• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Tencent on an all-out war with Steam in China which is part of Asia

Castef

Castef

Banned
It seems that the new aim of Tencent of expanding its digital delivery platform is going full-steam (eh...) in China.

According to sources (like Daniel Ahmad, Analyst at Niko Partners, always a great source of asian-related news and trends - I know he's banned here, too bad... ) Tencent is signing exclusivity deals for games such as Rocket League, Paragon and Paladins, which will be sold only on WeGame and removed from the chinese Steam store (in the case of Rocket League and Deformers).

Quite an aggressive policy: it will be interesting to see how/if they could manage something similar in the west, given their intention of expanding their business worldwide.
 
G

glaurung

Member
Steam has a crazy foothold in the Western world, no worries there. But I would be interested to know how much they care about the Asian market.
 
P

pa22word

Member
glaurung said:
Steam has a crazy foothold in the Western world, no worries there. But I would be interested to know how much they care about the Asian market.
Click to expand...

The future of the gaming industry is going to be fought in Asia I feel. If valve has its stuff together (lol) I would think they'd be gearing up to hit back pretty hard.

I mean when you look at stats like China having more people in their middle income Group than the US has people period, as their economy keeps growing and that section of the economy starts demanding more and more services I don't think any industry with a worldwide outlook can afford to be caught with their pants down over there.
 
J

JMTHEFOX

Member
Middle on the road about this. On one hand it's awesome to see Tencent expanding their gaming business to the west. They had plans to bring some of their games like Assault Fire But there wasn't any more news after the announcement.

On the other hand, those exclusivity deals for some of the games like Rocket League not going to be sold on Steam anymore worry me and a lot of other Steam players....

Best of luck to Tencent though. I hope their wegame platform has something similar to Steam's big picture mode.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
JMTHEFOX said:
Middle on the road about this. On one hand it's awesome to see Tencent expanding their gaming business to the west. They had plans to bring some of their games like Assault Fire But there wasn't any more news after the announcement.

On the other hand, those exclusivity deals for some of the games like Rocket League not going to be sold on Steam anymore worry me and a lot of other Steam players....

Best of luck to Tencent though. I hope their wegame platform has something similar to Steam's big picture mode.
Click to expand...

The OP means they'll be removed from Steam in Asian territories covered by WePlay, not altogether.
 
Trickster

Trickster

Member
Making games exclusive to certain digital platforms is kinda shit, it's one of the main reasons I hardly ever buy EA games.

If you want to compete with steam, do it by making a better platform than Steam.
 
Y

YianGaruga

Banned
Why would the Rocket League devs agree to something like this? I mean yeah more money is great, but they have a fuckton of that already

Paragon and Paladins I could see happening much more easily

EDIT: This was my reaction while OP said it would apply to "Asia". If it's China only it makes more sense.
 
T

truestatic

Member
kurahador said:
What the fuck?? Why are these company agree with this???
Click to expand...
giphy.gif
Click to expand...
.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
YianGaruga said:
Why would the Rocket League devs agree to something like this? I mean yeah more money is great, but they have a fuckton of that already

Paragon and Paladins I could see happening much more easily
Click to expand...

Yeah, Paragon makes sense simply because Tencent owns almost 50% of Epic.
 
P

pa22word

Member
YianGaruga said:
Why would the Rocket League devs agree to something like this? I mean yeah more money is great, but they have a fuckton of that already

Paragon and Paladins I could see happening much more easily
Click to expand...

My guess is either the check was so big they couldn't say no, or they don't feel valve is taking the Asia market seriously enough and so went to a competitor that promised them drastically more exposure.

Either one or both could be the case. I honestly know nothing about valve's Asian efforts.
 
S

Skinpop

Member
YianGaruga said:
Why would the Rocket League devs agree to something like this? I mean yeah more money is great, but they have a fuckton of that already

Paragon and Paladins I could see happening much more easily
Click to expand...
because it's next to impossible to own/run a platform in china unless you are a chinese corp. steam don't stand a chance.
 
M

MGrant

Member
Long as they don't touch my Steam shit in Taiwan it'll be okay. Also, we still don't have Nier: Automata on our Steam. That needs to change.
 
L

Last_colossi

Member
Just knowing that the guys who own Clash of Clans now own the exclusive rights to sell Rocket League digitally in Asia (only China?) makes my stomach turn.
 
wapplew

wapplew

Member
Steam had a good run in China. It's a miracle Steam able to operate uncensored, things could change soon.
 
C

Chairmanchuck

Member
orochi91 said:
It's just business.

Valve could try competing with Tencent and offer those companies/devs a better deal.
Click to expand...

Valve dont care. They could have made Steam really really big (and it is quite big now in China) by letting Chinese players play DOTA2 at launch on Steam instead of that Perfect World launcher....
 
S

sibarraz

Banned
Why is Daniel Ahmed banned here? his twitter account is very insightful and as far as I know he isn't a gamer gater or anything like that
 
M

Mephala

Member
I wonder if it is timed exclusivity. I suspect in Rocket League's case it is just distribution but you can probably connect to the game if you bought it on steam previously.
 
C

CrazedProfessional

Member
You cannot compete with Tencent in China. They just get favourable deals all the time. It's basically competing with the Government and a battle that even Google and Facebook lost.
 
S

sheaaaa

Member
You know what, fuck this shit. Any company that treats Asia differently to the rest of the world can go fuck itself.

I still can't buy Nier Automata here in Singapore, an English-speakint country.
 
U

UpDownLeftRight

Banned
YianGaruga said:
If it's China ONLY, then I can understand it a bit more. Doesn't make it better though
Click to expand...

Yeah this is still straight bullshit. I wonder is Psyonix actually agreed or if their previous work with Epic left them so closely tied that they were unwillingly dragged into this.

GearFourth said:
Competition is good which is what Steam needs too bad it's only for China
Click to expand...

Removing the game from another store is not the type of competition anyone should want.
 
L

Louis Cyphre

Banned
If they feel the need to sign exclusivity deals for games they have not funded then that tells me they don't have as much confidence in their service as they should.
 
K

klee123

Member
Good stuff, more competition the better. Not thrilled with valve having absolute monopoly over the pc gaming space.
 
O

Oersted

Member
YianGaruga said:
Why would the Rocket League devs agree to something like this? I mean yeah more money is great, but they have a fuckton of that already

Paragon and Paladins I could see happening much more easily
Click to expand...

Tencent has ocean levels deep pockets. And basically a monopoly on gaming and e-transactions in China.
 
T

Triggerhappytel

Member
YianGaruga said:
Why would the Rocket League devs agree to something like this? I mean yeah more money is great, but they have a fuckton of that already.
Click to expand...

Imagine the scenario:

Steam - "We're not very well established in China, but you'll get the same deal you get elsewhere of 70% of revenue for every copy sold."

Tencent - "We've got most of the market share for China, we'll pay you to host your game exclusively on our digital marketplace and we'll offer you a very competitive rate."

Which would you go for? Bearing in mind restrictions in China will probably make it impossible for a western company to ever catch up with a Chinese company.
 
P

Pachael

Member
I assume that games introduced on the service will be exclusive there and will not be on the Steam China platform.

Still, it is an open market, and they are paying for publishing efforts which I assume includes localisation, QA and so on, so fair play to them.

The discussion with Sergey was a little enlightening on that front too. Look forward to the competition~

EDIT:

Louis Cyphre said:
If they feel the need to sign exclusivity deals for games they have not funded then that tells me they don't have as much confidence in their service as they should.
Click to expand...

Can't see why WeGame wouldn't release in the west in a number of years and offer its own games or by their subsidaries. Epic have a number of games (obviously), Supercell devs may decide do something new / port their mobile offerings over, and well, Riot of course - what better way to launch a company service like Wow and B.net, or Valve and Half-life.
 
Y

YianGaruga

Banned
stuminus3 said:
Oh my poor sweet summer child. *hugs*
Click to expand...

Oersted said:
Tencent has ocean levels deep pockets. And basically a monopoly on gaming and e-transactions in China.
Click to expand...
Triggerhappytel said:
Imagine the scenario:

Steam - "We're not very well established in China, but you'll get the same deal you get elsewhere of 70% of revenue for every copy sold."

Tencent - "We've got most of the market share for China, we'll pay you to host your game exclusively on our digital marketplace and we'll offer you a very competitive rate."

Which would you go for? Bearing in mind restrictions in China will probably make it impossible for a western company to ever catch up with a Chinese company.
Click to expand...

At first it seemed like they were willing to fuck over all of Asia for money - however much it is - and I don't think that's worth it if you're already as succesful as RL.

Since it's only China and it's such a different and closed market I can see why it would make sense though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Tencent & Chinese Video Games Companies Rocked as State Media Calls Gaming “Spiritual Opium”
47
5K
Halo is Back replied
China calls for less 'effeminate' men in videogames and bans 'gay love'
6 7 8 9 10
491
42K
Fat Frog replied
[GI.biz] Analysts offer predictions for 2023 in games
16
3K
Magic Carpet replied
Tencent stealth launches international version of WeGame storefront
3
490
Shin replied
Interview with Shuji Utsumi (SEGA Co-COO) by Japanese media outlet Seizo-Trend
Business Game Dev
1
1K
Unknown? replied
Top Bottom