Tencent feels heat from gaming rivals Alibaba, ByteDance and Genshin Impact maker miHoYo

Tencent saw record growth in gaming in 2020, investing in nearly 30 companies as PUBG Mobile and Honour of Kings pulled in more than US$5bil. While Alibaba and ByteDance continue to push into gaming, miHoYo’s Genshin Impact became one of the hottest new titles without Tencent’s ecosystem. — SCMP

Tencent Holdings, the world’s largest video games company by revenue, saw remarkable growth in 2020, but it now finds itself on the defensive, trying to tap into new gaming genres as large tech rivals and gaming upstarts chip away at its empire.

The Shenzhen-based company, which gets a third of its revenue from gaming, invested in 29 video game companies last year, three times more than in 2019. Tencent also pulled in more than US$2.6bil (RM10.51bil) from each of its two biggest mobile games, PUBG Mobile and Honour of Kings, a first for any gaming company, according to app tracking firm Sensor Tower.