UPDATE: The White House has confirmed to the LA Times that the executive order signed by Donald Trump will only effect WeChat, the service owned by Tencent. This will NOT effect any of Tencent’s other dealings. TikTok still remains a casualty of this executive order as its owned by ByteDance.
The original, unaltered story remains below.
President Donald Trump has just signed an executive order banning transactions with ByteDance and Tencent. According to the executive order, this will be made effective in 45 days. Why is this relevant? ByteDance owns popular social media app TikTok and Tencent has a stake in a lot of incredibly large media products such as PUBG, Riot Games (League of Legends, Valorant), Epic Games (Fortnite), Ubisoft, and more.
The executive order signed by Trump says the US “must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security”. Tencent was caught in the crossfire because they own another service called WeChat. Both of these services are believed by the administration to be selling data to the Chinese government, hence the “threat”. TikTok has denied these claims.
According to the order, Trump says “additional steps must be taken to deal with the national emergency with respect to the information and communications technology and services supply chain”.
For a breakdown on Tencent’s ownership on some of the biggest game publishers, see below.
- Riot Games (League of Legends, Valorant) 100%
- Epic Games (Fortnite) 40%
- Bluehole (PUBG) 10%
- Frontier Developments (Planet Coaster) 9%
- Ubisoft (Rainbow Six Siege) 5%
- Activison Blizzard (Call of Duty) 5%
Tencent has stakes in many other companies, including developer Platinum Games, Discord, and Reddit. Tencent also has a notable involvement in Hollywood. Their Chinese film distribution company has distributed major blockbusters. Such films include Wonder Woman, Venom, Top Gun: Maverick (2021), Bumblebee, and more.
Donald Trump’s executive order will likely be challenged in court and probably won’t become effective but in the event that it does, it will likely eliminate TikTok in America. As for what this means for these game companies, it remains unclear. Companies like Activision and Ubisoft will probably survive without major issues if this somehow passes but those with major investments like Epic Games or the wholly owned Riot Games? It could mean major complications.
While someone could inevitably bail them out, it would take a lot of money to do it. We’ll continue to keep you posted as this story develops.
