Mobile led the charge as Tencent’s 2018 game revenue figures reached $19.13 billion (128.4 billion JPY).

While PC games fell 8 per cent year-over-year to $460.2 million (50.6 billion JPY), mobile surged 24 per cent year-over-year to reach $707.6 million (77.8 billion JPY).

Across the company’s entirety, Tencent hit revenues of over $45.56 billion (312.69 billion JPY), a 32 per cent increase year-over-year. Net profit increased 10 per cent to reach $11.65 billion (79.98 billion JPY).

The key to Tencent's mobile success is PUBG Mobile, which the company claimed as “the highest-MAU smartphone game.” Top-seller Honor of Kings was also named for attracting over 75 million unique viewers during the KPL Fall Finals in December and has made lifetime revenues of over $4.5 billion.

Rough rider

Tencent took time to address the shaky state of the Chinese games market in 2018, after losing $20 billion in value during the nation’s block on new game approvals.

"Since there is a sizeable backlog for the banhao applications in the industry, our scheduled game releases will initially be slower than in some prior years," said Tencent.

The publisher later elaborated on its Healthy Gameplay System, brought in to address concerns over young players time spent gaming by locking out under-13s without parental consent.

"The system has resulted in minors spending significantly less time in the affected games, but immaterial impact on time spent by adult players."

2019 is already on track for Tencent. Within the first few months of the year, share value has already been handed a $40 billion boost.