[Don't Starve Together] Let's talk Tencent.

Channel:

Freddo Films

Subscribers:

25,000

Published on February 1, 2021 12:00:03 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cyuM32qqKc

Game:

Don't Starve (2013)

Category:

Discussion

Duration: 5:41

27,389 views

1,334

Klei Entertainment, developers of Don't Starve Together and many other well-received, has recently been acquired by the gaming giant Tencent. In this video I talk about Tencent's recent purchase and what this may mean for the future of Klei Entertainment and Don't Starve Together.


First of all, the number one thing that I want to say is that it's not the end of the world. Klei isn't about to up and disappear - and I think it's safe to say that from the perspective of a consumer, nothing is going to happen in the immediacy, as it usually is with this sorts of thing. From my perspective, there is an unneccesary amount of urgency circulating the issue - and while the situation is definitely not ideal, it's also not really cause for alarm. So you can curb your dystopian fears of a Tencentian don't starve, at least for now.
There are a couple things that I want to clarify before I get into the guts of this video. Firstly, what does it mean when the majority of a company is owned, in legal terms? In this case, the majority of klei being owned by Tencent.
The majority shareholder is defined as: "a person or entity that owns and controls [the majority of a company's shares]. As a majority shareholder, a person or operating entity has a significant amount of influence over the company."
Unless you're literally living under a rock, you'll know that Tencent now owns the majority of Klei Entertainment's shares, which gives them a massive amount of weight in votes and diplomatic discussions that occur within the company. However, the interesting thing to note about Tencent's aquisition is that klei succesfully negotiated for possession of full creative control, meaning that they make all decisions to do with the company's products. So, according to klei, Tencent holds no power over these sorts of decisions - meaning that all klei products, past and future, are, well - made and operated by Klei. This is obviously a great thing for the company to still possess, I think the situation would be very, very different if this was not succesfully bartered for - although, from the way that the forum post announcing the news was worded, it sounds as though klei would have been highly unlikely to sell the majority of the company without getting to keep their creative control.
However, since Tencent still owns the majority of the company, it would be completely feasible for them to vote out klei entirely from the presumed board of directors and assume total control of the company by force. Whether or not they eventually plan to do this or something like this is not clear - but keep this in mind: Why would a profit-oriented company such as Tencent acquire the majority of a company such as klei, which we can assume to have been barely profitable, if profitable at all, just to accrue such and such percentage of their passive income? A passive income, which, because of the sheer enormity of tencent, likely amounts to a potentially neglegible amount. For me it would be strange for them not to have some sort of ulterior motive for Klei's future. On the contrary, they could simply have made the purchase in order to expand their reach - something that I absolutely would not put past Tencent due to their aformentioned enormity. To them, buying a humble indie company is probably the video game monopoly equivalent of chump change.
In any case, the least we can do is to simply observe and see what comes. There is really no use panicking over what might happen, the chances of major changes being made to DST in the near future are quite low. While the situation is certainly undesirable, it really isn't the end of the world.


♫Music Used: ♫
♫Windows96 - Crystal Clear (Reflections)♫
♫wrench - Think of the Children (Paradigm - Phat Beatsies)♫
♫HOME - Deepmind12 Test♫
I AM NOT CLAIMING OWNERSHIP TO THE MUSIC USED

Other Statistics