Tencent Games has opened a new development studio in Liverpool, UK.

The new office is headed up by Pete Smith, VP of partnerships for Tencent Games Global.

It currently houses 12 members of Tencent's global production team. It plans to support the development of titles from Tencent's partner studios.

Other recent hires to the studio include Ivan Davies as director, studio partnerships, Jon Lawrence as development director, studio partnerships, and Tom' O'Connor as director, studio partnerships.

"Given our continued expansion into the global market, we wanted a central location for our production staff to call home,"Smith Said. "In-person mentoring is key to the growth of our department and its skillset, and we feel this is best achieved through regular on-site collaboration.

"Liverpool is a vibrant city full of creativity and diversity and has been a hub of game development since the start of the gaming industry. We believe the production talent and industry experience available in the local area will accelerate our growth and capabilities."

Tencent joins fellow publishing giant Sony in establishing a Liverpool location. Back in February, the PlayStation maker moved its SIE office to a 65,000 square foot campus in the city centre.

Tencent provides clarification on new subsidiary's business operations

Despite online rumors Tencent says "All games under Tencent will remain under the control of their original teams…"

Yesterday Tencent said that its new gaming division was operational adjustment, as it clarified rumors that it wouldn't be managing some of its titles.

As reported by the South China Morning Post, online discussions about ownership began after a new update for mobile racer QQ Speed (GKART) had some data missing.

Rumors that the data was transferred to a new owner and it may be discontinued followed.

This happened as Shenzhen Tencent Tianyou Technology Limited as was added as an operator to several of Tencent's mobile titles.

Tianyou, a division of Tencent, was established in 2020 as a games and esports company to develop, publish, and operate games.

Tencent provided further clarity that despite the arm's ownership of these mobile games, there will be no real changes to the titles.

"All games under Tencent will remain under the control of their original teams, and the actual development and operation will remain the same," Tencent said.

Tencent cutting off Chinese gamers' access to foreign games

May 31 update to internet acceleration app will only support games operating in China

Tencent is altering one of its services in a way that will prevent gamers based in China from playing online games from overseas.

While the Chinese government approves which titles are officially released and operated in China, gamers do find ways to access online games hosted on foreign servers. However, local internet speeds can often be too slow to enable them to play.

Tencent, as well as other Chinese internet firms such as NetEase, offers network acceleration tools that improve internet speeds in order to allow gamers the chance to access these foreign games.

Reuters now reports that Tencent has announced an update to one such app that will only support games officially operating in China. The update will launch on May 31, after which users will be unable to access foreign games.

The company did not provide comment on why it was making these changes, but the move follows several measures by the Chinese government to both control the type of games released in China and cut down on the time people, especially children and teenagers, spend playing video games.