INTERNATIONAL_ In 2021, the investment and sponsorship of game studios will be exciting especially for Chinese game makers.
The reason for the sharp increase in capital investment is the influence of game quality control and version number, and companies need more quality products to gain greater rights in the market.
Among them, in addition to self-production, the fastest and most convenient way is to invest, buy and sell, and merge growing studio companies. Out of 342 funding and investment mergers and acquisitions in the mainland and abroad, Tencent leads with 102, followed by Bilibili, NetEase and ByteDance, according to the latest report.
Tencent’s game investment is the largest in China.
Although the number of investments by Bilibili and NetEase is not equal to Tencent, these firms have doubled compared to the same period last year. In particular, ByteDance mainly focuses on acquisitions, the value of a transaction is high.
In 2021, there were 220 investments and grants in the mainland, of which only 24 were seed, direct and A-round, representing almost 10% of the total. Some groups have been supported by major game makers since their inception, while others received funding within 2 months of their inception.
These are just a few pieces of the puzzle for the game capital market dynamics in 2021. This suggests a complete restoration of the game funding and investment ecosystem in 2021.
In terms of investment frequency, the investment of game companies in the first half of the year was more aggressive than in the second half of the year, out of 342 investments, there were 181 in the first half of the year. Investment and funding in the second half of the year decreased significantly, which may be related to the policy trend of the Chinese game market and the suspension of digital releases.
ByteDance bought Moonton in March of last year.
In terms of investment amount, 156 out of 342 investments and grants have a known investment amount, of which 90% have an investment amount of more than 10 million yuan, and 51.9% of them has a transaction amount of over 100 million yuan.
According to the report, 30 out of 67 investments and grants have an investment capital of more than 100 million yuan, according to the recent investment situation, the amount of one-time investment has gradually increased.
ByteDance acquired Mootoon Technology for US$4 billion (approximately 25.479 billion yuan) and acquired Xiaoniaokan for 9 billion yuan to take the top five. Followed by Microsoft, Netmarble and EA. It should be noted that the major shareholder of the Korean game company Netmarble is Tencent.
