Steam Supports Chinese RMB

Steam officially announced that starting from November 3, 2015 it will support Chinese RMB. At the same time, it will also start to support currency in Hong Kong, Taiwan and India. After the launch of new currency support, USD remained in the Steam Wallet can be automatically converted to the new currencies using exchange rate provide by Valve. Right now, Steam already supports customer service in Chinese and Alipay in China. The RMB support will definitely simplify gamers’ game purchase process and thus attract more players to join Steam.

Tencent Invests in Artillery

Tencent invested in the Palo Alto-based F2P game developer Artillery for series A funding round. The amount of investment was not disclosed, but Tencent is the lead investor. Other investors include First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital, Signia Ventures, General Catalyst, Charlie Cheever, Crunchfund and some other angel investors. Ankur Pansari, CEO of Artillery said that they started to talk to Tencent about a year and half ago The company is developing a game code-named “Atlas”, which fits into the high-demand competitive gaming segment as a MOBA game with RTS gameplay.

New WeChat Statistics

DoNews, via Marbridge, reported Tencent’s announcements regarding WeChat usage made during the company’s Global Partner Meeting. Lots of interesting statistics were disclosed. Some notable are that there are 570 million average DAU, that 15% of them actively play games on the platform, and more than 70% of gamers play more than 10 minutes per day. In addition, WeChat Sports has expanded to include WeRun, which tracks a user’s daily (physical) strides. It also enables users to “donate” strides to charity, and users have already donated 167.8 billion steps generating RMB 33.57 million in charitable donations. A user walks more than 10,000 steps in a day and money is then donated to the user’s designated charity.

Niko Partners on Twitter

Follow us on Twitter @nikochina to see these comments in real time as we publish them! Here are a few of our tweets from last week:

  • Century Huatong (002602), finalized 43% purchase of Shanda for 6.4B RMB & 100% of CMGE for 7B RMB. Looks like back-door listing in China.
  • Singapore’s Garena Benefits From Venture Capital Boom http://insidegamesasia.biz/singapores-garena-benefits-from-venture-capital-boom/ …
  • Confirmed: Xiaomi is making a laptop, and expanding into telco services https://www.techinasia.com/confirmed-xiaomi-making-laptop-expanding-mobile-services/ …
  • ‘Shanghai’ Delay: Harvey Weinstein Blames Chinese Government – Hollywood Reporter http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/shanghai-delay-harvey-weinstein-blames-828641 …