China’s Tencent had a strong first half of the year despite the COVID-19 pandemic, with year-on-year revenue growth of 28%.

Online gaming was a particularly successful line of business for the company, with revenues increasing by 40% to RMB38.3 billion (A$7.7 billion).

Tencent’s game ‘Valorant’ was particularly popular, and managed to become the most watched game globally on Twitch during the second quarter.

“The increase was primarily driven by higher revenues from smartphone games in both domestic and overseas markets, including titles such as Peacekeeper Elite and Honour of Kings, partly offset by the decrease in revenues from PC client games such as DnF and CrossFire,” Tencent stated.

“Internationally, our MAU (monthly active users) increased significantly year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter due to new game launches and more user time spent during the stay-at-home period.”

In China, MAUs actually fell quarter-on-quarter, as people went back to the office and COVID-19 restrictions eased.