Weren’t they around 50-60 before Tencent? Wouldn’t call that a small team.
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I feel that claiming there is a difference between businesses and governments when the subject is Tencent is unbelievably naive, given their history and how closely they are aligned with the CCP government and act as their censorship enforcement arm for anything they have their money in.
One only needs to look at how Blizzard reacted on their Chinese-language sites about the Blitzchung situation - incredibly submissive and cowed language, apologies for insulting the Chinese people for letting someone dare claim that Hong Kong should have sovereignty, etc. - and this is a company that was probably at the time with a lower percentage owned by Tencent than this arrangement creates.
Frankly there’s not much I can do about this - I’ve already bought the game, you have my money - but this is unspeakably disappointing and has pretty much snuffed out any excitement I had for the game going forward.
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I’ve thought about this. A LOT, since I saw the announcement on your page and I really at first felt like I was having a knee-jerk reaction to a company I am not a fan of, taking an a partial stake in an independent company making an indie ARPG game that will directly compete with other companies they own, and you do not see a problem with this?
Did you all get hit on the head as a child?
They people that work at Tencent may be wonderful, really nice people, but THEY don’t own the company, the Chinese government does.
With this deal, you guys basically opened yourselves up to chinese influence on your game and you help support the chinese government.
There’s a reason I haven’t spent a dime on GGG or Riot games since they got bought out by Tencent.
I would have rather you guys lost a small portion of control to NOT work with the chinese government. Hell South Park took a stance and got banned from their country.
Same reason I dont watch the WWE, they go and do shows for dictators and oligarchs and praise them while doing it.
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I’m sure this Friday’s dev stream will be interesting, and I hope the team is prepared for that.
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Agreed, but reading Judd’s statement, I’m pretty sure the deal with Tencent is now several months old, and permitted all the recent hirings.
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Blockquote
“All the initial worries people had when Tencent took over PoE never came to pass, so I see this as good news. PoE is probably in the best state it’s ever been I’m really enjoying this league.”
He says, as PoE just decided to launch it’s battlepass.
You are probably right on the technical aspects of your statement, and I do agree with you. The game, by itself, is in the best state it could ever be. But the problem is not the coding side of things. As is clear from the creation of the battlepass, what’s most important, the money, stopped pouring in. The leagues weren’t keeping players interested, with the newest one being the exception because the game changed too much for people to leave the game alone after week 1. The fact that they released the battlepass during this league, when every player was extremely happy with the current content was very much a deliberate choice on their part. Imagine if the pass released during Ultimatum? The entire player base would have left long before Archnemesis came around. And getting back to the money, Tencent expects returns on their investments.
We don’t fear Tencent getting their claws in games for nothing. The problem about investors is that they don’t like losing money, they like seeing their money double, triple, quadruple, over time. And Tencent (not just Tencent Games) doesn’t have half the money of China because they don’t control whatever their money is paying for.
Sure, a majority stake would have been MUCH worse news, but them having “low-equity”, which is just a “safe term” for “they bought less than 49% of us”, doesn’t mean they have no control, or don’t have someone there saying “do this like this” or “add this for this purpose”.
And just as an off-topic, since only two other people mentioned it; EHG, I hope you knew Tencent is in the middle of the BIGGEST money laundering scheme in recorded history while they are buying a part of you. I’m not saying this will bite your ass, but it very much could. Their shares have already lost 10% of they value in under 24 hours. And if they are indicted, you guys might just as well be too, and be asked to return the money they gave you, or much worse.
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Why are you copying POE?? same partner wtf ?
I guess PCC loves arpg.
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I dislike tencent and the influence of the chinese government on it, but i doubt this to be any bad omen. Chinese companies just do what they always do. Look at other parts of the world and their products, to either copy them or to somehow get a grip on them to integrate them into their own markets. Its easier to buy into products like video games to have them in your own market instead of copying them i suppose. China is the factory of the world and it only gets bigger.
There’s just too much influence from these AAA companies in gaming in general. I’m just tired of every fucking game having to have minitransactions and loot chests and P2W strategies.
Riot denies P2W transactions but some of their skins literally are trash and cause buggy video glitches that make it impossible to see their skillshots or turn spells invisible, still haven’t fixed half of them, they just ban the skins from pro play.
GGG started doing “battlepasses” and selling things that improve gameplay for people willing to spend money and handicapping those who don’t want to.
Its just this trend of independent company makes a game thats successful, major company buys it up, then they add microtransactions and ruin the overall feel of a game.
Its never in the first “round” of funding either, if you ever need more money expect to lose control of more of your control of the direction the game goes.
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I can understand the angst, but never forget the game is going to change anyway. In the medium to short term this seems unlikely to affect anything. In the long term, you can’t tell at this point. The game could get better or worse, with or without Tencent’s involvement.
All of this hand wringing this early on is not reasonable.
EHG disclosed this didn’t they ? And they are answering questions aren’t they ?
How about wait and see for at least a couple of weeks before predicting the fall of EHG, LOL
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Somethings to consider.
Tencent is stupidly smart, people point out that tencent has stakes in two competing products, three if you count riot potentially jumping in.
While this appears to reduce competition, it actually promotes it. EHG/Riot/GGG still need to get their own income. Even if tencent owns 99% of them, the EHG players still want to have good sales as thats direct money in pocket, just because PoE makes money does not mean EHG does by virtue of being owned fully or partially by tencent. This means they still have incentive to provide a competing product. Tencent wins either way, no matter which product wins in any given quarter.
Tencent has some stinkers as far as games go, but it also has some really high flyers that have been pointed out. Tencent has owned parts of riot since 2011, this is just after the end of season 1. So anyone thinking that league has not pretty much always been influenced(if they even have been) is kidding themselves. League of legends is one of if not the largest Esport out there played in many countries.
Also you have to consider what it means to have someone as large as tencent take an interest in your company and product. Tencent does not own or even try and buy small indie studios because they have bigger fish to fry. if you are getting scouted by tencent you are doing something right.
I think getting outraged about politics and what not is certainly fine, thats some peoples choice. But I think its extremely hard to stick to your guns, Tencent and other chinese owned companies make and are part of an outlandish number of products. being free of “Corrupt money” its basically impossible. I wouldnt blame anyone for not wanting to be involved, I stopped playing blizzard games after their HK stunt, but thats because not only was their stance shit they have shit games too 
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That is because these games receive new content and have servers.
Somehow, the devs must be paid for their servers and the all the new content they bring to the game.
I dislike microtransactions, but I recognize they exist for a reason. And I like they way EHG see them.
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This just shouts “bad financial management” to me. Maybe if you stopped redoing parts of the game OVER and OVER and OVER again, you wouldn’t waste so much cash. Even though I have no idea how much a game studio costs to run, I do know you have received an amount of money most of your players couldn’t fathom. So basically you have now got to the point in the game where unless you have another injection of cash from a backer. There will probably NOT be a release, let alone on the time scale released.
There is NO point your game will be perfect, so stop with this ideology that you have to keep reworking systems already done and concentrate on finishing the parts needed to launch. I bought the game knowing there was going to be a cosmetic shop but if it goes past that and I can’t play a game I’ve already paid for without having to buy stuff like stash tabs etc. I will not be happy and I will make a complaint to the British trading standards.
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GGG doesn’t sell a single thing that improves gameplay, but sure man
Oh no, the EEEEEVIL battle pass… what an incredibly sadistic way to fund development, offering a totally optional, purely cosmetic, non pay to win battle pass. Surely this was the doing of Tencent, and not the fact that basically every f2p game has had battle passes for the past nearly decade.
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Honestly I am behond disapointment about this decision. This is not only a question of money, this is a choice of civilisation and with who you choice to work with. There is plenty of solution of financing in America and Europe to AVOID WORKING WITH DICTATURE REGIME. Personnaly as I am half Ukranian I’m promise myslef I will never anymore spend money and time on product coming or related to any Russia/China/N Korea. even not speaking of Tecent obviously bad reputation.
So bye bye LE, it was a good time but you’re killing it, because hetical matters, it’s the main weapon we have as a customers to influence.
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In May 2021, Judd was giving the figure of “over 50 full time”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/nh0z4g/hey_reddit_im_judd_cobler_eleventh_hour_games_ceo/
Hard to believe he already had the Tencent money by then.
It was 10 months ago, and they have been hiring continuously since then. I don’t have a number but 60 before Tencent feels like a very low estimate, even if we consider the deal is several months old (I agree with you, it certainly is).
And now:
I would be surprised if the team is under 100 by summer.
This is, of course, not Blizzard. But this is certainly not “small”. For a studio working on only one, yet unfinished, game, I do consider it massive.
To be brutally honest the only reason I’ve been playing this game is because they WEREN’T Tencent owned. There’s POE for that already. Tencent is Chinese government filth that directs money from western companies to China. it’s bad enough we have a trade deficit with China going on 30+ years for material goods, it’s worse they’re buying up American companies left and right to grab more money for themselves.
Look at literally any economy that has a trade deficit and it’s always either falling apart or addicted to government spending. Tencent taking your profits contributes directly to this issue. i’m beyond irate our politicians are dumb enough to let this continue (did you know a Chinese company tried to buy the Chicago stock exchange? And that they’ve purchased pork producing companies in my brother’s home state?) It’s even worse that one of my main forms of entertainment is being handed to them on a silver platter. I buy American when i can afford it because quite frankly money leaving your economy is almost never a good thing. Never. This is why China is so aggressive in buying up profitable companies and is so stingy on the trade wars. They know more money into their economy is economic growth. Here in the US, our citizens and government just can’t seem to grasp this little fact.
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This was specifically addressed here:
To me at least, it sounds like there was 0 American or European offers that didn’t stipulate having some level of control over the direction of the game, Something EHG does not want another partner to have, at all.
Also for this:
Lets look at the numbers:
By simple math of the above numbers:
653 Days (Exact number looking for money)
540 Days after talks BEGAN with Tencent (18 months x 30 day average)
113 Days Between First talks with Tencent and The day this announcement was posted.
This means the deal is at MOST, almost 4 months old, but I would bet it wasn’t signed day 1. Likely The deal was finalized in the last 30 days.
I of course, could be wrong on all accounts.
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