Cognition Dissemination: PlatinumGames Getting a Tencent Loan Is Fine… Right?

PlatinumGames’ producers made it clear that 2020 will be an eventful year for the company during their New Year’s talk. Company President Kenichi Sato observed recent successes like 2017’s NieR: Automata and 2019’s Astral Chain (their last two games, notably), and mentioned their impending big announcements — though some were planned for last year. Representative Studio Head Atsushi Inaba clarified that big and small announcements are planned for 2020.

For unenlightened folks like me, they appeared to be referring to showing existing games in development like Babylon’s Fall, which finally surfaced last month after being announced in mid-2018. They also perhaps referred to showing Bayonetta 3, announced over two years ago at end of 2017, and revealing at least one of the self-published games they have in development (see the eighth question). Little did anyone outside the company know what they really meant, though it’s tied to one of those aforementioned projects.

PlatinumGames announced this past week that they received a capital investment from Tencent Holdings Limited as “a basis for partnership.” The news was immediately alarming for several reasons.

Tencent is one of the biggest companies in China, and like any company operating in the country, they have close ties to the Chinese government; they literally released a mobile game called Clap for Xi Jinping: An Awesome Speech, so blatantly propaganda that you’d think I made it up (I didn’t). China has been under heavy scrutiny for their desire to exert control over Hong Kong and fighting the still-ensuing protests to protect the territory’s independence, and for how they’ve treated the Uighur Muslim community. This is relevant here due to how this criticism has affected the independence of organizations and companies that work with them, most notably the NBA and Blizzard, both of which penalized those who stood up for Hong Kong’s democracy in their vicinity.

It was revealed around the time of those incidents that Tencent either has a stake in or has provided loans to several gaming companies in the last few years, and PlatinumGames will join the ranks of the latter group. You can’t blame anyone for immediately gasping when they heard one of their favorite companies, and one of the best action game developers around, took a likely-sizable loan from them.

At the same time, there might be nothing to worry about here. In the announcement, PG provided preemptive “We’re fine! Everything’s fine!” damage control by saying the “partnership has no effect on the independence of [their] company” and that they’ll “continue operations under [their] current corporate structure.” PG plans to use this loan to make the above-mentioned self-published games.

Besides, it’s not like PG’s titles were ever overly political, nor is it likely that their games will contain any pro-Chinese messages. Their most political games were Vanquish and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, published and owned Sega and Konami, respectively. Revengeance in particular contained a villain that was a parody of what western politicians can be like, notably released before the United States elected its own comically-corrupt parody as president. These games have been in development since well before Tencent invested any cash, so they should be thematically tolerable. In other words, it won’t be a game like Tamsoft and Pikii’s Hinomaruko, the premise of which sure implies that, actually, Imperial Japan was good.

This could be a boon for the games they’re self-publishing. Instead of needing to release lower-budget works if they don’t have enough leftover cash from other projects, those titles could be nearly or exactly on par with those released with the cooperation of other publishers in terms of presentation. It could also help them afford distribution for them worldwide if they go with physical copies. Whether this happens will depend on how much Tencent gave them, but there’s a chance it was a hefty sum.

But there’s another problem they could run into. Former PG creative producer JP Kellams mentioned on Twitter that he doesn’t think this deal will work out and that Tencent will want a refund, because PG doesn’t make the kinds of games they’re interested in. Tencent tends to like games updated over time, like multiplayer and live service games, which PG has little experience with. For instance, Tencent completely owns League of Legends developer Riot Games, and owns 40 percent of Fortnite-developer Epic Games, both of which have been heavy moneymakers for years. But Kellams is hoping he’s wrong, and there’s a chance of that too. It’s possible Tencent wants to expand their horizons by releasing more single-player games, but it’s also possible they want to help fund a new PG multiplayer game like an Anarchy Reigns spiritual successor.

I hate to end this post with a vague “we’ll see what happens,” but… we’ll see what happens. I hope this works out for PG, because this could go to hell in no time if Tencent pulls their investment. If they do, hopefully PG lines up quick partnerships with other companies or developers, or that NieR director Yoko Taro is there to save them again. If not, the rest of them could end up back at Capcom too.

P.S. This is a good time to mention that Sega is releasing the Bayonetta & Vanquish 10th Anniversary Bundle for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on February 18th, to commemorate the tenth anniversaries of both games. These will likely be ports of the superlative PC versions. I can attest to them both being great games, and it’s nice that a PlayStation system will finally get a good version of Bayonetta.