Presidential Orders (attempts) to ban transactions with Tencent

[sXeth]

White House signs order banning transactions with Tencent – Update - Charlie INTEL

UPDATE: A White House official has clarified that the executive order will only apply to WeChat and operations regarding WeChat and will not directly impact gaming companies. LA Times reporter Sam Dean posted the following tweet after receiving information from an official: This is subject to...

charlieintel.com

So what has this to do with gaming, you ask.


For those not so up on who owns the what now, Tencent Media is a Chinese company.


Who owns, wholly or partially (since this order aims to ban any transaction with them), Riot Games, Grinding Gear, Digital Extremes (or is in the process of buying their parent company), Epic, Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft, and a whole batch of others (especially if you're into Mobile gaming at all). (Actually considering Epic also makes Unreal and associated game engines, you could argue any game using those is also in a transaction chain).


Of course, this has every likelihood of getting smashed for being ludicrously broad and ill defined legally speaking the second any actual court proceeding kicks off, or flat out being lobbied out of existence quietly in the background. But if the hypothetical scenario held up in full, gaming in the US would basically be a massive pigeonholed niche,.

 

[SupahEwok]

The order only goes into effect in 45 days.

45 days from now is exactly 1 day after Microsoft's stated goal for buying the American operations of Tiktok.

All this is, is a clumsy bludgeon from the Deal Maker trying to intimidate the proceedings along. It's basically "sell by the deadline or I'll make it impossible for you to conduct business."

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Kyrian007]

No, this isn't a big deal... unless you are really into WeChat or Tik Tok. This will not in, any meaningful way, affect Riot Games, Grinding Gear, Digital Extremes, Epic, Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft, or any others unless they have WeChat or Tik Tok integration in their games. Tencent being a minority owner of something like Ubisoft, Epic, or Activision means absolutely nothing except they own stocks... shares of a corporation. A corporation does not go under because a shareholder breaks the law (or has an executive order aimed at them.) Corporations in this country (and many others) enjoy so much legal protection (in most cases FAR too much legal protection) that I actually kind of wish something like this could affect them. Hell, minority shareholders and corporations have so much legal protection that they are still legally protected in almost every way for criminal actions undertaken by a majority shareholder. There is no legal way this has other than the most minor effect on the video game industry as a whole.

Oh, I just checked the article. Nevermind, they retracted their original story. I imagine for all the reasons I stated.

 

[Aegix Drakan]

The order only goes into effect in 45 days.

45 days from now is exactly 1 day after Microsoft's stated goal for buying the American operations of Tiktok.

All this is, is a clumsy bludgeon from the Deal Maker trying to intimidate the proceedings along. It's basically "sell by the deadline or I'll make it impossible for you to conduct business."

Ah, I see.

Yeah, that makes sense. That's completely in line with how he does things.

Ah well. I was looking forward to see a bunch of otherwise "haha orange man" gamers be like "What do you mean I can't buy skins in LoL now?!?" and start spamming the white house twitter angrily about it. XD

 

[BrawlMan]

Ah, I see.

Yeah, that makes sense. That's completely in line with how he does things.

Ah well. I was looking forward to see a bunch of otherwise "haha orange man" gamers be like "What do you mean I can't buy skins in LoL now?!?" and start spamming the white house twitter angrily about it. XD

Funny how certain gamers won't do anything until it starts affecting them or people they suddenly care about

 

[Gyrobot]

You understand Tencent uses economic pressure to push Pro China views. Look at what happened with the FIFA Gacha game when one guy made statements against the mistreatment of Uighyurs in China or the huge push against anyone with pro HK opinions in games

 

[Houseman]

Ah well. I was looking forward to see a bunch of otherwise "haha orange man" gamers be like "What do you mean I can't buy skins in LoL now?!?" and start spamming the white house twitter angrily about it. XD

funny how certain gamers won't do anything until it starts affecting them or people they suddenly care about

The gamers I know all hate Tencent for buying our favorite games and ruining them with microtransactions. That's the context in which I first heard of Tencent

 

[sXeth]

You understand Tencent uses economic pressure to push Pro China views. Look at what happened with the FIFA Gacha game when one guy made statements against the mistreatment of Uighyurs in China or the huge push against anyone with pro HK opinions in games

I don't claim to be a fan of Tencent myself either. But this is mostly his orangeness's private spat and potential impact upon gaming.


Even were he to actually push Tencent out of western media, I doubt that'd be the end of catering to the Chinese government interests, simply by their market pressure they can exert simply by allowing or disallowing a products sale there. Even if Tencent drops out their share of Activizzard, they're still going to be tip-toeing around anything that might get their products banned just to keep however many thousands/millions they make in sales in China.