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UPDATED: Playerunknown's Battlegrounds firm Bluehole says Tencent isn't investing

UPDATED: Playerunknown's Battlegrounds firm Bluehole says Tencent isn't investing

Update: Reports that Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent was investing in Korean games firm Bluehole are not correct.  

A statement released to GamesIndustry.biz by Bluehole reads: "These reports are not accurate. Tencent didn't make an investment into Bluehole"

So there's that. 

Original Story: Rumours point to Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent investing in the company behind Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds.

Word comes by way of Chinese news site, Jiemian (as pointed out by Niko Partners' Daniel Ahmad on Twitter, below), which says that Tencent initially wanted to purchase the Korean developer. But after being rejected, the Chinese company decided to invest.

Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds launched in March and is now one of the most-played games on Steam. Not that long ago, it became the highest non-Valve game in terms of concurrent players, which is quite the feat.

At last official announcement, the game had sold 4m units and generated $100m for Bluehole, but SteamSpy data points to the game having reach well over 6m players since.

We spoke to its creator Brendan Greene last month about PUBG's creation and blockbuster success the game has had. 

Tencent has been getting more and more involved in games recently, having purchased Clash of Clans giant Supercell and made investments in Elite Dangerous firm Frontier and Liverpool-based indie Milky Tea.

That's on top of owning League of Legends maker Riot Games, as well as stakes in Activision Blizzard and Epic Games. 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.