What Trump’s order against Tencent means for video games and what it could lead to
Will Trump’s ban of the Tencent-owned WeChat and TikTok impact video games?
The other night President Donald Trump decided it would be in someone’s best interest if he banned some of Tencent’s products from being accessible in the United States. The Executive Order has caused a lot of worry amongst the video game communities because Tencent is a major stakeholder in some of the top game companies right now including both Riot Riots (League of Legends, VALORANT) and Epic Games (Fortnite).
While this was proven to be a false worry, it was still rough because he did block WeChat, a massive social media website in China. It’s also the primary source of communication for a lot of businesses and families in America who have partners and loved ones back in China. Also, before you scoff at a chat program you possibly never heard of being banned, this ban was so massive that it’s estimated in the last 48 hours, Tencent lost over 30 billion dollars. Thirty. Billion.
But let’s say you’ve got tunnel vision and you’re only worried about how this affects you, the gamer. Right now, Epic, Riot, Ubisoft and Blizzard are mostly fine because the ban doesn’t affect them. But here’s the thing, it absolutely could.
First off, this ban was created by a president with a lot of ego and not an idea of what Tencent really is. He probably has no idea about the game companies or its movie division, which is co-producing the Top Gun sequel, and he just made a massive enemy of them.
There’s a chance he could realize what he did and lighten up a little bit, or there’s the possibility that he gets upset that someone doesn’t like his decision and in a straight-up Donny move decides to tighten the ban out of spite. If he was somehow able to issue this ban in such a short amount of time, it stands to reckon he may have just been testing the water. And now that he knows there’s an area where he can actually DO something after several years of empty threats, this might be his new playground.
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Now let’s tighten the tunnel vision and eliminate the political side of things and speculate further. Tencent just lost more than 30 billion dollars. That’s a lot of money to lose because of the actions of one country. This is absolutely going to be something they consider as they move to other ventures. Whether you like a company like Tencent or not (I actually don’t), they provide a lot of money and support for a lot of video game companies. Tencent made almost as much money as Disney last year, think about that.
So while this ban doesn’t affect games in spirit, if Tencent decides to severe their connections before further bans hit, that’s a lot of support that a lot of these companies are going to lose out on. And a lot of these companies have only felt the freedom to branch out into new and exciting directions because of the massive safety net that Tencent planted below them.
Of course, this is all speculation and maybe our president will look out the Oval Office window, see a squirrel and get distracted for another month until he forgets about all this. But it’s still something that could shape the future and we shouldn’t dismiss something just because it does not affect us directly.