Riot Games is one of the biggest gaming publisher/developers in the world, managing the world's most popular Esports title: League of Legends, among a number of other titles released in recent years. However that American firm is no longer owned by its original founders and investors as it has sold off its remaining stakes to parent company Tencent.
"Our majority investor, Tencent, recently purchased the remaining equity of Riot Games," Riot said in a statement.
"This allows us to move away from a Riot equity program towards a cash based incentive program that allows Rioters to share in Riot’s success."
The Chinese publisher has owned a stake in Riot for some time now, leveraging its influence to help push the game in Eastern markets like China and South Korea. However yesterday it quietly purchased the rest of the company, which should be a nice boost to Tencent's own earnings.
Riot Games alone earned more than $1.3 billion last year, purely from the free-to-play League of Legends, but it's the viewership and ever-growing interest which is the real kicker for Tencent. Over 334 million people viewed the League of Legends World Championships, despite the fact that it had a vastly smaller prize pool than rival DotA 2.
This is a big jump from last year's total and shows that the game is only getting bigger. That means more revenue for a long time to come, making whatever Tencent paid likely a solid investment.
