Valve Sues Copycats in Asia

Valve Sues Copycats in Asia

Valve Corporation, developer of Dota2, has officially filed a lawsuit against the developer of Dao Ta Chuan Qi (“Dota Legend” or “Soul Clash” in Japan) – Lilith Games, and the game’s publisher Longtu Game. Valve requires that Lilith Games and Longtu Game to stop all development and operations work of Dao Ta Chuan Qi immediately and compensate RMB 31 million for economic loss and other reasonable expenses. At the same time, Valve also requires Lilith Games and Longtu Game to announce a public apology for the infringement on major media (including the game’s main portal site and its official website).

Chinese Teams Dominate eSports Tournaments

Guangmin Daily (a national newspaper launched in 1949 and is considered a conservative daily and very close to the Communist Party of China) released an article reporting the International DotA2 Championships that took place in the US this August. The article reported that five teams from China got 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th places, totaling USD$7.78 million in winnings. The average age of the Chinese players in these groups is less than 30 years old. The article commented that not a lot of people really know what e-Sports is and many people cannot tell the difference between e-Sports and online games. As a result, many people look down upon e-Sports. They think playing chess is “elegant” but playing DotA is “worthless.” However, in 2003 the General Administration of Sports of China already established “e-Sports” as a legitimate sports category. Currently there are about 30 million people in China who are e-Sports enthusiasts. The article encourages that the government should enhance e-Sports regulation and management and people should “take off their colored glasses” when they look at e-Sports and consider e-Sports an emerging industry.

President Xi Jinping’s Visit to the US

A significant meeting is taking place in Seattle this week. During President Xi Jinping’s visit to the US, 30 CEOs from US and China will have a business roundtable co-hosted by the Paulson Institute in Seattle. CEOs from the China side include: Jack Ma from Alibaba, Pony Ma from Tencent, Yanhong Li from Baidu as well as Lenovo, ICBC, Bank of China, Haier, and Cosco (China Ocean Shipping Company). US companies’ visitors include Hyatt, Pepsi, General Motors, Honeywell, DuPont, Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, IBM, Starbucks, Apple, Berkshire, Hathaway, Disney, Cisco and Dow Chemical. The Paulson Institute is run by Henry Paulson, former Secretary of the US Department of the Treasury and also former head of Goldman Sachs.

Tencent’s Continued Expansion

Tencent is growing into an even bigger media titan, while it hails as by far the most important digital games publisher and distributor in China as well as the most important company for social networking via WeChat and QQ. In its most recent expansion, Tencent announced the establishment of a wholly owned subsidiary – Tencent Pictures, in Beijing. Tencent Pictures will become a new member of Tencent’s trans-media entertainment ecosystem which already includes Tencent Games, Tencent Animation & Comic, and China Reading Limited (cofounded by Tencent and Shanda Literature).Tencent Pictures consists of three studios: Heiti Studio, Jinhua Entertainment Studio and Dameng Studio. At the press conference, Tencent Pictures 11 plans of famous IP film adaptation.

CMGE

We posted a news item in the September 17 Niko News that mentioned CMGE. Our commentary said that CMGE is publicly traded on NASDAQ. In fact, the company merged with Pegasus very recently and subsequently it ceased to be public and ceased trading on NASDAQ sometime in the past few weeks, according to this press release.

Niko Partners on Twitter

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