Tencent’s Timi Studios, the studio behind Call of Duty Mobile and Honor of Kings, generated revenue of $10 billion – £7.23bn – in 2020.
Reuters, which broke the story, reports that if true, that makes Timi “the world’s largest developer”, providing the studio with “a hefty basis for its ambitions to move beyond mobile games and compete directly with global heavyweights developing expensive AAA titles on platforms such as desktop computers, Sony’s PlayStation, Nintendo’s Switch and Microsoft’s Xbox”.
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The news comes after Tencent publicly reported it had generated 156.1 billion yuan (£17 billion) in revenue from its game business, but stopped short of revealing the revenue for each individual studio. According to two sources “with direct knowledge of the matter”, Reuters posits that Timi alone accounts for 40 per cent of all game revenue (thanks, TheGamer).
Just last month, Tencent continued its investment spree, this time in Arma and DayZ studio Bohemia. The Chinese megacorp acquired a minority stake in Bohemia Interactive, which is based in the Czech Republic. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.