Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[T. Reich]

Given that we know next to nothing about the GGG internal processes (they never really disclosed how the whole dev pipeline for PoE works), especially with regards to division of labour between cross-platform development (PC vs XBox vs China), it's pretty hard to predict how the whole process would change after this TC acquisition.

My guess is that TC really wants to kick-start the Chinese market growth for PoE, and since GGG is obviously too small-scale for TC's plans, TC threw wads of money at Chris & Co. The next logical step is to funnel TC's resources towards that goal.
It's possibly reasonable because of how the Chinese MMO market operates, and how heavily it's skewed towards p2w monetisation (as is already the case with the Chinese version of PoE). TC's chief revenue will probably come through here rather than through the "global" PC version.
If GGG has a separate dev team for the chinese realm (core graphics changes, exclusive mtx, new items, possible changing the balance for the Chinese realm to accomodate for the p2w model), then the "core" PC version would likely not suffer that much, being merely side-lined for a while.
If the Chinese development pipeline would affect the PC version development, then we're all fucked.

Either way, the threat of self-fulfilling prophecy looms over PoE (see you know what time it is post above), and that ain't good for anyone.

 

[Zdzisiu]

Given that we know next to nothing about the GGG internal processes (they never really disclosed how the whole dev pipeline for PoE works), especially with regards to division of labour between cross-platform development (PC vs XBox vs China), it's pretty hard to predict how the whole process would change after this TC acquisition.

My guess is that TC really wants to kick-start the Chinese market growth for PoE, and since GGG is obviously too small-scale for TC's plans, TC threw wads of money at Chris & Co. The next logical step is to funnel TC's resources towards that goal.
It's possibly reasonable because of how the Chinese MMO market operates, and how heavily it's skewed towards p2w monetisation (as is already the case with the Chinese version of PoE). TC's chief revenue will probably come through here rather than through the "global" PC version.
If GGG has a separate dev team for the chinese realm (core graphics changes, exclusive mtx, new items, possible changing the balance for the Chinese realm to accomodate for the p2w model), then the "core" PC version would likely not suffer that much, being merely side-lined for a while.
If the Chinese development pipeline would affect the PC version development, then we're all fucked.

Either way, the threat of self-fulfilling prophecy looms over PoE (see you know what time it is post above), and that ain't good for anyone.

Kinda seems a bit like the Announcement of Poe on Xbox.

There was a lot of predictions that GGG will focus on that and the PC version will suffer and also we all will be playing on controllers and drinking Mountain Dew to regenerate life.

The best case scenario is that Tencent will throw a lot of money to GGG just to make some stupid stuff for Chinese PoE. Hell, they can have Sailor Moon MTX and Kawaii Piety on their server if Tencent is willing to pay for that, I don't give a shit about that server.

 

[ArchAngel]

Lets see what happens but as history is a great teacher probably nothing good.

 

[Zdzisiu]

Lets see what happens but as history is a great teacher probably nothing good.

To be honest, I don't know that much about Tencent.

Can somebody give me some examples of games that were good before being acquired by Tencent and then going to shit because of their influence? And what kind of influence it was?

 

[T. Reich]

On XBox version - it seems like it was swept under the rug.
A few months ago I tried searching for PoE XBox communities or resources, or anything even.
There is a desolate Reddit sub, a pretty quiet official subforum, and virtually no video content apart from the press-releases.
Sure, there are still patches and expansions coming out now and then, but otherwise it's awfully quiet.

 

[Fedora Master]

Lets see what happens but as history is a great teacher probably nothing good.

To be honest, I don't know that much about Tencent.

Can somebody give me some examples of games that were good before being acquired by Tencent and then going to shit because of their influence? And what kind of influence it was?

They are basically chinese EA. You can bet your ass the cash shop will be revamped to offer straight up gameplay advantages in the future.

 

[ArchAngel]

Only good thing (for me) to come out of this is that I am going to have more free time to play other RPGs. I have mostly stopped playing most games to play PoE all the time :D
I only play other games while waiting for next league to start.

 

[Jason Liang]

Again,Tencent isn't a gaming company. They are closer to Microsoft than EA.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Again,Tencent isn't a gaming company. They are closer to Microsoft than EA.

That is in context of Tencent in China.

For international market Tencent is a video game company. And Asian market isnt the greatest example of F2P models. I am kinda afraid of what will GGG becomes. Maybe Ill play the last league for a hurrah.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Zdzisiu]

Lets see what happens but as history is a great teacher probably nothing good.

To be honest, I don't know that much about Tencent.

Can somebody give me some examples of games that were good before being acquired by Tencent and then going to shit because of their influence? And what kind of influence it was?

They are basically chinese EA. You can bet your ass the cash shop will be revamped to offer straight up gameplay advantages in the future.

Can you give me some examples of what they did to other games they own? What did they introduce and why it was bad?

All I can get from the usual places is prophercies of unending Pay to Win, milking every aspect of the game for profit etc but I have not seen any concrete examples of Tencent doing it to any western game they acquired.

 

[Zdzisiu]

And here is my nigger Tarke with a reasonable take on the whole Tencent debacle:

 

[Sykar]

This won't end well...

 

[Hyperion]

Even CohhCarnage is weary of the purchase. Dude flat out said he won't be buying another $500 supporter pack. And he's one of those variety streamers who I've never known to be anything but one of those "positive vibes only maaaaaan" streamers, who doesn't even allow foul language in his chat. I also think he hasn't been the mud like us since 2012, and only started when the 3.0 hype became too much for him to ignore.

 

[Zdzisiu]

This won't end well...

Define "well".

How PoE would have to look like in two years for you to say that it indeed ended well?

Because if we can't define that, anything that happens can be attributed to the evil Chinese overlords. Weak league like Bestiary? Chinks did it! Shitty league launch? Dem Yellow Devils are responsible! Strong nerfs to certain mechanics and builds and buffs to other? Straight from Beijing! Powercreep? Chink-Chonks too!

Right now I am of the opinion that nothing major will change for PoE, at least not on the international realm. There may be more PR being done, and more players coming to the game, maybe changes to the mtx prices (not likely), maybe a push for more mtx. And probably more employees in GGG. Chris already said they are hiring 15 people due to this acquisition.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Jaedar]

It seems to me that a company generally buys another because of:
Synergy reasons, making the company worth more to you than to the market in general (doesn't seem applicable here?)
The belief that you can make the company more profitable than it currently is by changing something (if you can't make the company more profitable it's not a wise investment since its current stock price probably represents its current profitability quite well)

It doesn't have to be bad though. Could be they notice that the vast majority of playing happens the first 2-3 weeks after a league, and so decide to hire more people to push out more leagues faster. Or convenience features that don't matter so much (like being able to buy the ability to start a character at a higher level than 0 ?).

Making the game pay2win (at least in the west) would probably be a bad move, so I'd guess they're not going to do that.

Although I could totally see a "exclusive first week of a league" ticket or something like that.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Zdzisiu]

It seems to me that a company generally buys another because of:
Synergy reasons, making the company worth more to you than to the market in general (doesn't seem applicable here?)
The belief that you can make the company more profitable than it currently is by changing something (if you can't make the company more profitable it's not a wise investment since its current stock price probably represents its current profitability quite well)

It doesn't have to be bad though. Could be they notice that the vast majority of playing happens the first 2-3 weeks after a league, and so decide to hire more people to push out more leagues faster. Or convenience features that don't matter so much (like being able to buy the ability to start a character at a higher level than 0 ?).

Making the game pay2win (at least in the west) would probably be a bad move, so I'd guess they're not going to do that.

Although I could totally see a "exclusive first week of a league" ticket or something like that.

I, on the other hand can't really see the "exclusive first week of a league" kind of deal.

That would not sit well at all with International PoE population. In fact, it would be an epitome of PayToWin which is the exact opposite of what made PoE popular and well liked.

So, unless somebody is willing to argue that Tencet bought GGG to transform it into something opposite it was, and how that makes any business sense, then I don't think we will see any drastic changes to PoE. PoE on Chinese market is a different story, but their players want that crap and actively seek it.

Also, you can buy a company that is profitable as a long term investment. You pay a certain amount of money at that moment, but then reap the profits for years to come. That does not exclude the possibility of improving the profit margins and wanting to get more money out of it.

Also, have you seen the amount of shit Tencent owns? They are buying shit left and right, like Chinese buying houses in Canada.

 

[T. Reich]

"exclusive first week of a league" ticket

In terms of PoE, it's like uber-p2w.
Hell, even 24 hours head start gives any good player an insane levarage over late starters.

Btw, I know a sure way to make PoE a much, much better game.

Spoiler

Murder every player that joined the PoE community less than 2 years ago. Every. Single. One.

 

[Saark]

Dude flat out said he won't be buying another $500 supporter pack.

I feel that this is sort of the point though. GGG had funding from microsoft for years now, and they just took the next best step to ensure that they can keep paying their ever growing staff for the foreseeable future even if a league turns out to be shit with lower support-pack sales happening because of it. They're not as reliant on the community support anymore because they just got an insane amount of cash-influx from that acquisition, and Tencent doesn't really care about whether GGG is turning 10 or 20 or 50% of a profit, because as long as GGG keeps making a profit at all, noone is gonna bat an eye at this investment.

Looking at all the other western games Tencent acquired that they would then, or already had, published in china, Tencent also doesnt give a fuck about the western development of the game. Since there is an international and a chinese version, Tencent only has a vested interest to 'control' the chinese version of the game, and GGG seems to have free control over whether they roll those changes into the international version or not. While everyone is right about Tencent technically being able to force GGG to make that change everywhere, there is no reason to do so if they know it won't go over well with the western community. It's a business, why would they turn away a large part of the playerbase?

So if there's one thing to be worried about, it's GGG allocating more resources/manpower towards the chinese version of the game, which is a valid concern. While It is already confirmed that some of the new money will go towards increasing their staff even further (around 10-15% more people), the question remains how many senior designers will move to mainly designing chinese-client features. Since these are almost exclusively cash-shop related however, I don't think the overall quality of the game will suffer.

Or maybe Chris just knew how the community will rage and be retarded all over again, sell 80% of the shares to Tencent for a buttload of cash, and with everyone leaving because of it or not supporting GGG anymore, the value of GGG will plummet and he will buy back those shares at half the cost, making enough profit to finally afford that BGS 10 Beta Black Lotus.

People seem to forget that GGG hasn't been this small indie company for quite some time now. They're going to be at ~130 employees soon, it won't take more than a few years and their studio will be bigger than Obsidian. For a studio that only develops a single game, that is one impressive number, even when you have to take out a dozen or so people that are only doing customer support.

 

[ArchAngel]

Dude flat out said he won't be buying another $500 supporter pack.

I feel that this is sort of the point though. GGG had funding from microsoft for years now, and they just took the next best step to ensure that they can keep paying their ever growing staff for the foreseeable future even if a league turns out to be shit with lower support-pack sales happening because of it. They're not as reliant on the community support anymore because they just got an insane amount of cash-influx from that acquisition, and Tencent doesn't really care about whether GGG is turning 10 or 20 or 50% of a profit, because as long as GGG keeps making a profit at all, noone is gonna bat an eye at this investment.

Looking at all the other western games Tencent acquired that they would then, or already had, published in china, Tencent also doesnt give a fuck about the western development of the game. Since there is an international and a chinese version, Tencent only has a vested interest to 'control' the chinese version of the game, and GGG seems to have free control over whether they roll those changes into the international version or not. While everyone is right about Tencent technically being able to force GGG to make that change everywhere, there is no reason to do so if they know it won't go over well with the western community. It's a business, why would they turn away a large part of the playerbase?

So if there's one thing to be worried about, it's GGG allocating more resources/manpower towards the chinese version of the game, which is a valid concern. While It is already confirmed that some of the new money will go towards increasing their staff even further (around 10-15% more people), the question remains how many senior designers will move to mainly designing chinese-client features. Since these are almost exclusively cash-shop related however, I don't think the overall quality of the game will suffer.

Or maybe Chris just knew how the community will rage and be retarded all over again, sell 80% of the shares to Tencent for a buttload of cash, and with everyone leaving because of it or not supporting GGG anymore, the value of GGG will plummet and he will buy back those shares at half the cost, making enough profit to finally afford that BGS 10 Beta Black Lotus.

People seem to forget that GGG hasn't been this small indie company for quite some time now. They're going to be at ~130 employees soon, it won't take more than a few years and their studio will be bigger than Obsidian. For a studio that only develops a single game, that is one impressive number, even when you have to take out a dozen or so people that are only doing customer support.

I want to focus a bit on the underlined part.

How do you conclude GGG got a huge influx of money? Owners sold their shares and got that money.*
Unless owners now decide to put that money back into GGG, GGG got nothing. And how much more money will Tencent put into GGG is unknown.

*unless owners signed a retarded deal where they gave their shares to Tencent in exchange for a big investment directly into the company. I say retarded because this is kind of deal you do when your company is doing badly and you cannot get investors otherwise. And with GGG playerbase rising all the time I doubt they were doing badly.

 

[Saark]

The Chinese online games company, the world's largest worth US$580 billion ($840b), acquired 80 per cent of the company for an undisclosed amount.

We're looking to increase our headcount over the next year from 114 full time employees to around 130

Source if you want it.

Now while that "undisclosed" amount may just lead to more cash for near-mint and mint black lotuses, I don't think this move was made to cash in on GGGs success on a personal level. Tencent also isn't in the business of just acquiring other businesses, they are investing. This means that they most likely didn't just pay off the owners for their shares, but also plan on putting more money into the company.
For GGG that is a slam-dunk, provided Tencent doesn't interfere with their design all that much. Tencent isn't going to get 80% of all the supporter money either, they will get 80% of the profits. If GGG decides to just roll most of that supporter money into operating costs and expanding their studio, Tencent just provides a nice safety net if things go badly. Tencent doesn't want their investment to fail, and with GGGs track record and their growth over the last few years, this acquisition seems to have made not only the owners quite a bit richer, but it provides GGG with some financial stability.
GGG also has always been a company that rolled most of their profits back into the company, which they will no longer be able to do, and they don't have to anymore. Tencent is actually quite good at managing their portfolios, especially the game developer ones, and by looking at some of their other games there is no evidence to believe that they will mess with the version of the game that we are playing.

 

[Hyperion]

Hopefully they can have someone other than Chris market and hype the new content come patch / expansion / E3 time, because he's an awkward dude. It can get pretty cringey watching interactions between him and Ziggy, let alone trying to sell his game to journos. Probably one of the bigger roadblocks to even bigger success, to be honest. Some of the comments there have mentioned Chris wants back in the development part of the game, but I don't know how true that is.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG