An ambiguous presidential order affecting a Chinese company connected to several popular video games sows confusion.
After President Donald Trump put out a pair of executive orders banning transactions with the Chinese companies that own the popular communication apps TikTok and WeChat, people familiar with Tencent, the Chinese company that owns WeChat, started pointing out that Tencent outright owns or has major stakes in many high-profile U. S.-based video game companies. Did this mean, they asked, that some of the most popular games in the world are going to get banned in the United States? Tencent owns the U. S.-based Riot Games, publisher of League of Legends, one of the most popular online competitive games. It owns 40 percent of Epic Games, publisher of the online gaming juggernaut Fortnite. It holds significant stakes in game companies that are probably less well-known to non-gamers, but suffice it to say that if you play video games online, it’s extremely likely that you’ve at some point been playing a game that Tencent has a stake in. Here’s the vague and weird wording of the executive order as it pertains to Tencent: It looks at first that it only bans WeChat—which is bad enough. We absolutely should not accept the idea that the White House has the authority for a blanket order banning citizens from using media platforms.
