HONG KONG: In a sea change at China’s Tencent, an easy-to-play game of cute characters tackling obstacle courses has taken precedence over developing a big-budget sophisticated foreign franchise for smartphones.

Since late last year, the world’s largest video games company has, according to sources, redeployed hundreds of people from the team developing Assassin’s Creed Jade for mobile – a multi-year project with France’s Ubisoft.