Alibaba to Sell Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition Creators for $2 Billion - Media Reports

The corporation continues to divest non-core assets.

Alibaba has agreed to sell Lingxi Games, a studio known for the multiplayer mobile strategy game Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition. The new owner of the developers will be the Hong Kong investment fund Trustar Capital.

The exact value of the deal has not been officially disclosed. A Reuters source claims that Alibaba will receive over $2 billion, while Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal estimate the sum at least $1.5 billion. The timeline for the deal's completion is also unknown.

Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition was created with the participation of Japanese Koei Tecmo and is based on the historical strategy series Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The game is dedicated to the struggle for power in China during the Three Kingdoms period: users assemble armies, form alliances, conquer territories, and fight for the capital Luoyang.

The strategy game was released in 2019 and by 2024 had attracted over 100 million players worldwide. By spring 2021, user spending in Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition reached $1.2 billion, and the game itself topped the ranking of the highest-grossing mobile 4X strategy games in the App Store. Lingxi Games' revenue for 2025, according to analysts' estimates, ranged from $450 million to $600 million.

Alibaba is selling the gaming studio amidst a business reorientation towards artificial intelligence and cloud technologies. In recent years, the corporation has sought to increase the profitability of secondary business lines or find new owners for them.