Tencent has walked over to another games studio and smacked it with its wallet, only this time it’s a bit of a surprise purchase to us here in the west. The Chinese megacorp has bought a controlling stake in Wangyuan Shengtang, which is known around these parts as the studio behind the now shuttered Swords of Legends Online, as well as the wider Swords of Legends IP.
Tencent, which already had a 20% stake in Wangyuan Shengtang, now has over 94% ownership of the Beijing developer, which also gives Tencent access to the Swords of Legends IP and other IPs, along with Wangyuan’s development resources and its marketing and distribution channels. According to studio founder Meng Xianming, Tencent will give Wangyuan room to develop its games.
The Swords of Legends IP might only be known to us as the aforementioned MMORPG, but the franchise is a monster hit in China. Additionally, the two companies were already collaborating on Ash Echoes, an anime style real-time tactics game with gacha elements, so those ties are likely deepening. Incidentally, the game itself doesn’t appear to be multiplayer and launched on January 12th only in China.
It’s unclear what this might mean for the global gaming world in terms of whether Ash Echoes will be going global later or Tencent might try to re-publish SOLO. We can at the very least hope a little bit for the latter, particularly since our own Carlo found the game to be a wasted opportunity in Wangyuan’s hands.
