Tencent
HONG KONG: Tencent Holdings Ltd. unveiled its latest entry in the Battle Royale death-match genre Wednesday, allowing China’s largest social media company to begin cashing in on a red-hot gaming arena.
Shares in the company gained as much as 3.7 percent, their biggest intraday climb in about two months.
Tencent concurrently pulled the plug on the mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, a title it was never allowed to make money on after Beijing imposed a months-long freeze on approvals to fight addiction.
The game’s testing phase formally ended Wednesday, Tencent said in a notice to users.
Game for Peace -- which pays homage to the Chinese military -- closely mimics and complements PUBG’s gameplay, down to a similar interface and functions to help users migrate their in-game profiles.
Having recently won a license to make money off users, the game also lets players deposit money into their accounts, meaning
Tencent can finally start charging for hugely popular Battle Royale or duel-to-the-death style titles. It’s currently available only to Android mobile users aged 16 and above.
Tencent’s prized games business is showing signs of recovery after a brutal 2018, when Beijing cracked down on approvals to combat addiction among the country’s youths and an economic slowdown cooled advertising.
The industry watchdog has since resumed greenlighting titles, but they’re working on a backlog of thousands of games.
“An earlier-than-expected launch of “Game for Peace” should drive strong re-acceleration in” second-half mobile revenue, Jefferies analysts Karen Chan and Ken Chong wrote. - Bloomberg
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