Tencent's DnF Mobile game title overwhelmed on launch, offering hopes of it reviving slow gaming growth

Tencent Holdings' Dungeon and Fighter (DnF) Mobile launched with an overwhelming start, as the Chinese tech giant pins high hopes on the eagerly awaited title to boost its sluggish domestic video game business.

The mobile version of DnF, developed by Japanese-Korean game studio Nexon, remained top of the charts for free game downloads on the iOS app store on Wednesday, after experiencing problems shortly after its official debut in China on Tuesday, when some players said they experienced online queues and were unable to log in.

Tencent, which operates the game in China, cited a server outage for the incident as it trumpeted the "fiery enthusiasm" from players for the game.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

The server supporting the game needed to undergo emergency maintenance that was estimated to take around 90 minutes, DnF Mobile said on its official Weibo account, where it also pledged to compensate all players with in-game coins and gifts. The game resumed operations an hour later with some functions still unavailable.

With the outage an indication of overwhelming demand for DnF Mobile, Tencent, which operates the world's largest video gaming business by revenue, may have good reason to pin hopes on the title giving its gaming business a boost.

"DnF Mobile is a key title for us given the success and longevity of the DnF [personal computer game] and the general scarcity of successful action games on mobile," Tencent president Martin Lau said in a conference call in March, weeks after the title received regulatory approval to launch in China.

DnF Mobile is expected to gross around 6 billion yuan (US$836 million) in a year, according to a recent note by investment bank Jefferies.

For the first quarter of 2024, video gaming revenue, traditionally Tencent's strongest revenue driver, declined 2 per cent in the domestic market while rising 3 per cent overseas, reaching 34.5 billion yuan and 13.6 billion yuan, respectively.

Tencent's headquarters building in Shenzhen, China, April 17, 2024. Photo: Bloomberg alt=Tencent's headquarters building in Shenzhen, China, April 17, 2024. Photo: Bloomberg>

Apart from DnF Mobile, Tencent is also preparing to launch several high-production-value titles this year, including Tarisland, Need for Speed Mobile, One Piece Mobile, and Delta Force: Hawk Operations.

The company's annual game release event, Spark Conference, is scheduled for next Tuesday.

Jefferies is expecting a recovery in Tencent's gaming revenue in the second quarter of this year. "We are positive on Tencent's gaming revenue outlook, considering that it has a number of emerging franchises with potential," analysts Thomas Chong and Zoey Zong wrote in a recent note.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.