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Comment by VonGuard | Hacker News Reader

League of Legends is no longer the world's most popular video game.

While this is true, Tencent also owns major shares in a ton of the games that might be considered among the most popular, as well as minor shares in many of the companies they don't control.

Arena of Valor, most popular mobile MOBA game; 80m daily players as of Dec 2017 and I believe it's currently the biggest game worldwide despite mostly being popular in China (I think there are even stories of politicians delaying press conferences to finish a match lmao) - developed and published by Tencent

Fortnite - Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games

Clash of Clans - Tencent owns ~85% of Supercell

PUBG - They're working on acquiring 10% of Bluehole, developed PUBG mobile, and managed the (hugely successful) China release

Overwatch / Hearthstone - Tencent owns ~5% of Activision (about $2.5b)

Crossfire (still very popular in Asia) - Tencent managed the China release

Candy Crush - Tencent is the distributor in China

Some smaller but also well-known companies:

Path of Exile - 80% stake

Miniclip - majority stake

Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, The Division, Rainbow 6) - 5%

Paradox Games (Cities: Skylines, Stellaris, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, etc) - 5%

Netmarble Games (mobile games like Lineage 2, YS Online) - 22%

(mostly sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_Games)

This is completely ignoring their significant shares in Tesla, Snapchat, etc. And the fact that they're like, not an actual investment firm and have their own business, including WeChat, QQ, and their AI lab. League's decline in popularity is certainly bad for them, but relative to their entire operations it's only a small hit. This recent drop in market value is, in my opinion, better attributed to the doubts over tech stock valuations due to Facebook and Twitter.

And they are able to push all of their mobile games through Wechat, with over a billion active users.

Gaming was 48% of their revenue for Q2, with US$3.2 billion in phone sales and US$2.1 for desktop.

The other 52% comes from social networks, Wepay, cloud infrastructure, and online advertising.

>Miniclip - majority stake

Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I wasn't even aware that they were still around, but apparently they are.

major flashbacks to bush's white house shootout. i wonder if they still host all the old games?

honestly i wonder about the flash games sites in general. what happens when flash finally gets brought behind the barn?

Flashpoint has been organizing an archive that bundles in the standalone flash player.

Anyone play their mining game where you are a drill?

omg motherload. memories <3

When I used to play MotherLoad, the world was still a bright place, full of possibility. I was on track to finish from a prestigious high school, accepted into a prestigious university, and obviously going to end up pretty comfortable in life.

Little did I know, that within me I had the seeds of mental illness growing. Perhaps, one of the signs, if I only knew to pay attention to it, was how "addicting" games were to me. I think the world back then just thought a lot less about those things, if you could still manage to be outwardly successful.

No one worried about what it meant that some kids finding a vibrant, "safer" environment in video games, than in the real world.

Ahhhh, MotherLoad.

Sometimes I upvote things purely for their literary quality.

I have no knowledge of "Motherload," nor any interest in modern games. But those few lines about your (your character's ?) interaction with it, makes me want to know how this story unfolds.

Oh man Motherload. I have really good memories of spending my school breaks on motherload. All those drills, so much fun.

Motherload? That game was terrific. You can still play it, though you do need Flash.

https://www.miniclip.com/games/motherload/en/

There's also Super Motherload on Steam.

I loved that game. I wrote a copy of it for desktop in c++ at the end of high school: https://github.com/Sytten/MineDeeper Please don't judge my code quality I was 16 at the time :)

I love this about HN. People showcasing their little OS projects. One can learn so much.

XGen Studios the studio behind MotherLoad actually released a remaster of the game a couple of years ago http://www.xgenstudios.com/super-motherload/

Arena of Valor is SCARY addictive.

My wife threatened divorce if I wouldn't delete the app.

Interestingly, Arena of Valor has done much, much worse in North American markets (and nowadays charts poorly on iOS in both ranking and grossing): https://toucharcade.com/2018/07/30/arena-of-valor-world-cup-...

Fortnite is... Which is made by Epic Games... Which Tencent owns nearly half of...

Tencent does a lot more than having a stake in Riot Games.

Yeah, they bought PUBG too. Right after it stopped being popular.

They also own 40% of Fortnite.

pubg was bound to be a flash in the pan. i don't know how they would be able to fix it short of completely reworking it. 10 minutes of looting, then rip after getting shot from across the map

Yes, they do, QQ being exhibit A. But League of Legends was supposed to be their first major step into the larger world of 100 million player+ games, worldwide. Riot has yet to produce another game, and their seat atop the gaming market is now gone.

It wasn't their biggest money maker, but it was their biggest money maker outside of China, and investors really liked the idea of global growth.

Their seat is gone. To another game they own nearly half of.

Pretty sure they make way more on Fortnite.

No offense, but that comment goes to show US centric HN is. This is like valuing Microsoft based on XBox sales, only that it plays an even smaller role.

What is now? PUBG?

depends on what sphere you're looking at. the overwatch league is poised to take over in the esports scene while fortnite is gobbling up the casual playerbase.

note that this is north america focused, i have no clue about europe, south korea, or china.

> the overwatch league is poised to take over in the esports scene

in terms of number of players? Do you have any links to places where this has been said?

Measured in revenue, it has to be Fortnite: Epic is apparently printing money to the tune of $100MM/month from it. And anecdotally, over the course of just a couple months it certainly seems like every single person under the age of 18 in the United States started playing it.

Well, Tencent also owns Epic so...

I wish it was. It's replacement is really awful.

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