Original: http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201210/147408.html
Dotaland note: First reported on and translated in early September here: https://dotaland.net/2012/09/04/dota-2s-chinese-partner-confirmed/
After The International 2 in Seattle, Dota2 let itself become known by many more fans, with everyone wishing to join in on the beta. But to do so requires access to a beta key, and in addition to issues with lag between regional servers, this meant that many Chinese players have been denied access to playing Dota2, so more and more players have been hoping for Dota2 to officially go into public open beta in China.
According to information gained today, Perfect World has confirmed their role as Valve’s official Chinese partner in promoting and running Dota2 in China. However, there are no specific details as of now, and all we can confirm is that Perfect World will be responsible for at least the entirety of Mainland China, and that they have established an operational headquarter in Shanghai. As a result, we believe that open beta for Dota2 in China is only a matter of time now.
In order to find the most suitable partner for Dota2 in China, Valve has sent many high level executives over the past few months to China, and ultimately decided upon Perfect World as the exclusive partner.
This is not the first time Perfect World has worked with Valve; not long ago Perfect World’s North American section published their FPS Blacklight: Retribution under Valve’s Steam platform (dotaland note: Torchlight series is also by a Perfect World owned developer and is also on Steam). The arrival of heavyweight title Dota2 in this context means that this is the start of an even bigger cooperation between Valve and Perfect World.
Perfect World sounds like a big company. GL Valve.
They are pretty big but they’re actually relatively smaller compared to the biggest Chinese online/game companies. I think what PW has working in their favor is that they have more operations outside of China and have worked with Valve already.
Pretty sure Torchlight was developed by Runic Games which is an entirely independant studio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_Games
Says their parent company is Perfect World, and also says that PW spent $8.4m in 2010 to buy a majority stake in Runic. They maintain an indie game studio atmosphere and their people are still awesome (met them at PAX 2012), but strictly speaking, they are majority owned by Perfect World and are thus not an entirely independent studio…
Additionally, the Torchlight 2 area at PAX was situated within the Perfect World booth as far as I recall.
I stand corrected.