Tencent Becomes Majority Owner of Marvelous Inc and Xseed Games

Tencent will own 20% of the game studio behind God Eater 3, Daemon X Machina, Story of Seasons (formerly Harvest Moon), and Senran Kagura.

[Sonyslave3]

Damn China not freaking playing idk if this good or bad.

[Sophisticated_Chap]

Bad

[Cmv38]

Bad...definitely bad

[LOGICWINS]

Can you explain for the laymen (me) why this is bad?

[LightofDarkness]

Chinese censorship laws forbid a great deal of content and subject matter that western and Japanese markets are accustomed to.

[UltraNova]

Who's next...

[AnubisG]

This is bad without a question.

[yellowgerbil]

No amount of money is worth selling out to the Chinese in an industry where they censor things so badly that there is only like 10 games available on the Chinese Playstation store.

[Rangerman1208]

That reminds me of the time they banned Devotion from Steam just for a winnie the pooh easter egg.

[TheColbertinator]

It turns out the world's most powerful Communist autocrat is just a snowflake.

[rainslacker]

Tencent owns so much of the industry now, and they don't censor games outside of China beyond what is done because of these crazy standards which localization companies, or console makers, or publishers themselves would do otherwise.

It's also not like Marvelous and Xseed haven't been criticized heavily for censoring their games outside Japan for quite some time now anyways.

[yellowgerbil]

What you said amounts to one of those crazy women trying to marry a serial killer behind bars, "I know he hurt other women, but he hasn't hurt me so I love him".

[rainslacker]

And how has Tencent hurt you, or what have they done that has you concerned?

Seems that might be worth mentioning, because otherwise, what you said originally amounts to, "I have no reason to hate them except they're Chinese, and I'm irrational." I mean, unless you are talking about that extremely exaggerated example you gave, which isn't true, and the censorship has more to do with local requirements more than it does Tencent doing it.

I know there are things out there you could cite, because I'm well aware of who Tencent is, and what they've done, but most of that is within China itself.

[yellowgerbil]

let me ask you this. Would you support Microsoft or Sony if they had ties to the kkk? Would you support Nintendo if they had ties to Isis? Would you support Rockstar if it had ties to Scientology?
Probably not, same goes for a company owned by the Chinese government. Have nothing against Chinese people, but their government and by extension the companies within its borders, yeah.

[RazzerRedux]

@yellowgerbil

lol....Microsoft and Sony already have a ton of ties to the Chinese government.

[rainslacker]

Probably not, but realistically, I'm sure you can find investors in any major company that have ties to some screwed up organization. Tencent is a privately held company in China. They tow the communist china line because they have to, and may have a vested interest in doing so. I dunno.

But, my philosophical ideals against blatant hatred or offensive groups is a lot different than my views on companies that operate within political regimes that I dont agree with.

I dont have anything against the companies within china. If you can show something that supports that they are directly linked to the chinese government, either completely controlled by, or they control the government, then by all means, I'm willing to hear it.

[BlackIceJoe]

This is disappointing news, because I try to stay away from Tencent.

[Cmv38]

at this rate it'll be easier to stay away from oxygen

[Double_O_Revan]

Sorry to say, but they bought that too.

[ifrit_caress]

Any breathing human being should stay away from Tencent.

[Rangerman1208]

At this point, the entire gaming industry is just gonna be a battle of Tencent and NetEase on "who can own the most studios".

[Silly gameAr]

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

[Looper]

For once sir we agree!

[Shikoku]

Someone needs to stop these damn communists buying up all the game studios and pushing the nationalist agenda

[Asuka]

Until you can get people to start hating money more than they hate their agenda that's not going to happen unfortunately...

[Knightofelemia]

Damn China just buying everything up

[antikbaka]

not a cent to Chinese owned companies

[Looper]

Gonna have a tough time with your electronics bud.
Don't get me wrong, I think China has had way too much time in the industrial sun and needs to be taken out back and dealt with but you're going to have a difficult time not giving your money to a Chinese company one way or another.

[antikbaka]

*game companies

[Nacho_Z]

Why is the distinction between game and non game companies important? Why are you fine with buying Chinese products in general but not computer games?

[antikbaka]

because, modern world currently constructed the way taht you can't avoid buying products which are not made in China.

[rainslacker]

You'll not be buying a lot of games then. Tencent either has majority share, or a significant share of a lot of publicly traded companies. Their impact on the business and design side of things varies within all those holdings.

I'm not a big fan of Tencent, but for the most part, I haven't seen the games I care about that they now have a stake in change because of their interference. I'm sure it exists in some of their games, but unless they do something to the games I care about, I'm not at a point where I'm going to boycott a developer because they have investors who are Chinese.

If Chinese companies want to invest in American or Asian companies, then they have just as much right as anyone else. The thing about publicly traded companies is you don't usually get to decide who to sell to, and if Chinese companies are offering more to get controlling shares, then there's no reason not to take it IMIO.

[antikbaka]

then you are kind of blind. Youtube censoring anti china comments, Blizzard has banned people from speach and punished them. I'm sure there are many more examples

[AnotherGamer]

The hell is going on? When have Tencent being this active buying things?

[Chevalier]

For awhile now. Riot game studios, majority stake in Epic, Bluehole, Ubisoft, Activision, Grinding Gear, Supercell, Platinum, Yager, Funcom, Paradox and now Marvelous.

https://www.pcgamer.com/eve...

They also put money into Discord too.

[ifrit_caress]

Tencent becomes a cancer of the gaming industry. Far worse than microtransactions.

[DefaultComment]

Hate tencent all you want but the matter of fact is Tencent is looking to take the gaming industry by storm and none of you can stop them from it. You can boycott them as much as you like but it's only a matter of time when you'll come back crawling when there will be great new games out there and you'll choose to ignore that tencent is their biggest shareholder.
At the end of the day that's what you are, raging and talking trash but in the end you bow your heads later on.
You can down vote me all you want but that doesn't change reality of what it is and will happen in the near future.

[Chocoburger]

Absolutely not. There's enough good games made since 1983 to keep me busy until the end of my life. Don't make assumptions about people as if we're going to "come crawling back" to play some shitty, janky, generic, shallow, forgettable, free-to-play mobile trash, PC trash, or console trash.

[AnubisG]

China is buying up everything. Movie industry, gaming industry. Get ready for insane censorship in all media.

[Jrios355]

Companies keep selling their souls to the devil.

[smashman98]

I believe in the stock market you can't decide who buys and who doesn't. I could be wrong.

[rainslacker]

Depends on who's doing the selling. Publicly traded shares they can't really control. But if a stake holder has shares, they can indeed choose who to sell to. I don't know the details here, but majority ownership can be done through means other than private sale depending on how the shares are distributed. General investors aren't likely to not sell to a Chinese company, as their investment is to make money, not hold the company to matters of principal, which they likely don't share with the minority that don't want Chinese companies investing in other nations companies. For the most part, Chinese money is just as good as American's or Asians money.

[GrizToof]

Goodbye Japanese developers =( Selling your soul to China is a horrible idea especially if you are anti censorship. Every game released by these new Chinese companies will have to get the stamp of approval from the government. Look what other companies have done to make sure they don't hurt China's feelings.

I'm getting to the point where i just don't care anymore. I'm an old gamer and it's obvious that this once great form of entertainment has entered a realm that i don't like and cannot relate with those that like it. I am not upset by it anymore, this is how it goes when you get older. Things out grow you and people no longer make things for you, it's made for the kids.

[Dwarrior]

There are plenty of options still out there, boomer. The commies don't own it all.

[djl3485]

20% is not a majority.

[rainslacker]

It can be if they are the largest single shareholder. 20% is usually enough to have a significant say on the board anyhow.

[Dwarrior]

Tencent owns how much of Epic Games? And the world kept right on spinning.

You going to boycott anything made with Unreal? Good luck with that.

[Chevalier]

40 percent of Epic they also have 5 percent of Activision and Ubisoft too. So yeah it might be difficult to avoid supporting Tencent

[Nacho_Z]

Can't say I'm concerned about a company I've never heard of buying a majority stake of another company that makes games I've barely heard of. Even if I was a massive fan of God Eater or whatever there's no reason to assume that it won't be business as usual just because there are new investors.

[rainslacker]

Marvelous and XSeed is probably the most prolific publisher/studio holder of Japanese games that aren't mainstream out there. They're about on par with Atlus, if not more prolific in the niche genres or games. For people that actually like Otaku style gaming, they are one of a few who regularly release titles that they'd be interested in.

Not that this acquisition worries me, and people seem to be basing their distaste on nothing more than the fact that this is a chinese company, but without much to say why that's a bad thing for the games themselves. Just wanted to point out that XSeed and Marvelous aren't minor players in the market. More prolific games from them include being the publisher or western localizers for the Ys series, almost all the ARC System work games, Senran Kagura, Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel series, and they've taken on quite a few of those niche games which get a lot of criticism for being too racy....also known as pedo simulators to the uninformed.

[wenaldy]

Nooooooo... Harvest Moon mobile with waiting time and pay/boost to speed up ;(

[Games1st]

Rip.

[AK91]

Oh no