The Chinese tech giant Tencent is the second largest gaming company in the world. According to new reports, Tencent has now aimed to replicate the successful Steam hit Palworld by Pocketpair. To achieve this, they want to use the successful formula of the game as a basis for their own games. The Chinese company aimed to minimize risk and has assigned several studios to the project. The subsidiaries are supposed to compete against each other to develop a better game than Palworld.
What is Tencent?
- With about 25 billion US dollars in revenue, Tencent is number 2 in global gaming, ahead of Microsoft Gaming, but behind Sony, which now generates about 1 billion US dollars more per year. This was different in the past, but Tencent has lost ground in recent years.
- Tencent is a Chinese mega-corporation that is said to have good relationships with the government. In China, the publisher owns numerous studios and is particularly successful in the domestic market with mobile games.
- However, globally, Tencent is known for investing in or even acquiring many successful gaming companies that develop core games. They own Riot Games (LoL) and Funcom (Dune, Conan Exiles). But they also hold stakes in Epic Games, Ubisoft, Krafton, FromSoftware, and many other companies.
Tencent has been struggling lately and needs new hits
This is the situation: The economic site Bloomberg reports that the publisher is now trying to replicate the success of Palworld after their own games were not as successful as they had to admit.
- Tencent recently missed hits in Asia such as Genshin Impact (miHoYo) and Eggy Party (NetEase)
- Its own games did not perform as well as in all the preceding years
- The boss of Tencent urged the company not to rest on its laurels but to push forward again
In the meantime, it was thought that Tencent wanted to acquire the license for Dungeons and Dragons from Hasbro and have Larian, in which they hold shares, develop more games like Baldur’s Gate 3. This, however, was decisively denied.
Several studios are supposed to develop games like Palworld in competition with each other
This is Tencent’s plan: Tencent has allegedly tasked two studios, Timi and Lightspeed, with developing video games that can compete with Palworld. Specifically, these are supposed to be games that combine pets with “stylized violence.”
It seems that the Chinese have identified “cute little creatures and violence” as the core recipe of Palworld.
Reportedly, Tencent plans to develop several projects in the genre in competition with each other in the hope that better games than Palworld will emerge this way.
This way, their mobile hit “Honor of Kings” was created, a sort of “Mobile LoL.” They distribute the game in China through their own social media apps, and it is huge. In 2018, we reported on MeinMMO that 108 million women play it alone.
This is what’s behind it: Ironically, a game designer warned in January 2024 about just such a situation.
A former Nintendo developer expressed concerns that Palworld could serve as a template for future successful games. This is because Palworld itself already draws inspiration from established games in many parts:
Former Nintendo developer explains the problem of Palworld for gaming and calls out Asmongold
