Tencent & Charan

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_Saranghaeyo_ wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Anonymous1749704 wrote:

These decisions don't happen overnight. Who knows how long they've been negotiating the terms with Tencent.

it makes me wonder about the mtx release binge we saw recently. Was this them trying to buff the value of their company through profits as much as possible leading up to it? A last ditch attempt to raise a certain amount of money needed to avoid selling off? A proof of profit potential example to show off to tencent?

Was this in the pipe before the beastleague backlash? Was it partly cause by it?

Wouldn't surprise me. The MTX spam has been on a different level.

It doesn't work like that, you can't just say these are our sales in the last month so that's what we'll use to determine the worth of the company.

who said anything about it being solely based on those sales?

Tencent bought GGg because it fits with their overall gaming strategy and positioning against its rivals (Alibaba?)

Chris and company sold because the price and power arrangement fit with their exit strategy. Those who sold stock made a ton of money and now have choices they didn't have before.

GGG now has access to resources it didn't have before.

Chris, Erik and Jonathon are still tied to the company. There may not be much of a market for GGG shares, but I'm guessing that meeting specified goals will increase the value of those shares they still hold.

Without doubt change is coming, but some of them might be actually good and improve game play experience. With all the other shareholders out of the picture, if Tencent stays hands off for a year or so, Chris Erik and Jon could use the new resources to do great things.

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Chanbalam wrote:
There may not be much of a market for GGG shares

You really do not understand the difference between a privately held company and publicly traded if you think shares of a private company are ever on the market.

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鬼殺し wrote:

http://app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/1887410/25895937/entityFilingRequirement?backurl=%2Fcompanies%2Fapp%2Fui%2Fpages%2Fcompanies%2F1887410%2Fdocuments

Anyone who doesn't think that's an EPIC shakeup is deluding themselves.

Oy. That's disturbing.

I'm afraid we'll have to see how it goes before judging.

I probably dont see my self stop playing this game any time soon. But as long they pump out good content, in which I enjoy to burn my time into. Then it's a plus, hopefully I can get a couple or so years of entertainment before the new "next" hype.


I hope it doesn't goes to a dumpster hole like the other failed ARPGs before PoE.

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kolyaboo wrote:

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Chanbalam wrote:
There may not be much of a market for GGG shares

You really do not understand the difference between a privately held company and publicly traded if you think shares of a private company are ever on the market.

Actually, I do. Public shares and private shares are very different and much of what is possible in the private share market is constrained by both contracts and regulations. Do you know if Tencent has restricted who can buy GGG shares? I would guess that Tencent deliberately avoided buying 100% of GGG so that it had a hold on Chris, Erik and Jonathon for some period of time. Tencent doesn't want them to be able to jump ship too easily, too soon.

Who knows, maybe GGG stock could be converted to Tencent stock at some point in the future at a very favorable rate. Without seeing the content of the purchase docs and Chris's new contract we can only guess. But, I think that Selling GGG stock at this point is unlikely.

Of course abandoning it could be an option.

FYI Chris Wilson posted on reddit some hours AFTER the first thread on reddit already existed. It wasn't planned to reveal it so soon at all especially after the regular PR fiesta.

The main reason was damage control.

GGG was removing postings on this forum regarding shareholders in the past.

After the 7,5% RMT shareholder blowup he could feel the wrath of the community with less investment into packs and mtx. I remind you explanation attempts like "Minority shareholders have nothing to say" and so on.

As I proclaimed years ago Path of Exile isn't profitable the way it's designed and will cease to exist unless they find another way to make money. There are limited regions to expans Garena was a failure so the servers were merged. They did "Closed Beta 2.0" but know that they can't repeat it many times.

By cooperating with the RMT shareholder forcing design around Trading and RMT it took RMT to the extremes and after getting exposed it was a backlash with PR answers being "I know it looks bad". Even looking at the Wikis clearly shows that balancing or "bug fixing" had other intentions.


Everybody should understand that this is a cashout decision. 80% means that the point of no return is reached. They can't simply "buy back" shares to obtain a majority anymore. They have nothing to say anymore and the remaining share is more or less "Let's see how it will look like".

To dissect the posting:

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Why Tencent? Why not another company?

Tencent is one of the largest companies in the world and also one of the largest games publishers in the world. Tencent owns giant franchises like League of Legends and Clash of Clans and has a strong reputation for respecting the design decisions of developers and studios they invest in, allowing a high level of autonomy in continuing to operate and develop their games.

We have been approached by many potential acquirers over the last five years, but always felt that they didn't understand Path of Exile, or that they had other agendas (like signing users up to their services). Tencent's agenda is clear: to give us the resources to make Path of Exile as good as it can be.

LoL is one of the 5 most played games worldwide it makes money and as long a franchise makes money nothing much will change.

Clash of Clans on the other hand had very questionable decisions that drove many (unpaying) players away.

Investors do buisness they don't need to understand anything they only need to understand how does their investment make money. And I highly doubt investors openly say "Hey we will have every player sign up at our service and sell the data"

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Is Grinding Gear Games becoming part of Tencent?

Grinding Gear Games is still an independently-run company in New Zealand. All of its developers still work for Grinding Gear Games and have not become Tencent employees. The founders (Chris, Jonathan and Erik) are still running the company, just like we have been for the last 11 years. Going forward, we will have financial reporting obligations to Tencent but this will have minimal impact on our philosophy and operations.

Chris shows he doesn't understand investment at all. Of course the majority but a few positions stay the same this also applies to fusions.

The obligations on the other hand will have a major impact on the game. Investors have expectations and the numbers must be reached only that matters. In the first year the numbers are low but depending on the investor the numbers may become really unrealistic/unreachable.
Let's say first year the goal is 2 million the second year it becomes 6,5 million, then it becomes 14 million and the company has to compare to the global players in the gaming industry.

Once the goals are about to be missed there will be dismissals and changes to "rescue the numbers" and that will be of course RMT, P2W and other stuff.

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Will Tencent try to change Path of Exile?

No. We spoke to CEOs of other companies that Tencent has invested in, and have been assured that Tencent has never tried to interfere with game design or operations outside of China. We retain full control of Path of Exile and will only make changes that we feel are best for the game.

How naive. Why would anybody right in his mind talk badly about the owner of his company?

Talk to people who quit and don't think those are ungrateful employees.
Once the investment doesn't return you are forced to make changes.

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Will Path of Exile become Pay to Win?

No. We will not make any changes to its monetisation on our international servers.

A quote Chris hopes nobody remembers once there is P2W.

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Will Grinding Gear Games prioritise the Chinese version of Path of Exile?

The Chinese version of Path of Exile currently has its releases a few weeks after the international version. We are working hard to reduce this gap so that they come out closer together (or even simultaneously), but are not planning to prioritise the Chinese version of Path of Exile ahead of the international version. We want to treat all of our customers equally without any of them being frustrated at missing features or delayed releases.

2 words: Chinese Censorship. Once the government isn't happy with certain things everybody has to satisfy them or the game gets banned.

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Will the Chinese version get some features ahead of the international one?

We develop almost all features on the international version. But sometimes, Tencent will request features that they want to try in the Chinese version that we don't plan to roll into the international version. If those features turn out to be a really good fit for both versions, then we of course port them back into the international version.

Already the PR response justifying P2W?

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Will I have to have some type of Tencent account to log in?

No. Nothing is changing with the way you access Path of Exile on the international servers.

Of course those changes will be sold as "optional" similar to Razer footprints.

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What's next for Grinding Gear Games? A lot more Path of Exile! We are committed to our current schedule of four releases per year, and we have some really big plans for future expansions. If you like what we've done so far, you'll love what we're working on next. As well as multiple 3.x expansions in 2018 and 2019, we've just started development of 4.0.0, which is currently targeted to enter Beta testing in early 2020.

Another quote he hopes that will be forgotten as soon the devs are forced to work on other things.


Remember:

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Aaron has no power or say in anything we do. Those sites stopped selling PoE items some time ago and the advice he has given us has helped a lot in our ongoing fight against RMT. I'm aware that it looks bad, but the goal was to improve PoE by getting the right expertise on board. We wouldn't have taken his investment unless we were sure it would achieve this goal.

Guess who has no power to say anything anymore now?

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鬼殺し wrote:

Golden handcuffs. It's the most likely and easiest way of looking at it. And in hindsight, nowhere near as sudden or shocking as it seems to be.

Golden handcuffs are oh so common. And we can still be sad.