There’s a really good chance that you missed this bit of news from last week. I did, and I tend to follow companies that develop games I enjoy so much. Tencent Holdings, predominately a Chinese Internet service company, has acquired a majority stake in Riot Games, the creator of the F2P battle arena game League of Legends. Tencent reportedly paid $350 million to buy out other venture capitalists and put itself in a great position to soak up all of Riot’s money as it continues to innovate its genre.

Obviously, I believe that Riot Games has found a winning formula. The company releases new content weekly, be it champions or the occasional map reskin (which is entertaining for some reason). It levies the new champions against skin sales to generate revenue. A scheme that has cleaned the moths out of many a friends’ pockets. It employs daily rewards for the first win to keep us coming back and has an incredibly deep universe for a game that has no open world. It’s no shock that a company was willing to pay nine figures for a piece of that action. Considering its growth – the company has been on a hiring spree since LoL launched in late 2009 – the profits haven’t peaked yet.

If only I had $351 million… Continue Reading