League of Legends developer Riot Games now belongs 100 percent to Tencent games.
According to IGN, it has been confirmed that Riot Games is now fully owned by majority investor Tencent games. Tencent Holdings Limited reportedly has purchased the rest of the remaining equity of Riot Games.
As written on Riot Games' official website, "As a result of our continued growth and changing circumstances, we're shifting to a new structure to recognize and reward Rioters' contributions - and that first involves a big change to our existing equity program. As part of this effort, our majority investor, Tencent, recently purchased the remaining equity of Riot Games.
"This allows us to move away from a Riot equity program towards a cash based incentive program that allows Rioters to share in Riot's success. This program comes in addition to our highly competitive salaries, open PTO, learning and development programs, 401K match, subsidized medical plans, and kitchens stocked with snax (poro and otherwise) all full-time Rioters get."
According to IGN, Tencent Holdings Limited is a Shenzhen-based internet company that also holds minority but substantial stakes in other companies like Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, GLU Mobile and Pocket Gems.
Moreover, according to The Score eSports, Tencent was already the majority stakeholder of Riot, with already 92.78 percent ownership in the company shares as of Feb 18, 2011. While Riot is known to be the developer of League of Legends and was always responsible for running most of the LoL competitions internationally including World Championships, it is Tencent who currently distributes League of Legends in China. It is too early to determine what change Tencent's 100 percent ownership will bring to the game.
In the meantime, League of Legends is a free-to-play, with in-game purchase, online multiplayer battle arena available on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS
