Grinding Gear Games, creator of Path of Exile, announced in a forum post that Tencent has acquired a majority stake in Grinding Gear Games. The forum post was written by Grinding Gear Games Chief Chris Wilson.
Our Chinese publisher, Tencent, has acquired a majority stake in Grinding Gear Games. We will remain an independent company and there won’t be any big changes to how we operate. We want to reassure the community that this will not affect the development and operations of Path of Exile, so we have prepared some answers to some questions you may have about this investment.
Tencent is a Chinese company that describes itself as “a leading provider of Internet value added services in China.” Tencent Games is the largest online games community in China, and a leading world-class online game developer and operator. Tencent owns Riot Games, the creator of League of Legends.
In the forum post, Grinding Gear Games states that they will not make any changes to the monetization of Path of Exile on their international servers. In other words, they are not planning on making the game “pay to win”.
Grinding Gear Games is still an independently-run company. “All of its developers still work for Grinding Gear Games and have not become Tencent employees.” The forum post says the founders (Chris Wilson, Jonathan Rogers, and Erik Oloffson) are still running the company.
Current players will not need to have a Tencent account in order to log in to Path of Exile. Grinding Gear Games says nothing is changing with the way players access Path of Exile on international servers.