The Chinese gaming industry seem to make games for gamers, while the western gaming industry seems obsessed with unsuccessfully "converting" people that don't play games, as if they are some kind of untapped market.
Well King and Blizzard are in Activision, and at least some years ago in their balance sheets we saw that King has a similar operating income as Blizzard. Those silly mobile games rake in some cash.
One can also ask how Tencent and NetEase is buying up stakes in everyone if they were not making money. There cannot be that much free money from CCP...
The gaming industry, regardless of where it's headquartered, is actually focused on aggressive, shameless monetization, and the Chinese segment were pioneers in this.
The western studios are focusing on making games for "modern audiences" which amounts to around a hundred people. I kid you not.
Valve just announced that games existence a few days ago and it's still deep in development. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make based upon its count of early play-testers?
I think you're mixing games up? The Valve game is called Deadlock and currently has 76,000 people playing it.
Which game are you referring to? Both that I mentioned are fully released