1746

I am pretty sure Tencent is the only minority investor to hold 40%. :)

1747

True, but it’s still inaccurate to say that Epic is owned by Tencent. Tencent – who I despise, I might add – holds a significant stake in the company, but they don’t own it. Yet.

1748

Yeah I don’t want to get into that discussion again. Tencent owns 40%, Tim owns 44.7%. Make of that what you will.

Personally I consider that to be a far closer connection to the Chinese government than just trying to get into China. If the Chinese government applies pressure (as the article suggests it has already begun to do), can Tim buy them out? Doubtful. Will he raise alarm bells, or will he comply, especially since the Chinese have become experts at slowly boiling the frog? I’m not sure. I do know I want nothing to do with Epic or Tencent. But let’s be clear – the Chinese government effectively owns 40% of Epic.

1749

They also have two people on the board of directors. They may have a “minority” stake, but they for fuck’s sure have an influence, and why Tim Sweeney is trying to convince us otherwise is downright weird.

1750

Technically they do own Epic, 40% of it.

1751

No one entity “owns” Epic, and it appears that none has a controlling interest. And while (almost) none of us here has an inside view of that particular company, many of us understand that a 40% shareholder can have an enormous amount of influence, if they choose to use it.

1752

If Epic was owned by Tencent, they could do whatever they want. That’s different than having a large amount of influence, although the latter is a very bad thing as well.

I don’t like Tencent. I don’t trust them, the fact that they are a major investor in Epic makes me wary. But by making incorrect statements, it gives Epic and their defenders an avenue to derail any point being made by correctly saying that what was just said is untrue.

The amount of influence that Tencent is going to have with a 40% stake is bad enough. Focus on that and Tim Sweeney has a harder time weaseling out of the criticism.

1753

+1 non-existent like.

(BTW, can we all resort to responding with ‘+1 like’ until @tomchick activates the likes on this forum?)

1754

That battle has been fought. You want us to litter every thread with +1 spam to try and force the issue? No, thanks.

1755

Has it? I didn’t know.

1756

Yep. We had a whole thing about it. Decision was made.

1757

Hahahahahaha…

"With this deal, we saw an opportunity to increase player exposure to our own store while at the same time supporting a partner that greatly values our games and provides better terms.

Early indications are supportive, as PC pre-orders are higher than for the first Division, and pre-orders on the Ubisoft store are six times higher. We believe this deal is a long-term positive for Ubisoft."

1758

The Division 2 is a big game, I don’t know why they’d sell it anywhere other than their own store. Why go to the trouble of building UPlay and still put your games up elsewhere? Why pay even a 12% cut?

1759

EPIC store prolly tossed them a few million up front?

1760

Yeah, that was my first question as well. Seems odd to me. It’s almost like if Blizzard were going to sell Diablo 4 on EPIC. If Blizzard still made PC games.

That’s the obvious answer for sure, but I just can’t imagine the number that would have steered Ubisoft away from uPlay sales.

Unless they are thinking of decommissioning uPlay?

1761

My personal opinion on that is they don’t trust their own output enough to make it exclusive to their own store. I think that’s the case for most big third party game companies.

1762

What do you mean by output, you mean they don’t have confidence The Division 2 will sell without the marketing from being in a third-party store?

1763

I think he means how many folks will be trying to download it day one, but I’m not sure that’s the biggest issue with something like this - it will be server load trying to play, and I doubt that has much to do with the store front used to purchase the game. I could be off on his meaning, of course.

1764

It’s going to use UPlay anyway, all of Ubisoft’s games require it even when you buy on Steam.

1765

Yeah, that’s true, which makes this even more strange. WTH.