Tencent subsidiary behind Call of Duty: Mobile becomes world’s largest game developer

Tencent-owned subsidiary, TiMi Studios, reportedly earned a monstrous $10 billion (about $12 billion CAD) in revenue in 2020, as per a Reuters report.

The developer behind popular titles like Call of Duty: Mobile and Honor of Kings might not be a household name, but the numbers speak for themselves. According to the report, its staggering earning makes TiMi the “world’s largest developer” in terms of revenue.

For comparison, Epic Games (Fortnite’s developers) reported $4.2 billion ($5.2 billion CAD) in revenue last year and Activision Blizzard (developers for the Call of Duty franchise) posted over $8.09 billion ($10 billion CAD) in revenue in 2020.

Honor of Kings, @TiMiStudios 's premier mobile MOBA, has set a new world record of 100 million average daily active users year to date. Congrats and happy fifth anniversary! pic.twitter.com/sYCrE7W750

— TiMi Studio Group (@timistudios) November 1, 2020

Honor of Kings, a multiplayer online battle arena game that’s only available in China, had a 100 million active player base as of November 2020, and Call of Duty: Mobile had the largest mobile game launch ever, with over 100 million downloads worldwide in the first week of its release in October 2019.

But TiMi is not resting on the success of its older titles. In a recruitment letter last month, an engineer from TiMi wrote that it aims to create a new AAA game “that resembles the virtual community from the movie Ready Player One.” TiMi is also building a studio in Los Angeles “with the goal of creating content with original intellectual property that has global appeal,” according to the report.

Tencent reported $23.79 billion (about $29.8 billion CAD) in overall online game revenue for last year, out of which games developed by TiMi accounted for 40 percent of revenue or $9.5 billion (about $11.9 billion CAD).

Image credit: TiMi Facebook

Source: Reuters Via: The Verge