In a post on their website, Riot Games has announced that the company’s majority investor has upgraded their status to full ownership — and there’ll be changes.
If you weren’t aware, the Chinese corporation Tencent has been a majority owner of Riot Games for a while. I say corporation deliberately, because it’s grown into a gargantuan investment firm following its humble origins as the provider of the online messenger service OICQ. (Which ICQ, obviously, sued them over.)
Tencent has a lot of fingers in the gaming market though: they spent around US$230 million for a majority stake in Riot back in 2011, acquired a 14.6% share of GLU mobile for US$126 million this year, and has held a minority share in Epic Games since the beginning of the 2012-13 financial year.
Riot’s now fully owned by Tencent, although the post on the website doesn’t outline how much Tencent paid. It does, however, explain that the move will allow the company to transition from the current equity incentive program to cash-based incentives.
“This program comes in addition to our highly competitive salaries, open PTO, learning and development programs, 401K match, subsidized medical plans, and kitchens stocked with snax (poro and otherwise) all full-time Rioters get,” Riot, which was ranked #13 on Fortune’s best companies to work for this year, said.
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6 responses to “Tencent Fully Buys Out Riot Games, Staffers To Get Cash Incentives”
Tencent… the same monsters responsible for the mind-boggling practices here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI&ab_channel=ExtraCredits
This can only go well.
That’s downright terrifying.
Yeah, in this instance ‘monsters’ and ‘mind-boggling’ are not hyperbolic first-world problems used to describe games that are ‘literally worse than hitler oneoneleven’ but actual, genuinely terrifying 1984 shit.
Can you give a synopsis for those of us without access to Youtube?
Tencent is running a social network/gaming service for China which ‘gamifies’ being a ‘good citizen’.
They’ve partnered with majority market share retailers and other service providers to offer discounts and rewards to citizens whose social networking applications and purchasing history (through those same retailers etc) indicates ‘good’ behaviour. You get points for good things, lose points for bad things. Gain enough points and go up to enough tiers, get discounts, preferential treatment on travel approvals and other state bureaucracy-related things, or free stuff!
So about them points…
Linking to foreign news articles about a crash in the Chinese economy? Lose points. Link to state-issues broadcasts about how the economy is doing better than ever? Gain points!
Buy locally-grown rice? Gain points! Buy some Japanese anime? Lose points.
And here’s the really insidious part: Your point score is affected by the scores of your friends. If you have a friend who has a low score because they’re
politically active and don’t toe the party linea trouble-maker and bad citizen, then your score will go down, too. So you should pressure them to conform, or excise them from your social networks, isolating them.It’s staggering in its genius and pure evil.
Thank you good sir.
That setup is genius, evil, and terrifying.
Farewell LoL, it was fun while it lasted 🙂