Summary

  • Tencent is now designated as a military company by US Dept of Defense.
  • While this may impact its business, there are currently no sanctions or bans in place.
  • Tencent plans to work with the government to address the misunderstanding and get removed from the list.



Tencent is a huge company with its hands in a little bit of everything, but it is best known as the owner of WeChat, its gaming division with titles like PUBG Mobile, Call of Duty: Mobile, Fortnite, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, and the owner of Riot Games, which produces League of Legends and Valorant.

The TikTok logo against a grayscale image of buildings

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And while this may come as a surprise to many, Tencent has now been designated as a military company by the US Department of Defense. While this is the same list that Huawei is currently on, and prevents it from doing business in the US and many other parts of the world, Tencent, for the time being, won’t see any sanctions or bans on its products or services (via The Verge).




Things could go bad quickly

As you can imagine, being on this list could make conducting business a bit harder with increased scrutiny around its moves both locally and abroad going forward. Tencent has currently invested quite a bit in various developers, studios, and IPs, and there are even reports that it has lost billions in market share with this recent development.

Most recently, DJI narrowly avoided having its products banned in the US. And ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has also been fighting banishment for some years now. While this isn’t good news for Tencent, it’s a problem that’s reversible, and a spokesperson for Tencent clearly stated to The Verge that the brand isn’t a “military company or supplier” and that it will “work with the Department of Defense to address any misunderstanding.”

For now, it’s going to be business as usual for Tencent, and it will have to work with the government in order to get itself removed from the list. Again, while there aren’t any sanctions or bans in place right now, the damage to its public image is already being done, and things can only get worse as time passes.