Looking to provide a leg up to fledgling game developers, China’s Tencent Games is strengthening its Venture Lab initiative with the goal of supporting talent from around the world.
The new unit is focused on providing investment, resources and networking to young indies and startups, helping them bring their games to market. It will also offer services such as publishing, marketing, consulting, game data science and onsite support.
Tencent Games’ Juno Shin will now head up Venture Lab globally. Shin has been with the company since 2013, including stints as head of partnerships/investments in Japan and Europe and vice-GM of business development. This decade-plus of experience has helped him gain the broad expertise needed to guide players who are just starting out.
“[Venture Lab works] with these early-stage studios to help them solve bottleneck problems or fill in missing capabilities to maximize their potential,” explained Shin, adding that the unit is now building out a team of experts and veterans.
Venture Lab has quietly worked with two game developers already—remote indie Eleventh Hour (on its action title Last Epoch) and German studio Keen (on its survival-focused Enshrouded). Both titles launched earlier this year and were among the top-grossing Steam games in Western Europe during Q1 2024, according to Tencent.
Meanwhile, Tencent has brought on HUYA-owned game and streaming platform NIMO to manage distribution and operations tasks within its marketing solutions segment. The company made the announcement at Gamescom 2024 (pictured), which kicked off on August 21 in Germany.