Wizards of the Coast and Tencent have partnered up and announced that Magic: The Gathering Arena will be making its way to China, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Myanmar, Laos, and Brunei.

Tencent Games has been making aggressive inroads in the Western market by purchasing up and partnering with developers and publishers from the West in order to distribute the game into Eastern territories.

Wizards of the Coast president Chris Cocks mentioned that in order to bring the game to the East it seemed like Tencent was the only partner to help make that a reality, saying…

“Magic: The Gathering is played by millions of passionate fans throughout Asia and continued growth here is a crucial part of our strategy. Tencent is the perfect partner to help bring Magic to more and more gamers throughout the world.”

At present, Wizards of the Coast is still working on Magic: The Gathering Arena, focusing on ironing out the core gameplay and testing it with gamers before rolling it out in full.

At the moment Magic: The Gathering Arena is currently in closed beta testing. The game is a standard CCG hoping to close in on the market that Hearthstone and Gwent are controlling.

It should come as no surprise that Wizards of the Coast decided to partner up with Tencent in order to grow the game’s base in Asia and reach a wide audience. Tencent, however, has been dipping its fingers into just about every major genre, market and studio property that sells well in the West. They’re already the largest software publisher in the world, and teaming up with the Wizards of the Coast will only make their reach that much larger.

Tencent also recently teamed up Ubisoft to have their games published in the East as well; Tencent also helped Ubisoft stave off the Vivendi Universal buyout.

You can learn more about Magic: The Gathering Arena by visiting the official website.