Chinese companies, such as Tencent, pursue two major strategies in the gaming industry: investing in and/or buying up major game makers. Access to vast databases of users around the world enables the company to optimize resources for launching, scaling, and marketing its products.
Tencent's share of ownership in gaming companies (based on PCGamer):
● Riot Games (League of Legends) - 100%
● Epic Games - 40%
● Bluehole (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds) - 11.5%
● Ubisoft - 5%
● Activision Blizzard (World of Warcraft.) - 5%
● Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile) - 80%
● Supercell (Clash of Clans) - 84.3%
Tencent owns a substantial share of Epic Games (40%) — the North Carolina-based company behind "Fortnite," the Epic Games Store, and the software suite that powers a huge portion of gaming (Unreal Engine). It also owns the majority of Finland's Supercell (84%), the Finnish mobile gaming powerhouse behind "Clash of Clans," "Clash Royale," and "Brawl Stars." Tencent also has minority stakes in "Call of Duty" publisher Activision and "Assassin's Creed" publisher Ubisoft. The company owns Riot Games — the Los Angeles-based studio responsible for two of the world's biggest games, "League of Legends" and "Teamfight Tactics" — and operates WeGame, the Chinese equivalent of Steam, the world's largest P.C. gaming storefront. Tencent's version of Steam has 300 million registered users and 70 million monthly active users in China.
Tencent often serves as a mediator for American game creators who want to enter the Chinese market. When the American-owned Activision wanted to bring "Call of Duty" to China, it chose Tencent as a partner. Even Nintendo partnered with Tencent to get into China's lucrative gaming market and release the Nintendo Switch (Console version) in China.
Recently, Tencent offered to buy Norway-based Funcom, the company behind Conan Exiles (and others in the Conan franchise), Dune, and some 28 other titles (TechCrunch).
CENSORSHIP ON TENCENT AND GAMING PLATFORMS
Like other Chinese giants, Tencent was accused of assisting Chinese authorities in hunting down criminal suspects, silencing dissent, and creating surveillance cities. There is a concern that Tencent and other companies provide Chinese authorities with access to their databases of users, customers, and gamers.
Players in China can access some of these games only after providing phone numbers that are connected to a National ID. The Communist Party of China is using national ID numbers to track users' playtime in games, like Fortnite and Tencent's Honor of Kings (a.k.a Arena of Valor), introducing time restrictions at times (Engadget).
Citizen Lab found that conversations between an overseas user and a contact inside China over Tencent's apps were subject to certain forms of keyword censorship and that once an account is registered with a Chinese phone number, it remains subject to Chinese controls even outside the country (JapanTimes).
Last year, the world's most popular PC game League of Legends, owned by Tencent, appeared to forbid users from changing their status messages to certain words such as "Uyghur," which led to protests from users and caused an international uproar (Quartz).
Similarly, Indievent---the China-based publisher of Devotion---had its business license revoked by the Chinese authorities because the game somehow included an image that referenced Chinese President Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh, mocking the leader with a popular and therefore controversial meme.
(Franak Viacorka for USAGM Digital Trends)
