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Tencent culls games marketing budget as China’s freeze on the industry continues

Publisher plays conservatively as the block on new game approvals continues

Tencent culls games marketing budget as China’s freeze on the industry continues

Tencent is reining in its games marketing budgets as China’s industry freeze continues.

Bloomberg reports that an internal document is asking marketing executives to “endure the hard times together” by enacting greater control on cash flow and curtailing spending.

The big freeze

In doing so, Tencent will be withdrawing unused marketing funds from games that hadn’t been approved before the Chinese government froze the licence approval process. It is also halving branding budgets from more mature titles if those funds hadn’t yet been deployed.

China’s block on game approvals began earlier this year amid a government restructure, alongside both moral concerns and an apparent growing short-sightedness problem among Chinese youth.

Our sister-site PCGamesInsider.biz has the full story.


Staff Writer

Natalie Clayton is an Edinburgh-based freelance writer and game developer. Besides PCGamesInsider and Pocketgamer.biz, she's written across the games media landscape and was named in the 2018 GamesIndustry.biz 100 Rising Star list.