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Tencent wants to pay developers more to make better games for WeChat

WeChat's mini programs are hugely popular, but its games section is flooded with clones

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One of the earliest mini games -- Tiao Yi Tiao -- made national headlines this January, amassing 100 million users in just two weeks. (Picture: Shutterstock)
This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Remember those games that you can play directly on Facebook Messenger? China’s biggest messaging app WeChat has the same thing.

They’re part of WeChat’s lineup of mini programs, essentially lightweight apps that can run virtually instantly without the need for long downloads.

But... remember how those little Messenger games feel a little cheap? Well, WeChat has the same thing there, too.

Now Tencent plans to offer developers a bigger cut if they create better games. The company says that games that qualify as “creative games” can keep 70% of the revenue, as opposed to the default 50%.
This new creative game scheme came right after WeChat boasted that it now has more than 1 million mini programs, of which games reportedly account for somewhere between 30% and 40%.

To put that into perspective, having one million mini apps puts WeChat at around half the size of Apple’s iOS App Store.

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