In a rather confusing move, Tencent is launching a battle royale game called Ring of Elysium.

The free-to-play project is set to be released on September 19th and is coming to Steam. The title already appears to have been released in Thailand by local publisher Garena.

The title was previously called Europa after its corporate antagonist and has been developed by Tencent's internal Aurora game studio.

Why Tencent is releasing its own take on the battle royale genre is somewhat baffling. The Chinese tech and entertainment giant owns stakes in both Fornite maker Epic Games, as well as the firms behind Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Bluehole and PUBG Corp. 

Incidentally, Tencent's slice of Epic is now worth in the region of $4.1bn thanks to Fortnite's massive success.

The company paid $330m for 48.4 per cent of the game and middleware maker back in 2012 - so it's already making a tidy profit from battle royale.

It's also somewhat surprising that Tencent is launching the game on Steam. The firm has been cooking up its own PC marketplace called WeGame for some time now. Already available in China, the platform is set to go international in the near future based out of Hong Kong.