The story of Tencent being involved in fighting games dates back to 2011 with a game called XD (we extend its abbreviation to XDZW, sometimes to King of Combat). In an event that shocked the world Dakou and Xiao Hai were chosen play some matches in a TGC event (esports). This was a bit of a shock given that at the time both Xiao Hai and Dakou were known mainly for being Godlike KOF98 players. That is not all Tencent had in mind for fighting games, here’s a brief story of what has happened since and their special collaboration with SNK.

It’s been close to 2 years ever since the announcement between SNK and Tencent was announced (April 2013). At the time, Tencent was trying to make its game appeal more to a wider audience. The result was to include a few KOF characters into XDZW. Imaginations ran wild at the time; many thinking that SNK might publish XDZW (after Beta into the Japanese market), others that there might be a XDZW vs KOF game in development, even stronger rumors suggested that the next KOF would be using the XDZW game engine.

At first it seemed like the partnership would end there. However, that was not the case. After a few months Tencent released on their QQ games platform KOF98UMFE and later KOF02UM. And even then, that’s not all they would do. Tencent, a company that has supported esports (and parent company of Riot games AKA League of Legends), has since run tournaments for all three of these games. They have specially had events for KOF98UMFE inviting world renowned players such as MADKOF, Baozi, ET, and Xiao Hai (to name a few) to these events.

In these almost 2 years, what has resulted has been one of the best collaborations we’ve had (only rivaled by Sony and Capcom). So far, these are the tournaments that Tencent has organized (along with their prizes and winners) only involving KOF. There are a few events that had XDZW (only prior to the release of both SNK games on the QQ platform).

KOF98UMFE (online, Jan 23-25 and Jan 30-Feb 1 2015)

Prize: 10,000 QQ Points

China vs Taiwan (4v4)

KOF98UMFE (Nov 29, 2014)

Xiao Hai

ET

Nozomi

Xyzzy

KOF98UMFE (November 15, 2014)

Prize: 100,000 RMB

Xiao Hai

Lao He

UP

ET

KOF02UM (June 3, 2014)

Prize: 80,000 RMB

1 xiaohai

2 CAP

3 水魚 (waterfish)

4 希焱xi yan

KOF98UMFE (November 19, 2013)

Prize:60,000 RMB

1 ET

2 baozi

3 xiao hai

4 heipi

As a fan of KOF Tencent has done everything to the competitive scene in China and they have the infrastructure to do something that size in the west (look at League of Legends). One can dream, and I really hope this collaboration leads to more and more events this 2015 and the years to come. Thank you Tencent and Thank You SNK!

For more information on QQ events please check their official website QQ Games 98UM