Tencent has made another major investment. The Chinese tech giant now owns a majority stake in developer Kuro Games, best known for its free-to-play gacha title Wuthering Waves.
Wuthering Waves
- Over the weekend, several Chinese media outlets reported that Tencent had acquired 37% of Kuro Games shares from Hero Entertainment (thanks, Gematsu). As a result, the Honor of Kings maker now has a 51.4% stake in the studio.
- This move also makes Tencent the only external shareholder of Kuro Games. The information was found on Qichacha, which provides business data and credit information on Chinese companies.
- In its internal memo, Kuro Games noted that the studio will continue to operate independently, similar to Tencent’s subsidiaries like Riot Games (League of Legends) and Supercell (Clash of Clans).
- “In addition to our past experience of cooperating with Tencent, we firmly believe that after this external shareholder change, Kuro will have a more stable external environment, which will be more conductive to our future long-term development strategy of independent operation,” the developer stated.
Founded in 2014, Kuro Games has two main products in its portfolio. The first is action RPG Punishing: Gray Raven, which has generated over $159 million in IAP revenue on mobile alone since its launch original launch in December 2019 (via AppMagic).
The second is Wuthering Waves, which amassed over 30 million pre-registrations prior to its May 2024 release. Its mobile version reached almost $10 million in net revenue across iOS and Android in just five days, currently sitting at over $126 million.
According to Hurun Research Institute, Kuro Games was the 680th largest private company globally, with an estimated market value of $1.7 billion. It ranked above studios like Tripledot ($1.4 billion), Mythical Games ($1.3 billion), and Playco ($1 billion).