Tencent increases its focus on mobile gaming with $500m investment in Korea’s CJ Games

Chinese Internet giant Tencent is stepping up its commitment to mobile social games as it announced plans to acquire a 28 percent stake in Korea’s CJ Games for $500 million. 

CJ Games is known for its portfolio of mobile games, which includes ‘Taming Monster’ by Seed9, ‘Modoo Marble’ by N2Play, ‘Everybody’s ChaChaCha’ by Turnon Games, and ‘Everybody’s Dungeon King’ by Bluepepper. As part of the deal, CJ Games will also acquire and merge Netmarble, a game distribution division of its parent firm CJ E&M.

Tencent already has an extensive history in the gaming industry — considering that it’s already well known for online multiplayer games on its Web portal QQ Games — but mobile social games have been one of Tencent’s key focus areas recently, especially for its popular messaging app WeChat.

WeChat rolled out its games across the world in January this year, after it introduced games and added support for payments to the Chinese version of the app, Weixin, in August last year.

This latest deal will no doubt accelerate Tencent’s plan to extend its mobile communication platforms, which it previously said was to “support a broad portfolio of associated applications spanning activities such as games, entertainment, information, and utilities,” essentially completing the evolution of WeChat to become more like a social platform and not just a chat app.

Headline image via Faykwong/Flickr