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Report: US government is investigating Tencent's games investments

Trump administration asking Epic and Riot about how their user data security

Report: US government is investigating Tencent's games investments

Games companies who have received investment from Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent are being asked to provide the US government with information about their data security protocols.

That's according to Bloomberg, which reports that the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the US has sent letters to the likes of Epic Games and League of Legends maker Riot asking about how they secure and handle data about American citizens.

This is just the latest move in a battle between the United States and China. The US recently
expressed concerns about social media platform TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance. The company's US arm has been spun off into its own entity, with Oracle holding a minority stake.

Tencent has numerous ties to video games companies. The firm owns Riot Games and bought a 40 per cent stake in Epic back in 2012, in addition to owning about five per cent of Activision Blizzard. The Chinese firm also backed comms platform Discord in 2018.

This story first appeared on PCGamesInsider.biz.


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PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.