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Hi-Rez Studios and Tencent announced a publishing partnership for SMITE at Gamescom in August 2013. According to a contemporary report quoting Hi-Rez COO Todd Harris, Hi-Rez would publish the free-to-play game in North America and Europe, while Tencent would handle other territories, including China. The announcement also described a planned China test for October 2013; the reports do not confirm that it began on that schedule.
What the Hi-Rez–Tencent deal covered
GamesBeat reported on August 21, 2013, that the companies had announced a worldwide publishing cooperation agreement at Gamescom in Cologne. Harris described the geographic division as Hi-Rez publishing SMITE in North America and Europe, with Tencent publishing it elsewhere, including China. The agreement itself is not available in the sources, so this is the arrangement as reported at the time, rather than a summary of contract terms. GamesBeat’s announcement report
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A Chinese report published by 17173 the following day called Tencent the game’s “global agent.” That wording is broader than the territory split attributed to Harris by GamesBeat. For the specific reported allocation of publishing regions, the GamesBeat account is the clearer description; “global agent” is 17173’s characterization. 17173’s August 22, 2013 report
What SMITE was at the time
The 2013 coverage presented SMITE as a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena game with an action-focused, third-person perspective. Its playable characters were gods drawn from different cultural pantheons. Hi-Rez framed the design as a way to add direct action and shooter-like elements to the MOBA format, rather than relying only on the genre’s more traditional presentation. Those descriptions reflect how the game was introduced in the 2013 announcement, not a current review of the live game.
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17173 gave the Chinese title as 神之浩劫 and described the game as a third-person team-action competitive title. It also reported localization intentions that included Chinese-themed characters such as Guan Yu. These were details reported around the announcement, not confirmation of what later appeared in the Chinese service.
What was announced about a China test?
GamesBeat said the companies were preparing a closed beta in China for October 2013. 17173 likewise reported an October mainland China first test. Both items describe plans announced in August; neither confirms that the test actually took place on that exact date.
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What the announcement does—and does not—tell us today
Hi-Rez’s current official games page lists both SMITE and SMITE 2 and identifies related marks and character likenesses as Hi-Rez property. That confirms the franchise’s presence in the company’s current official materials, but it does not establish whether a China service is currently operating or whether Tencent still publishes the game there. Hi-Rez Studios games
Accordingly, the 2013 partnership should be understood as a historical publishing announcement. The sources cited here do not establish the present status of Tencent’s role or regional availability in China.
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