Relations between China and the USA are not necessarily the best. US President Donald Trump wants to make the Chinese social media services TikTok and WeChat inaccessible. However, in doing so he could affect almost the entire gaming industry.
The US president, Donald Trump, is taking a hard line on protectionism. He is now raising his economic restrictions against China just three months before the next US presidential election. The targets this time are Chinese social media giants. The best known of these is probably TikTok. The Gen-Z platform is a thorn in Donald Trump's side - OK BOOMER! However, he has also turned his attention to the smaller platform WeChat. It is the social media division of the game giant Tencent.
Andre Feinberg twittered the Executive Order against TikTok and WeChat. In the document, only the chat service is attacked but "any subsidiary of that entity" is also addressed in Section 1 (a).
It may therefore also affect other divisions of Tencent. In addition, a concrete time limit of 45 days has also been set - i.e. September 15 or September 16 , depending on the time. Should the rumors about the gaming division come true, many major titles would be affected. After all, Tencent is a shareholder in the following companies.
list of game and tech companies Tencent has stake in:Riot Games (100%)Epic Games (40%)SupercellActivision BlizzardBlueholeUbisoftRedditDiscordHuyaDouyuGrinding Gear GamesFrontier DevelopmentsParadox InteractiveFuncomSharkmobFatsharkKakao https://t.co/njItJiBTy4
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) August 7, 2020
This would include League of Legends, Valorant, Fortnite, Call of Duty and many more. Due to the enormous mobile development at Tencent, the next Pokemon game: Pokemon Unite would also be affected.
All-clear
Of course, the US president leaves a wide corridor for interpretation and then presumably chooses the path of least resistance - we would not see this approach for the first time. The LA Times gives the all-clear with a touch of speculation:
So WeChat is attacked and Tencent is attacked, but not the games? That sounds confusing and depending on what you think about Tencent, it might be good. It remains to be seen how the situation will change - and hopefully become more concrete - in the next one and a half months.
Would a Twitch streamer like Trump dare to take action against gamers?
What do you think? Tell us your opinion about the three T's: Trump, TikTok & Tencent on Facebook or Instagram!
But until then, you can take a break. Like Pokimane:
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