A Study on the Impact of Tencent Venture Capital’s Involvement on

the Coordinated Optimization of Kuro Technology’s Marketing and

Publicity Strategy and Big Data–Driven Public Opinion Monitoring

System

Mengkun Yu

School of Economics and Management, China University of Petroleum, Fuxue Road, Changping District, China

Keywords: Tencent, Kuro Technology, Capital Involvement, Public Opinion Monitoring, Marketing and Publicity

Strategy.

Abstract: With the rapid development of the global Internet and social media, digital marketing and brand

communication have become core competitive dimensions for enterprises in the online sphere. Based on

multiple theoretical frameworks and taking Guangzhou Kuro Technology Co., Ltd. as a case study, this

research delves into the synergistic optimization effect of Tencent Venture Capital’s involvement on the

company’s marketing and publicity strategy and its big data–driven public opinion monitoring system. We

construct a “Capital–Publicity–Opinion Monitoring” collaborative optimization theoretical model to reveal

how Tencent Venture Capital alleviates corporate funding bottlenecks, integrates marketing resources, and

establishes an efficient early-warning mechanism. The findings indicate that Tencent’s capital infusion not

only propels Kuro Technology’s promotional strategy and public opinion monitoring but also exhibits

common efficacy across different sectors. This study offers theoretical guidance and practical insights for

game developers and other digital marketing enterprises undergoing strategic transformation under capital

support.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the gaming industry has faced

significant challenges in research and development,

market promotion, and public opinion management.

Founded in 2017, Guangzhou Kuro Technology Co.,

Ltd. (KURO GAMES) is an Internet cultural

enterprise dedicated to developing ACG-style games

and incubating original intellectual properties.

Leveraging its flagship title Punishing: Gray Raven

and the open-world game Capital - Publicity - Public

Opinion Monitoring, the company quickly rose to

prominence in the ACG market. At the end of 2024,

Tencent, through one of its wholly owned

subsidiaries, strategically increased its stake in Kuro

Technology—raising its controlling interest above

51% and injecting substantial capital (equity changes

shown in Figure 1). While internal capital allocation

is critically important, external factors—such as

market competition, regulatory environment, and

https://orcid.org/0009-0009-9630-9865

industry dividends-must also be considered (Graham

et al., 2011). Moreover, Tencent’s investments in

other sectors, including e-commerce and education,

have similarly demonstrated advantages in resource

integration, providing a valuable cross-industry

comparison for this study. At the same time, public

opinion monitoring-as an integral component of

digital marketing-requires an in-depth examination of

its technical implementation, early-warning

mechanisms, and operational procedures.

This paper aims to explore the comprehensive

impact of Tencent’s capital involvement on Kuro

Technology’s marketing and publicity strategy and its

big data–driven public opinion monitoring system,

and to construct a “Capital–Publicity–Public Opinion

Monitoring” synergistic optimization theoretical

model. The significance of this research is mainly

reflected in three points. First, to clarify how

Tencent’s capital support and resource integration

drive the upgrading of corporate marketing strategies

526

Yu, M.

A Study on the Impact of Tencent Venture Capital’s Involvement on the Coordinated Optimization of Kuro Technology’s Marketing and Publicity Strategy and Big Data–Driven Public Opinion

Monitoring System.

DOI: 10.5220/0013848800004719

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on E-commerce and Modern Logistics (ICEML 2025), pages 526-532

ISBN: 978-989-758-775-7

and enhance brand communication effectiveness;

second, to reveal the specific mechanisms by which

Kuro Technology leverages big data technologies to

build a public opinion monitoring system that enables

real-time alerts and crisis response; third, through

cross-industry cases (such as Tencent’s investments

in the e-commerce and education sectors), to validate

the model’s universality and provide theoretical

support and practical pathways for other digital

marketing enterprises undergoing strategic

transformation following capital involvement.

Data source: Tianyancha, Hero Entertainment Announcements

Figure 1: Shareholding Structure of Kuro Games Before/After Tencent Acquisition.

This study is grounded in three major theoretical

frameworks. First, the Resource-Based Theory holds

that a firm’s core competitive advantage derives from

unique and hard-to-replicate internal resources;

Tencent’s capital and channel assets have thus helped

Kuro Technology establish significant competitive

barriers. Second, the Integrated Marketing

Communications Theory emphasizes maximizing

market impact through multi-channel, unified brand

messaging, and Tencent’s multi-platform resource

integration has underpinned the optimization of Kuro

Technology’s marketing and publicity strategy.

Finally, the Dynamic Capabilities Theory advocates

that firms must possess the ability to rapidly sense and

respond to changes in their external environment—

where a big data–driven public opinion monitoring

system serves as a critical tool for dynamically

addressing market sentiment.

Moreover, recent empirical studies on corporate

digital marketing, public opinion monitoring, and

capital operations indicate that, following the infusion

of capital support, firms often experience significant

enhancements in both their marketing and publicity

strategies and their risk early-warning capabilities.

This paper’s core issues include the impact of

Tencent’s capital involvement on Kuro Technology’s

marketing and publicity strategy and brand

promotion, the construction and application of Kuro

Technology’s big data-driven public opinion

monitoring system, and how to build a “Capital–

Publicity-Public Opinion Monitoring” synergistic

optimization theoretical model based on post-

acquisition practices by Tencent.

The research objectives are: through qualitative

data analysis, to clarify the specific effects of

Tencent’s capital involvement on Kuro Technology’s

internal marketing and brand promotion; to examine

the application effectiveness of the big data public

opinion monitoring system in crisis early warning and

brand maintenance; and to construct and validate a

cross-industry universal “Capital–Publicity–Public

Opinion Monitoring” synergistic optimization model,

providing theoretical guidance for digital marketing

and brand management.

A Study on the Impact of Tencent Venture Capital’s Involvement on the Coordinated Optimization of Kuro Technology’s Marketing and

Publicity Strategy and Big Data–Driven Public Opinion Monitoring System

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2 MECHANISTIC ANALYSIS OF

SYNERGISTIC OPTIMIZATION

BETWEEN CAPITAL

PARTICIPATION AND KURO

TECHNOLOGY’S MARKETING

STRATEGY AND BIG DATA

PUBLIC SENTIMENT

MONITORING SYSTEM

2.1 Capital Advantage and Resource

Integration

The infusion of Tencent’s capital directly resolved

Kuro Technology’s funding bottlenecks in R&D and

market promotion. For example, the open-world

game Wuthering Waves, which Kuro Technology had

been developing for several years, generated over

RMB 200 million in global revenue on its first day of

launch, demonstrating how ample funding can

significantly accelerate market rollout. In addition to

financial support, Tencent brought abundant channel

resources and brand influence. By leveraging

Tencent’s own platforms-WeChat, QQ, Tencent

Video, and others-Kuro Technology achieved cross-

channel resource integration, thereby forming a

unique marketing network. According to Resource-

Based Theory, a firm’s sustained competitive

advantage stems from resources that are both unique

and difficult to imitate; Tencent’s capital and channel

resources thus constitute the key factors that enabled

Kuro Technology to stand out in the competitive

landscape.

2.2 Brand Trust and Market

Expansion

Another notable effect of Tencent’s majority stake in

Kuro Technology has been the enhancement of the

company’s brand trust. As an industry authority,

Tencent’s investment provided powerful brand

endorsement, fostering consumer and partner

confidence in Kuro’s products. Drawing on

Integrated Marketing Communications Theory, Kuro

Technology-backed by Tencent-implemented a

coordinated online-and-offline, multi-channel

promotional strategy, rapidly expanding its market

reach through advertising campaigns, KOL

partnerships, and live-streamed promotions.

According to available data, following Tencent’s

acquisition, Kuro’s new game Wuthering Waves

amassed nearly 30 million users worldwide in its first

week, underscoring the role of brand trust in driving

market expansion. Moreover, Wuthering Waves

demonstrated sustained growth by June 2024, ranking

among the top three global ACG mobile games by

revenue and claiming the number one spot in the

South Korean ACG mobile market.

2.3 Data Collection and Intelligent

Processing for Public Opinion

In today’s information-explosive era, precise

collection and analysis of public opinion data are

critical for enterprises (Lan & Xu, 2020). By

leveraging public opinion cloud-data platforms-such

as Alibaba Cloud Dataworks and Tencent Cloud TI-

ONE-real-time data are harvested from over 80,000

websites, more than 5,600 forums, in excess of 300

million Weibo accounts, and over 25 million WeChat

accounts. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

techniques are then applied to this enormous corpus

of text for semantic parsing and sentiment analysis.

Mature early-warning mechanisms for online public

opinion crises-built on Analytic Network Process

(ANP) and stochastic Petri nets (Tian et al., 2023)-

operate by first filtering enterprise-related data via

predefined keywords, then computing a sentiment

index for each piece of text with thresholds (for

instance, designating sentiment scores above 0.7 as

high-risk negative content), and finally employing

clustering algorithms to aggregate and organize

emerging hotspots, thus pinpointing major events and

their primary sources of negative information.

2.4 Early-Warning Mechanism and

Decision Feedback

The early-warning mechanism is a crucial component

of the public opinion monitoring system. An alert

system is established by setting thresholds based on

sentiment scores and topic popularity; once sustained

negative sentiment exceeds these thresholds, a

warning is triggered. Representative studies suggest

that the growth pattern of online public opinion

follows a logistic curve, divided into incubation, early

diffusion, late diffusion, and recession phases (Xing

& Li, 2020). If public opinion can be extinguished

during the early diffusion phase, the spread of

negative sentiment can be effectively contained.

Moreover, since rumors and doubts grow most

rapidly at the outset, suppressing public opinion early

on is of paramount importance (Wang et al., 2013).

When the 1.2 version of Wuthering Waves was newly

launched, negative comments about in-game event

anomalies and frame drops surged, and discussions of

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these issues spiked rapidly across social platforms.

The warning system generated an alert report and sent

notifications to both the PR and technical teams.

Upon receiving the warning, the PR team issued an

official statement the same day, while the technical

team promptly optimized server performance and

released compensation emails along with an apology

announcement. Subsequent monitoring showed that

negative sentiment dropped swiftly, and discussion

volumes stabilized, effectively averting an escalation

of the crisis and earning recognition from many

players.

This concrete early-warning and feedback process

vividly demonstrates the practical value of a big data–

driven public opinion monitoring system in corporate

crisis management and also validates the

effectiveness of Dynamic Capabilities Theory in

practice.

2.5 Model Validation Through Case

Studies and Industry Insights

In the construction of the “Capital–Publicity–Public

Opinion Monitoring” model, this paper has primarily

analyzed the case of Kuro Technology; the following

section will validate the model’s universality through

cross-industry comparisons.

The first case comes from the e-commerce sector-

Pinduoduo. Tencent’s strategic investment in

Pinduoduo was not limited to simple equity increases

(Figure 2 for the shareholding structure); rather, by

providing capital support, integrating channels, and

driving brand promotion, Tencent enabled Pinduoduo

to achieve remarkable success in user acquisition and

market expansion. Pinduoduo first secured Tencent’s

investment in 2016, and in April 2018 it received a $3

billion financing round led by Tencent. Subsequently,

Tencent became Pinduoduo’s second-largest

shareholder.

Data source: duoduo’s 20-F filings

Figure 2: Pinduoduo Shareholding Structure (2024).

From its inception, Pinduoduo chose WeChat-a

widely adopted social media platform-as its primary

traffic gateway, fully leveraging WeChat’s massive

user base and social networking features to rapidly

achieve viral user growth in its early stages. Through

strategic collaboration with Tencent, Pinduoduo also

gained access to WeChat’s traffic and technical

support, which further accelerated its development.

According to statistics, over 90% of Pinduoduo’s

users access the platform via WeChat.

The second case study pertains to the online

education sector, focusing on Yuanfudao. In this

domain, Tencent's capital investment has

significantly propelled the promotion of online

courses and the establishment of brand recognition

for Yuanfudao. Leveraging data platforms, the

company conducts real-time monitoring of user

feedback and course evaluations, enabling swift

responses to user needs by adjusting teaching content

and promotional strategies accordingly. This

approach mirrors Kuro Games' practices in public

opinion monitoring, exemplifying the synergistic

optimization logic of the "Capital–Publicity–Public

Opinion Monitoring" model. A comparative analysis

of metrics such as user growth, frequency of

course/product updates, and efficiency in handling

negative public opinion-illustrated in Figure 3-

demonstrates that, according to the "2020 China

Online Education Market White Paper and 2021

Outlook Report" published by the Chinese Academy

of Sciences, Yuanfudao ranked highest in online

course quality ratings that year, receiving widespread

acclaim.

A Study on the Impact of Tencent Venture Capital’s Involvement on the Coordinated Optimization of Kuro Technology’s Marketing and

Publicity Strategy and Big Data–Driven Public Opinion Monitoring System

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Data source: White Paper on Online Education Online Course Market in China in 2020-A Forward-looking Report in 2021.

Figure 3: Ranking of online teaching levels across platforms (2020-2021).

Through cross-industry case comparisons, it

becomes evident that enterprises in sectors such as

gaming, e-commerce, and online education exhibit

several common characteristics following capital

investment. For instance, financial backing facilitates

the integration of internal resources; multi-channel

promotional strategies are optimized; and big data-

driven public opinion monitoring systems enable

companies to promptly capture market feedback and

make necessary adjustments.

3 MECHANISM ANALYSIS

3.1 Analysis of the Synergistic

Optimization Mechanism

Based on the preceding analysis, this study constructs

a synergistic optimization theoretical model

comprising three interrelated layers: the capital layer,

the publicity and distribution layer, and the public

opinion monitoring layer. These layers form a

mutually supportive and dynamically responsive

closed-loop system within enterprise operations.

At the capital layer, the resource-based theory

posits that a firm's core competitiveness stems from

unique and inimitable resources (Battisti et al., 2022).

Tencent's capital injection into Kuro Games not only

provided essential financial support but also brought

extensive channel and brand resources. This

investment addressed Kuro Games' funding shortages

in the development and marketing of the "Wuthering

Waves" project-particularly critical given that, at the

time, Kuro Games had only one profitable mobile

game and limited resources for long-term projects.

Furthermore, by integrating Tencent's channel

resources, Kuro Games achieved cross-platform

marketing and resource sharing, enhancing its market

reach and operational efficiency.

At the publicity and distribution layer, the theory

of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

advocates that enterprises can maximize their market

influence through coordinated and consistent brand

messaging across multiple channels (Porcu et al.,

2012). With Tencent's support, Kuro Games

integrated both online and offline promotional

resources, employing strategies such as advertising

placements, collaborations with key opinion leaders

(KOLs), and operations on social media platforms

like WeChat and Bilibili. This comprehensive, multi-

faceted brand promotion system enabled Kuro Games

to rapidly expand its market share.

Regarding the public opinion monitoring layer,

the dynamic capabilities theory emphasizes that

various dimensions of dynamic capabilities compel

enterprises to continually build and update their

resources and assets to swiftly respond to changes in

the external market environment (Teece, 2014). Kuro

Games can establish a real-time public opinion

monitoring system to accurately analyze and provide

early warnings on online public sentiment, thereby

offering timely feedback for corporate decision-

making and achieving crisis prevention and brand

maintenance.

3.2 Analysis of the Synergistic

Feedback and Continuous

Optimization Mechanism

In the "Capital - Publicity - Public Opinion

Monitoring" model, the core is the close collaborative

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Figure 4: The positive feedback loop diagram between "capital - promotion - public opinion monitoring".

feedback relationship between the three levels,

forming a dynamic optimization closed-loop system

as shown in Figure 4.

The capital injection part refers to the financing

from Tencent, which provided Kuluo Technology

with sufficient funds and related channel resources,

thus ensuring the foundation for subsequent product

development and marketing strategies.

The next phase is the implementation of

marketing strategies, which refers to the use of multi-

channel marketing strategies to carry out

comprehensive brand promotion under the support of

capital. At the same time, a large amount of user

feedback and market data generated during the

promotion process is collected in real-time.

The final part is the public opinion monitoring

feedback, where the big data public opinion

monitoring system analyzes the collected data using

intelligent algorithms (Bi et al., 2023) and promptly

transmits positive and negative public opinion

information and market feedback to the decision-

making level. If there are signs of negative public

opinion or a decline in promotion effectiveness, the

company can quickly adjust its market strategy or

technical solutions.

Finally, decision adjustment and reinvestment.

Based on public opinion monitoring feedback, the

company adjusts its marketing strategy, optimizes

product features, and reinvests the relevant

improvements into capital for reuse, thereby

achieving the recycling of funds and resources, and

forming a positive feedback loop between the

"Capital - Marketing - Public Opinion Monitoring"

layers.

3.3 Potential Negative Impacts of

Capital Intervention

Although Tencent's capital intervention has brought

significant advantages to Kuro Technology, it is also

important to be aware of its potential risks.

Specifically, as the controlling shareholder, Tencent

may use its capital influence on steer Kuro

Technology's product development or market

strategies toward Tencent's ecosystem, thereby

weakening the company's innovation flexibility and

independence. Previous studies have pointed out that

excessive reliance on a single capital source can

suppress the long-term innovation capacity of small

and medium-sized enterprises (Zhang and Zhou,

2024). This issue is particularly concerning in the

highly competitive and highly consolidated gaming

industry. As a "rising star" in the two-dimensional

(2D) field, Kuro Technology's management style may

conflict with Tencent's more group-oriented,

hierarchical operational model. If the two parties fail

to integrate effectively in terms of management

philosophy, decision-making processes, or team

collaboration, it could lead to internal friction,

affecting team cohesion and company execution

efficiency. Additionally, over-reliance on external

capital may reduce the company's ability to withstand

risks (Zhu, 2023). If future capital support decreases

or the partnership ends, Kuro Technology could face

risks such as a broken capital chain or difficulties in

market expansion. Furthermore, capital intervention

may lead the company to focus excessively on short-

term profits, neglecting long-term technological

accumulation and the development of user

ecosystems.

4 CONCLUSION

This paper adopts case analysis and cross-industry

comparison methods to conduct an in-depth analysis

of the synergistic optimization effect of Tencent's

capital intervention in Kuro Technology's marketing

strategy and big data public opinion monitoring

system. It concludes that Tencent's capital

intervention significantly drives the upgrading of the

company's marketing strategy and the construction of

the public opinion monitoring system. It further

A Study on the Impact of Tencent Venture Capital’s Involvement on the Coordinated Optimization of Kuro Technology’s Marketing and

Publicity Strategy and Big Data–Driven Public Opinion Monitoring System

531

elaborates that Tencent's capital intervention not only

alleviates the company's financial bottlenecks but

also enhances the company's market influence and

brand trust through resource integration and brand

endorsement, as exemplified by the excellent market

performance during the launch of Mingchao.

It is recommended that enterprises, when

introducing capital, should focus on maintaining

innovation flexibility and independence, avoiding

over-reliance on a single capital source to ensure

long-term sustainable development. Looking ahead,

with the continuous development of digital marketing

and big data technologies, the synergistic

optimization model of capital, marketing, and public

opinion monitoring is expected to be applied and

validated in more industries, providing more

comprehensive strategic transformation guidance for

enterprises. However, this study also has limitations,

mainly in the selection of cases, which may affect the

generalizability of the conclusions. Future research

could expand the sample scope and further explore

the applicability and differences of this model in

various industries and different-sized enterprises.

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