French publisher Ubisoft is partnering with a Chinese developer to bring their games to the largest market of gamers in the world.

According to games industry site Gamasutra, Ubisoft is partnering with Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent to bring a variety of Ketchapp’s mobile games to China.

Ketchapp was a mobile games developer that Ubisoft bought in 2016. They’re the developer behind mobile games like Hoverboard, Rider, Skyward, and 2048, a game that’s seen as mostly a ripoff of the hugely successful mobile game Threes. In fact, most of Ketchapp’s repertoire consisted of unlicensed variations of popular mobile games.

This sort of makes their move to China, the undisputed king of knock-offs, make a lot of sense.

Tencent will make Ketchapp now Ubisoft’s games available via their Weixin Mini-Game app, which is a WeChat mirror for people in mainland China. With nearly a billion (that’s billion with a B) active users Weixin is easily the most popular app in the region.

Tencent
via fortune.com

 

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The recently launched mini-game extension allows users to play a whole bunch of casual games without requiring them to download anything to their phones, which is handy for those low data caps. Not that China suffers from that nearly as much as North America does. We're lookin’ at you, Verizon!

Partnering with Tencent is seen by industry analysts as an opportunity for Ubisoft to make a much larger name for themselves in China, where the market for mobile gamers is basically equal to the rest of the world combined.

"We're excited that a selection of our successful and diverse portfolio of casual games, which already is supported by one of the largest mobile gaming communities, is now coming to Tencent’s new application," said Ketchapp’s co-founders, Antoine and Michel Morcos.

"Weixin Mini-Game offers Chinese players instant access to a wide range of fun and challenging games. We have witnessed the massive success of Jump Jump and we are delighted by this collaboration."

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