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Games Giant's Pitch for Global Talent: ‘Embrace Your Inner Geek’
- Tencent’s closet rival hiring developers from Japan to the U.S
- It wants credit on a quarter of triple-A releases by 2027
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Jenova Chen needed money to put his latest game out in China. It was 2016, right after Tencent Holdings Ltd. made a splash by taking over Clash of Clans studio Supercell Oy, and Chen was counting on the newly acquisitive internet giant.
But when Tencent passed, calling his novel mix of stylized designs and free-play too risky, it was the smaller NetEase Inc. that swooped in. Founder William Ding flew all the way to San Francisco and spent hours with Chen to seal the deal, unheard-of back then for the reclusive Chinese billionaire.