Shares in Chinese gaming tumble; CCP imposes new regulations and spending limits
pcgamer.com
pcgamer.com
I linked to the PCGamer article instead of the Reuters report because it had additional information and helpful context for people not already familiar with the industry.
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This affects how Chinese-owned gambling games can be monetized, at least within China itself. Also has implications on Western games, since many Western publishers are now partially or wholly owned by Chinese giants like Tencent: https://www.pcgamer.com/every-game-company-that-tencent-has-...
In fact why wouldn't the CCP want Tencent and Co to milk foreigners with predatory, addictive gambling schemes? That just means more wealth/power transfer to China.
> [...] and it's unlikely that the Chinese Communist Party cares how gaming companies monetise foreign countries. Especially considering these regulations seem more like cultural browbeating than financial plays.
Still, with all the gaming layoffs this year across so many publishers, I wonder if these companies losing 20% of their value overnight will mean they have to let people go too and/or try to recoup their Chinese losses by exploiting foreign markets more. Is it gonna enshittify the Epic Game Store / Unreal Engine etc?
For example, one of my favorite games is Path of Exile[1], which was developed by an independent New Zealand dev team. But eventually 87% of the company got sold to Tencent[2]. So far they've been able to keep the monetization schemes separate, with the Chinese market having a pay-to-win model and the Western market keeping the previous "cosmetics only" model. If they lose the Chinese market, are they going to expand the P2W mechanics to the rest of us...?