Tencent on the hunt to buy Warframe? (Deal not confirmed/final)

[WhiteMarker]

1 minute ago, Gabbynaru said:

...Does it? If it was DE's idea, that means we're completely screwed cause they have no more concept of what's acceptable and what's not. If it was Leyou's idea... well, it can only get worse, cause unlike Leyou, Tencent is hellbent on conquering the world by purchasing everything and they need money for it.

I was just talking about all the fea, when it comes to Tencent.
If Rivens were DE's idea, not coming from Leyou, then it's likely that DE will continue to not needing others to monetize their game even further.

It's just the same with people disliking Disney buying the MCU and Star Wars. But somehow people liked Endgame, and people liked the Mandalorian, even though Disney was in on both of these.

In the end, let's just be real, we will all keep on playing Warframe.

[Myscho]

Hold your horses with these doomsday prophecies

[HexxyTheGrouch]

If true, that is very concerning.

Warframe has been slowly turning me off for a while, but has nothing to do with Tencent

Some of the new content has been enjoyable / eventually been improved to where I find it enjoyable, other choices are notable negatives and I won't waste my time on them if possible, The tap for giving DE money ended at the first try at void fissures when you had to collect them and stuff things into a hole? It's been a while. Still, despite all this, I keep playing because they did eventually fix it and oh yeah there are other parts that are decently fun. None of this is why I'm concerned. I know a lot of folks have short or selective memories, so I'll just leave the key words here:

Blizzard , Hearthstone bans , Hong Kong

I am one person but the company above doesn't see me around all that much guaranteed. Don't even get me started with the Denuvo DRM garbage...

[(PSN)lumen2ne1]

1 hour ago, Viges said:

Yea, completely not like other big companies like EA, Ubisoft, Activision etc. which rarely pushing any lootboxes, microtransactions and other bs. Am I right?

Never did I mention those companies that have nothing to do with DE or Warframe. If those companies offered to buy Leyou I would totally agree with you.

[OniDax]

Tencent will be looking to make Warframe make more money. They recognize that Warframe underperformed last year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/tencent-in-exclusive-talks-to-buy-hong-kong-gaming-firm-leyou.html

Quote

“My view is that it is looking for a buyer because its main service game Warframe suffered in 2019 due to a slow update cycle and new competition,” he told CNBC by email Friday. “Although it has a growth strategy for the title, it will need investment in development to drive engagement.”

I see that as either new management (and leading to more dev hires), more advertising (which hasn't seemed to help DE that much), or more microtransactions, or some or all of the above.

[Angwah]

9 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

You only point 1 game example defending this “hands-off”, while there are many more that are against this “Hands off” approach mostly aiming at LoL and Firefall. So your argument does not have enough strength, try harder.

Also that “silent giant” news report is 4 years ago. Present day Tencent isn’t as same as they were before that.

Fine, more 'proof', this time from an article from 2019:

https://www.pcgamer.com/au/every-game-company-that-tencent-has-invested-in/

Do note the multiple mentions if they leave their investments independent. Oh, especially the mention of how Riot Games was apparently free enough to flat-out refuse to make a mobile game version. Of course Tencent, while leaving the choice with Riot Games, does not give a #*!% about IP and just let one of their other companies make a clone which went on to become one of the most successful Chinese mobile games, so yeah, Riot Games kinda was stupid there and missed out on a great thing. But now they're making their own mobile version, so yeah. 

Ah, and another mention of their hands-off reputation, this time outside the games industry when they, for once, were not:

https://technode.com/2020/06/11/tencent-moves-to-integrate-movie-and-fan-fiction-platforms/

I have no idea what Firefall has to do with this. Sure, The9 is Chinese as well, but it's not Tencent? As to why it failed? Totally their own crappy management. They kept remaking the game, management kept changing direction and of course the player base melted away and never restored itself. Oh, Red5 blamed it all on Mark Kern but things got worse under new management who never had the patience to let their changes pan out. "#*!% it. Remake it Again!" They remade the game so many times! Can The9 share in the blame? Absolutely, sometimes hands-off, which was apparently also their style, is not the way to go.

Anyway, you do not have to believe me that this is actually the reputation in business Tencent has build up over the years. I don't care, honestly, but I invite you to go look for yourself. Yeah, they're obviously not angels, but they leave their subs the freedom to chart their own path without meddling overly much. 

[DrBorris]

3 minutes ago, OniDax said:

Whatever. Warframe suffered last year. Tencent will make necessary changes to make Warframe more profitable. They probably don't need to make changes to other games under their belt because those games are successful. Change of management, more advertising, more monetization, some or all of that. They'll do something to make more money from Warframe, particularly because it's been failing to put out enough content and to compete. Things aren't just going to stay the same. The whole reason Leyou is selling is because they don't want things to stay the same.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/tencent-in-exclusive-talks-to-buy-hong-kong-gaming-firm-leyou.html

Where are you getting the information that DE wasn't profitable enough last year? Warframe is nearly always above 40k players and the team hasn't significantly grown. Remember a couple years ago when Warframe was in the top 10 most profitable games on Steam?

A couple bad updates doesn't mean DE stops making money, the Forums are only a vocal minority of the game.

[VVVVVVEmersonFisioVVVVVV]

In fact nothing big will really change, maybe some microtransactions (more buyable mods, more types of formas...) nothing to be afraid of, older owner of DE was chinese too lmao.

 

[Gileadan]

The only thing that worries me is that I remember the first time I read the word "TENCENT": in the registry of my nephew's PC who was playing LoL at that time and had this really obnoxious Chinese "toolbar" popping up all the time.

[OniDax]

46 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

Where are you getting the information that DE wasn't profitable enough last year? Warframe is nearly always above 40k players and the team hasn't significantly grown. Remember a couple years ago when Warframe was in the top 10 most profitable games on Steam?

A couple bad updates doesn't mean DE stops making money, the Forums are only a vocal minority of the game.

So, what do you think they mean by "suffered" if it's not about profit? We're talking about business here. If Leyou believes Warframe suffered, then that means financially.

http://leyoutech.com.hk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2019-Annual-Report.pdf

This is Leyou's Annual Report for 2019. Leyou lost money by the end of 2019. A majority of forum goers and being among the 10 most profitable Steam games years ago does not mean Warframe was profitable last year. Having 40k+ players on Steam doesn't make Warframe profitable.

Let me make it clear for you: Leyou lost $20 million last year in gross profit.

Quote

Following the analysis of market and strategies, I shall discuss the Group’s financial performance during the reporting period. Faced with the launch of several large-scale competing products from top international video game companies in 2019, Warframe was adversely affected with less exposure. Besides, suffering from the decline in the units of current generation consoles sold, the number of new users had reduced. Another factor that caused Warframe to run below expectation in 2019 is its update strategy on size, type and cadence: since Fortuna update was released in the fourth quarter of 2018, the development team of Warframe has spent all of their efforts on the Empyrean update, which was
eventually released in the end of 2019. There was no other major update during the interval, particularly the story quests that fans love. Nevertheless, the three abovementioned factors were temporary. Along with the ambitious 2020 plans that Warframe’s development team are having, I believe these temporary factors will gradually diminish and the  performance of Warframe will excel again.

I'm sorry to break bad news to you, but Warframe was not successful last year, and that is the reason Leyou is looking for a buyout. Don't think Tencent won't want to make changes.

[kgabor]

1 hour ago, WhiteMarker said:

I was just talking about all the fea, when it comes to Tencent.
If Rivens were DE's idea, not coming from Leyou, then it's likely that DE will continue to not needing others to monetize their game even further.

It's just the same with people disliking Disney buying the MCU and Star Wars. But somehow people liked Endgame, and people liked the Mandalorian, even though Disney was in on both of these.

In the end, let's just be real, we will all keep on playing Warframe.

The Mandalorian was really good and so was The Clone Wars, both created by Disney but directed by different people from the sequels, the two former are closer to Lucas's vision and The Clone Wars was directed by Dave Filoni, someone who seems like a true fan and actually knows what made Star Wars great.

[ChaoticEdge]

I am bit late on news now but at 1st Sony bought the other half the company of warframe that use to belong to part the warframe of DE and now Tencent bought the actual warframe?

the chaos is probably gotten deeper then I thought to be...Anyway if I am bit wrong about this plz give me the webpage for it so I can read it properly.

[Aadi880]

il y a 12 minutes, OniDax a dit :

This is Leyou's Annual Report for 2019. Leyou lost money by the end of 2019. A majority of forum goers and being among the 10 most profitable Steam games years ago does not mean Warframe was profitable last year. Having 40k+ players on Steam doesn't make Warframe profitable.

There is a misinformation here.

I have read the report. Leyou did not lose money. In fact, Leyou  cannot tell you this (By law, a company cannot indicate their net profit. Such information is confidential)

It says a loss of revenue, this does not mean a loss in profit.

That simply does not include expenses made. If Leyou maintained a cost-focus, then there has been no "lost money". Leyou can still make a profit regardless of a reduction of revenue, should there has been cut on expenses, which ofc, is confidential as far as I know.

Of course, my knowledge in business is limited, but as far as I know, revenue does not include expenses. You cannot determine a company's losses by just looking at revenue only.

[SneakyErvin]

5 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

While that’s true to PoE. We don’t know how Tencent will view Warframe and their “plans“ for it. If Warframe flops in microtransaction sales in 1 failed update, they may send men in suits straight into DE’s office.

We kinda do know though when we look at PoE since PoE is the embodyment of hit and miss updates, nobody does it better, ehr, worse, ehr whatever you wanna call it. And if Tencent hasnt touched PoE after several "failed" leagues they wont interfear with WF. Tencent is also a holding company, so look at the end of each year incase new funding is asked for by DE, like all other holding companies. Also it isnt Tencent itself that is in the deal, it is the partially owned subsidiary named iDreamsky.

edit: People also need to remember that DE is with a 99% chance self sufficient atm when you consider givaways etc. There is little chance that a HK based parent company would hand out charity to Canadian organizations or "towards a trip to space" and let a subsidiary get all the credit. All of that is DE, so if there is money for such things chances are big that they are self sufficient. I'd actually like to know how much investments they asked for from Leyou.

[OniDax]

4 minutes ago, Aadi880 said:

There is a misinformation here.

I have read the report. Leyou did not lose money. In fact, Leyou  cannot tell you this (By law, a company cannot indicate their net profit. Such information is confidential)

It says a loss of revenue, this does not mean a loss in profit.

That simply does not include expenses made. If Leyou maintained a cost-focus, then there has been no "lost money". Leyou can still make a profit regardless of a reduction of revenue, should there has been cut on expenses, which ofc, is confidential as far as I know.

Of course, my knowledge in business is limited, but as far as I know, revenue does not include expenses. You cannot determine a company's losses by just looking at revenue only.

Are you kidding? Gross profit is down $20 million, which they call a loss. The loss in revenue is around $13 million. They also specifically say that they weren't bringing in as many new players in 2019 as they were in 2018. That's an underperformance. And an analyst pointed out that this was the reason Leyou was looking for a buyout. I don't think you actually read that report. The only misinformation here is your statement.

[Wyrmius_Prime]

Didnt they just leave an offer though, or did I miss some more recent news?

[Scruffel]

You can't buy Warframe, it's Free To Play. Tencent got scammed.

/s

Also, in all seriousness, they are offering to buy Leyou, which is the holding company that has shares with DE. They don't do any decisions with game development. Barely any need to worry.

[ChaoticEdge]

Just now, Wyrmius_Prime said:

Didnt they just leave an offer though, or did I miss some more recent news?

I just found the sources...

https://www.pcgamer.com/tencent-is-reportedly-in-talks-to-acquire-digital-extremes-owner-leyou-technologies/

There is other companies are planning to buy it including Sony and Tencent for it seem that it is going be a bidding instead of buying DE

[Zahnny]

Please don't tell me Warframe is about to go down the Crossfire route of macrotransactions...

[ZarTham]

Tencent won't touch Warframe, they usually don't mandate what or how a game should be.

[Magus_Tahir]

Chaotic you're so late to this conversation that you missed the A train, the B train, THE C train, hell you even missed the D train so much for rotations there, oh my god it's the E train no wait its gone Carlin was right, oh look here you are finally the "F" train. Glad you could join us today, welcome to the conversation it's been 6 hours since the main thread was made here you go.

[Fire2box]

IDreamSky (which Tencent is a heavy investor in), Sony and Tencent itself are or we're in talks of buying out Leyou. Leyou wholly owns Digital Extremes. 

So far it's all just talks but of the three I think Sony is by far the best fit for players and DE. 

[SneakyErvin]

38 minutes ago, OniDax said:

So, what do you think they mean by "suffered" if it's not about profit? We're talking about business here. If Leyou believes Warframe suffered, then that means financially.

http://leyoutech.com.hk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2019-Annual-Report.pdf

This is Leyou's Annual Report for 2019. Leyou lost money by the end of 2019. A majority of forum goers and being among the 10 most profitable Steam games years ago does not mean Warframe was profitable last year. Having 40k+ players on Steam doesn't make Warframe profitable.

Let me make it clear for you: Leyou lost $20 million last year in gross profit.

I'm sorry to break bad news to you, but Warframe was not successful last year, and that is the reason Leyou is looking for a buyout. Don't think Tencent won't want to make changes.

They didnt lose anything, they had a revenue return that was 12% or so lower than 2018, which had a massive gain over 2017.

edit: Also, WF was among the top sellers on Steam in 2019.

edit2: You also need to go read up on what those 40k+ players mean. Those are concurrent numbers. So the actual active playerbase is several times that on Steam.

[OniDax]

22 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

They didnt lose anything, they had a revenue return that was 12% or so lower than 2018, which had a massive gain over 2017.

edit: Also, WF was among the top sellers on Steam in 2019.

edit2: You also need to go read up on what those 40k+ players mean. Those are concurrent numbers. So the actual active playerbase is several times that on Steam.

Leyou considers Warframe to have underperformed. That's in their report. Those aren't my words. Leyou reported a loss in revenue and a loss in gross profit. Not my words. Their words. By the last calculations for 2019 (based on studying their financial reports), they have around 4-5 million monthly active users (before they stopped reporting on that altogether). I'm not going based on fluctuating Steam numbers. I'm going off of their reports. And when an analyst, who has more experience and knowledge about this business than you or me says Leyou is looking for a buyer because Warframe suffered in 2019 due to a slow update cycle and new competition, something that is based directly on Leyou's 2019 Annual Report, yes, I believe them over forum users who want to believe that their favorite game is always successful. You. Are. Wrong.

[Aadi880]

Tencent HAS NOT bought DE, or Leyou. Not yet at least.

Tencent and Leyou are currently on a "EXCLUSIVITY AGREEMENT" 

This simply means Leyou is not available to other bidders, and that, Tencent and Leyou are negotiating to see if they actually want to buy Leyou, and or Leyou actually want to sell themselves to Tencent.

The decision is not final as of yet. Non of them know whether or not they should.