Last month, Bloomberg reported that Tencent was planning to possibly pull out investments from a number of Japanese game studios, including Rune Factory and Monster Hunter Stories series developer Marvelous. And on July 31, Marvelous officially confirmed that it would terminate its capital and business partnership with Tencent Group subsidiary Image Frame Investment.
According to GameBiz, the companies ended their 6-year-long business alliance because Image Frame Investment expressed the intention to sell their Marvelous shares, following a revision of Tencent’s investment portfolio and a change in its capital allocation policy.
Consequently, Tencent and its affiliates will lose the status of a major shareholder, and it is expected for former Sega president and current CEO of Amuse Capital Hayao Nakayama to become Marvelous’ largest shareholder, followed by Marvelous CEO Haruki Nakayama. Image Frame Investment will be distributing its 12.17 million shares between Marvelous, SBI Securities, and one more Japanese business firm.
Additionally, the Tencent Group plans to discontinue development of a certain Story of Seasons mobile game, for which the license agreement had been signed back in 2019, citing “business environment and profitability” as the reasons. However, as the license agreement itself remains effective, this means that Tencent and Marvelous won’t be completely severing their business relationship.
As explained by GameBiz, Tencent’s shift in investment strategy to prioritize “capital efficiency” and “shareholder stability” stems from the recent changes in the Chinese market’s business environments. Given that the group made aggressive investments in Japanese game companies around 2020, it seems like Marvelous won’t be the only one affected by Tencent’s revised investment policies.
