Hi-Rez Studios, the maker of a promising free-to-play online battle game called Smite, has announced a publishing deal with China’s giant online entertainment company Tencent.
Smite’s Chronos god
Tencent has struck a worldwide publishing cooperation agreement with Hi-Rez Studios on Smite, a multiplayer online battle game (MOBA) that is still in beta testing but has already drawn more than 2 million registered players to date. Tencent is the majority owner of Riot Games, the creator of the wildly popular League of Legends MOBA. Thanks to investments in Riot Games and Epic Games, Tencent counts itself a player on the world stage and the fourth-largest gaming company in the world.
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Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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