News

Tencent Q2 2021 mobile game revenue up 13% to $6.3 billion

Company is also cracking down on young players' activity

Tencent Q2 2021 mobile game revenue up 13% to $6.3 billion

Tencent has announced its Q2 2021 financials for the three months ended June 30th, 2021.

Total revenues for the period were up 20 percent year-on-year to $21 billion. Mobile games accounted for 30 per cent of overall revenues or $6.3 billion, a rise of 13 per cent.

Key titles cited for the revenue increase were attributed Honor of Kings (closing in on $10 billion in player spending) PUBG Mobile, Clash of Clans and Moonlight Blade Mobile. The Chinese-only version of PUBG Mobile, which is called Peacekeeper Elite, experienced a fall in sales during the quarter.

Tencent generated $5.4 billion in terms of profits, up 13 per cent. In terms of new content, Tencent pointed to the success of internal studio Tourdog's Alchemy Stars, which was the most downloaded tactical RPG in Japan during July.

Tencent's Lightspeed and Quantum Studios' forthcoming open world survival crafting game Undawn has also accumulated over 30 million Chinese pre-registrations.

Much too young

A key concern that remains for Tencent is the increasingly aggressive position of the government to Chinese technology companies in general and time spent playing in particular.

In this context, Tencent noted it had "sought to pioneer a healthy game playing environment". It has now banned in-game spending by players aged under 12 in Honor of Kings and Peacekeeper Elite, as well as the intention to roll out this restriction to all of its games in future.

In addition, under 16s can only play for one hour a day (two hours on holidays), which is harsher than the government mandated 1.5 and three-hour limits set. 

Tencent said that 2.6 per cent of its revenue originates from players under the age of 16 and 0.3 per cent from under 12s. It will also be cracking down on children using adults' accounts.

Honor of Kings was rated the world's top grossing game in June 2021 with an estimated revenue of $265 million. 

The company also recently announced various partnerships, including working with Konami to publish China-only Contra Returns globally, as well as Bandai Namco for the forthcoming release of Digimon: New Century.


Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.