Steam Rumored to Come to China

An article in 17173.com states that Steam appears to be gearing up for a China launch in 2015, and is currently in regulatory review for that to happen. There is a simplified Chinese version of Steam already but the digital distribution platform has not yet been approved for the Chinese market. There will likely be content restrictions in China (ie, denial of access) for some of the game titles that Steam legally distributes globally.

Shanda’s Restructuring

Shanda’s PR department quelled rumors that Shanda plans to spin off a division to Tencent, saying that will not happen. He also said that Shanda intends to stay in the game industry even after going private and undergoing corporate restructuring.

M&A for Mobile Online Game Companies

An article in 17173.com discussed that the M&A market for mobile online games companies is particularly active with regard to cross-industry mergers. The article says that of the 213 transactions of A-listed companies related to mobile games, 96 transactions were cross-industry. 32 of these were related to film/TV, games, Internet, totaling RMB 63 billion in transaction fees, which is equal to 1/3 of all fees for that set of transactions.

Glu’s China MD Joins Ski-Mobi

Sky-mobi is a platform for mobile games distribution in China, with a pre-installed app on tens of millions of phones and a big reach into cities in Tiers 3 and 4. The company also recently launched a service to compete with Yodo1, iDreamSky and others to help foreign mobile games launch in China. Now the Hangzhou-based, NASDAQ-traded company is pushing its international thinking even further by hiring Glu Mobile’s managing director for China to lead its games division.

KakaoTalk Launches KakaoPay

Mobile payment providers are in a hot sector. Apple announced ApplePay, making PayPal nervous and investors wary, and in Korea KakaoTalk announced KakaoPay as a mobile payment service. In China we have seen TenPay and AliPay, among others.