Tencent and Voodoo.
Not a spell, an investment! When we talk about gaming empires and their expansion, Tencent is by far one of the most influential players in the gaming industry. Tencent’s expansion hasn’t stopped and it has acquired a minority share in Voodoo, a French game company. Tencent has now expanded in the domain of casual mobile gaming with the help of this deal.
Now let’s talk about Voodoo, Voodoo is a French company that has a successful mobile games inventory which has more than 300 million monthly active users. The company announced earlier this week that Tencent has joined hands and become a minority shareholder of $1.4 billion.
Though the funding amount is yet to be disclosed by the company Tencent has done it all form hefty checks to buy full control of studios like Riot Games to become a minority shareholder in Epic Games.
It was earlier reported by Bloomberg that Voodoo was looking for a stakeholder that increases the company’s value at more than $1.6 billion, and the French company started this search as early as May. According to Reuters, Goldman Sachs became bought Voodoo’s share worth of about $200 million.
Voodoo is a seven years old startup, co-founded by Laurent Ritter and Alexandre Yazdi. Yazdi is and will remain the largest shareholder and has the steering wheel of the company. Voodoo has made a name for itself in the world of “hyper-casual games” games that are built fast with an underlying objective that does not obsess over the glitz and glam of designing.
This deal has also brought expansion opportunities for Voodoo in the Asia Pacific gaming region. Yazdi told, “We can improve the way we distribute on Android (in the region) and also use local influencers to create virality in our games.”
Voodoo is on the right track as the APAC region is 50% of the total gaming market, so yes the opportunity is huge.
And as for Tencent, Voodoo’s game reservoir can prove to be a match made in heaven for Wechat messenger, a platform for simple games with a potential consumer of over 1 billion.
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Reinout is a games investor and strategic business consultant specializing in the games industry. Reinout established his credentials through his own successful investments, start-ups, consulting and (advisory) board positions that led through time to strong bonds with key stakeholders in this fast paced industry. He is known for his outstanding results in the gaming industry. He has worked with many game studios around the globe and is therefore well known in the international gaming industry.
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I am observing and overseeing several boards of gaming companies. My trademark is to listen, strategize and give feedback to the stakeholders involved. I also represent management/founders towards shareholders and vice versa.