For years now, Tencent has been placing investments across the video game industry, acquiring stakes in a variety of companies and, in some cases, acquiring them entirely. It's been a slow-burning strategy that has undoubtedly paid off, as exemplified in a new Bloomberg report where chief executive officer Michelle Liu discusses her methodology that helped Tencent generate $10 billion in revenue over the past year.
Not only did the report include the gargantuan sales record, but it also included a few notable bits of information on how Tencent treats its relationships with the studios it acquires. Dune: Awakening developer Funcom and Dying Light: The Beast developer Techland are mentioned specifically as having benefitted from Liu and Tencent's guidance.
"If they could already achieve everything on their own, what would they need me for?" Liu said. "Tencent has a lot of experience with data analysis, benchmarks, and criteria." Experience that has clearly benefitted its partners and the studios it acquired.
The chart below shows just how much bigger Tencent is than other major game publishers and platforms like Roblox, even as Roblox smashes concurrent player count records.
"We can always count on an extra point of view that helps us to improve the game," said Techland founder Pawel Marchewka regarding Tencent's guidance in an interview at Gamescom 2025. Funcom chief executive officer Rui Casais added, at a separate Gamescom interview, "When Tencent came in, they said, 'Look, you're spreading your attention.' You have a great IP that you've secured, you should really focus on that and drop the other things."
While Funcom has not been able to avoid layoffs, Dune: Awakening was the studio's biggest launch in its entire history. Techland was able to sell over a million copies of Dying Light: The Beast at launch on Steam alone, not including those players who got it for free as part of the Dying Light 2: Stay Human bundle they had purchased.
Of course, it's the teams that worked on those games that deserve the credit for their successes, but Liu's earlier point still stands, and it's becoming clear that Tencent is capable of directing teams to success. We'll see if that continues to be the case with its new venture with Ubisoft and Vantage Studios, but $10 billion in revenue is nothing to shake your stick at.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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