Tencent's Steam competitor WeGame to launch globally

The biggest gaming company in the world Tencent is now going to exchange blows with Valve for the crown of largest PC platform. The global version of WeGame is in development in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong version will be accessible worldwide. They plan on exposing a global audience to Chinese games. With around 220 games and more coming such as Fortnite and Monster Hunter: World, WeGame is already considered China's largest PC game distributor.

This is interesting perhaps this is the competition Steam has needed in a long time. GoG is good and all but they lack modern games outside of indies, Origin is hardly used outside of EA games and free games, Microsoft Store/XBL still needs to be ironed out a lot and Uplay isn't even on Valve's radar as a threat.

While WeGame may not take off in the West it can certainly steal the growing Chinese and overall Asian demographic that Steam has been building up. A key advantage WeGame would have is that it would have most of the types of games East Asian gamers play and Western titles, a lot of the MMOs and F2P games on Steam are region locked to the West or not on Steam at all so games such as Dungeon Fighter Online, Blade & Soul, League Of Legends, Crossfire could be played on the WeGame platform along with their other Western titles.

An interesting thing that this fight between WeGame and Steam can lead to is exclusives. Tencent is a huge company that throws money around buying shares in games but now they're paying for games to be exclusive to their WeGame platform whether timed or permanent. They've already paid for games such as Rocket League and Paradox games titles such as Cities Skylines to be region blocked out of China on Steam and to be distributed only on their platform. Then there is also the fact that Tencent is somewhat active in having games developed whether by themselves or by companies they own stakes in. Some examples are Monster Hunter Online, Xuan Dou Zhi Wang/King Of Combat online, Rising Fire and Europa. While the quality for most of these games is questionable its still better than Valve doing nearly nothing. There is Riot Games developing a singleplayer spin off the League Of Legends series that right there can be a killer app for the WeGame platform assuming its not another mini game. There is another company they invested into called Seasun and they're currently working on a high end MMOFPS called Project Extopia which can be another possible killer app for them.

Anyway I'm interested to see how this turns when both platforms officially launch.

PC gaming gets the most boring news. Seriously.

As long its English subtitled I am in :)

Very interesting.

This is the Microsoft mentality. Question do Western gamers want to play Chinese games? I played that Chinese rig game on steam that I forgot its name and realized how much western RPG's take a sh%$ on it.

@needhealing: That's assuming Western gamers even know what Chinese games are out there. What is this Chinese rig game you've played?

Mispelt it. LOL. Chinese Rpg. The Gate of Firmament or something like that.

@needhealing: Oh so that is what you played, Xuan Yuan series is built on an incredibly low budget as were most Chinese singleplayer games at the time due to rampant piracy and lack of premium market but that is starting to change you should take a look at the devs upcoming successor in the series it is a step up from the previous titles.

Xuan Yuan 7 clearly has much higher production values. Now that the premium game market is growing and companies are investing more into budgets along with tools such as Unreal Engine 4 being available we're starting see some talent shine.

Swords Of Legends/Gujian is another series if you look at the first two games they're incredibly broken, graphics so outdated that it makes it look older than it really is and have production values so low they make some indie games here in the West look AAA but take a look at Swords Of Legends 3 now they've gotten an actually budget behind them and UE4.

Here is some Gu Jian Qi Tan 2 gameplay and this is a 2013 game

Now here is the upcoming Gu Jian Qi Tan 3. Now this looks like something a company would proudly show off at a video game conference against other AAA games. China has the talent, they've simply been lacking the funds.

EA tried to give Valve competition, but they realized they needed to provide the consumer with value and promptly gave up.

I think it was called Origin, something like that.

Not interested in yet another platform for PC gaming.

Is the article sourced from Tencent's press news release?

Best of luck to them.

I'll try them out if they offer a good deal and I can use my keys bought there on Steam (don't see why not) provided they offer all games.

The problem is, my "game library" is pretty much entirely on Steam, and I want it to stay that way.

What are the odds of being able to use their store from EU with GDPR around?

Pretty sure Tencent has enough money to just buy Steam, or even Valve as a whole.

They do but Valve is a privately owned company and they need to convince Gabe for that to happen. In reality I don't want that to happen, the competition between them will only mean good things for PC gamers.

Tencent coming for Valve. I like it.

@Yams1980: No worse than any US corporation tbh. They might not sale those information to whoever.

If you are scared of China getting your CC#, address and SSN they already got it thanks to your favorite American companies.

Chinese rules are strict. I don't think Tencent can escape laws.