Today Riot Games announced that it had raised an $8 million round of funding from Chinese online gaming giantTencent Holdings, along with returning investorsBenchmark Capital and Firstmark Capital. Tencent is the Chinese licensor of Riot’s League of Legends, a freemium real-time strategy game that monetizes through the sale of virtual items.
League of Legends’ status as a freemium title is unusual given its roots in the traditional PC gaming market. League of Legends is a commercial version of a free player-created modification of Warcraft III called Dawn of the Ancients. Where traditional PC RTS sessions can go on for hours, League of Legends is focused on short games that last 20 to 30 minutes. Most virtual items sold for the game will be avatar customization pieces.
Tencent is well-known for its wild profitability as a seller of virtual goods in a variety of different games and applications it operates in China. The company has also partnered with Western software developers before to create new online games geared toward the Asian market, like NBA 2K Online. Tencent’s investment in Riot Games appears to be unprecedented, but may well signal a future trend of growing closeness between the Chinese and Western games industries.
Posted: September 10th, 2009
Categories:
Games,
investing
Tags:
NBA 2k,
riot games,
tencent,
world of warcraft,
WOW
Comments:
View Comments.