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Tencent is rebranding its PC digital game store as WeGame (updated)

That's a lot of crap.
Image Credit: Steam
@tolkoto

Tencent is making some changes to its PC game store.

According to Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, the Chinese game company is planning to rebrand its Tencent Games Platform digital store, calling it WeGame. The formal announcement will take place on April 20. The platform primarily serves China, but WeGames could be a more international endeavor. This news comes from Ahmad’s tweets that he made on April 16.

Tencent is the largest gaming company in the world. It owns League of Legends developer Riot Games and has stakes in Activision Blizzard, Supercell, and Epic Games. China’s PC games market was worth $13.8 billion in 2016, according to Newzoo, and Tencent is the main company profiting from the country’s love of PC gaming. Tencent designed the Tencent Games Platform for free-to-play games like League of Legends, but it is now adding paid games (including VR experiences) from Western developers.

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Valve’s Steam store has long dominated the PC digital gaming space, having more than 125 million registered accounts. According to Ahmad, Tencent Games Platform already has 200 million users just in China. If WeGame were to expand outside of China, it could bring competition to the digital PC store space.

Updated on April 18 at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time after clarification from Niko Partners that Ahmed’s info came from a slide he saw on Tencent’s Chinese website, which did not state global expansion of WeGame as part of the rebranding. We also removed a reference saying that Tencent had announced the rebranding, since the full announcement is coming on April 20.