Chinese entertainment giant Tencent Holdings has added several more game developers and publishers to its portfolio after acquiring Leyou Technologies for $1.5B USD.

The acquisition was announced earlier this year, but officially finalised on Wednesday 23 December when Leyou withdrew its listing from the Hong Kong stock exchange. 

In addition to Tencent, since Leyou was offered for sale nearly a year ago several other parties had also reportedly expressed an interest, including iDreamSky, Zhejiang Century Hautong Group, and Sony Corporation.

The deal sees UK-based Splash Damage, and Canada-based Digital Extremes join Tencent, and also gives the Chinese conglomerate a minority stake in Certain Affinity and Athlon Games.

Splash Damage has collaborated with Activision Blizzard on several first-person shooter games, Digital Extremes is developer of Warframe, Certain Affinity has worked on Call of Duty and Halo, and Athlon Games is currently partnered with Amazon for a Lord of the Rings MMO. 

Leyou’s properties join Tencent’s already impressive video game holdings, including Riot Games, Supercell, and Funcom. Tencent also has minority stakes in Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Krafton and others. 

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Italian asset management firm Gruppo Amodei has acquired a 51% stake in Milan-based esports event organiser PG Esports. 

The stake was acquired from event organising company Fandango Club, which is also co-owner of the Milan Games Week. Fandango Club has retained a 34% stake in PG Esports, with founder Pier Luigi Parnofiello also holding 15%. 

Parnofiello will remain at the helm of the organisation, which will continue to operate from its headquarters and studios on the Fandango Club campus, and organise leagues and tournaments for League of Legends and Rainbow Six across Italy.

Headed by Roberto Amodei, Gruppo Amodei is the family’s asset management firm, and currently owns a number of Italian newspapers, including sports daily Corriere dello Sport-Stadio and Tuttosport. 

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Complexity-Limit is the Castle Nathria Race to World First champion, bringing back-to-back World First titles to North America. 

Daily viewership of Complexity’s Race to World First stream exceeded last year’s event by over 50% each day, surpassing last year’s 10-day total in just six days.

Total concurrent viewers for Complexity-Limit’s Race to World First streams, across Complexity and guild members’ Twitch channels, peaked at 220,000, and Complexity-Limit’s Raid Leader, Maximum, had the second most-watched Twitch channel in the week. 

Reflecting on the success, Complexity-Limit guild officer Luke “Tagzz” Moran, said:

“Taking home back-to-back ‘Race to World First’ titles is a testament to this guild’s determination and perseverance. We strategized for hours on end leading up to our first raid and entered Castle Nathria with the same intensity and mentality that we had last year, and it paid off.

“Our second win under the Complexity banner shows the indispensable value of having a dedicated support system that can equip us with the necessary tools we need to achieve peak performance and keep us connected, especially when we can’t all be together.” 

[#LimitGuild #RWF]

If you’re not first, you’re not @LimitGuild 🏆

Congratulations on being the Race to World First back-to-back CHAMPS!#WeAreCOL | #COLWIN pic.twitter.com/ZdmNTHqB6T

— Complexity Gaming (@Complexity) December 23, 2020

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Riot Games Korea has revealed plans for its Valorant esports team support program. 

To help establish a strong Valorant esports ecosystem in South Korea, Riot will be providing funding to eight teams that make it through an extensive screening process. 

Each team will be eligible for up to three payments of up to ₩50M KRW (roughly $45K USD) during the 2021 season, assuming they meet the following minimum requirements:

1. Advance to the Challengers Finals at least once per stage.
2. Establishment and operation of a camp environment (establishment and operation of a camp environment such as accommodation, computer and equipment, meals and snacks, bedding, and rest area).
3. A formal contract must be signed with at least five players and at least one coaching staff. Deemed non-compliance with the maintenance requirements.
4. At least ₩500K ($450) per game, or equivalent compensation, must be paid to all players and coaching staff who competed in each stage (except for online qualifiers).
5. At least 50% of the total prize money must be distributed to the players and coaching staff participating in each stage.
6. Twitch and YouTube channels are required to operate, and at least one SNS channel must be separately operated.
7. Must have at least one secretariat representative, excluding submitted athletes and coaching staff.
8. All athletes, coaching staff, and secretariat staff must comply with the Valorant esports policy, competition rules, terms, and conditions (service terms, operating policies, etc.).

Full information is available at Riot Games Korea’s official site. 

AYO.NEWS says:

Riot is demonstrating it is serious about building a strong esports ecosystem for Valorant around the world, but these concrete measures in South Korea will certainly give teams the confidence to invest in the title, and bode well for 2021. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

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US-based esports infrastructure company Nerd Street Gamers (NSG) has appointed former ESL executive Andrea Intiso as Director of Publisher Relations. 

A 14-year veteran of the esports and gaming industry, Intiso was most recently Director of Esports Services at ESL, and was previously Senior Partner Manager for two years. 

Intiso’s appointment follows the hiring of Jonathan Oudthone, former President of Esports Stadium Arlington (ESA) as Director of National Programming for NSG, and the announcement of a new monthly subscription service, Nerd Street+. 

As previously reported, Nerd Street+ is set to launch across all NSG-owned Localhost facilities, including in Philadelphia, Denver, St. Louis, and Austin. A new 40,000 square foot ‘esports industry campus’ in Philadelphia, to be called The Block, is also planned. 

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Texas-based esports organisation Envy Gaming is launching a new content creator network and ambassador program. 

To get things started, Envy has signed chess Twitch streamer sisters 24-year-old Alexandra and 18-year-old Andrea Botez, from the BotezLive channel, which has some 473K followers. 

In addition to streaming, Alexandra is a respected player in her own right, and holds the title of Woman FIDE Master. The duo have also provided commentary for the popular Pogchamps influencer chess competition. 

Commenting on the news chief content officer at Envy Gaming, Andrew Peterman, said:

“The Botez sisters are the most entertaining creators in chess right now, and they’ve played a major role in popularizing the game on Twitch.

“Signing Alexandra and Andrea to launch our new Envy creator network is about much more than chess, however. It’s about giving people access to the personalities that represent the future of entertainment.”

While Alexandra Botez added:

“We want to show people who don’t play chess that it is an exciting game with a vibrant scene, and we loved that Envy approached us about building bridges between a competitive environment like chess and the world of esports, music, pop culture, you name it. That future is what we love about being part of Envy.”

Queens of the board ♛ pic.twitter.com/D3MCLGN2Zi

— Envy (@Envy) December 22, 2020

Evolved Talent Agency and Brillstein Entertainment Partners consulted on the partnership between Envy Gaming and the Botez sisters.

Chess has surged in popularity through 2020, with events like Pogchamps and the release of the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit helping raise the sports’ profile considerably. Illustrating the scale of the growth, leading online chess platform Chess.com adding an incredible 2.8M new users in November 2020 alone. 

Staying with Envy Gaming, earlier this month the organisation announced a partnership with fantasy prop betting platform ThriveFantasy. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

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