In a year where the Chinese market was dominated by issues with opaque regulations and tightening covid restrictions, Tencent is facing internal corruption and mismanagement that has further harmed the company during a tough fiscal year, at least according to CEO of Tencent Ma Huateng. The allegations were made in a recent Reuters report where an unnamed employee spoke about Huateng’s lambasting of employees and managers during a recent corporate call.

According to the report by Reuters, “The founder of Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700.HK) told employees many ‘corruption’ issues had been discovered within the company and mismanagement was draining its vitality, according to two employees familiar with the matter.”

Trouble in the Tencent tent

Ma Huateng’s comments are likely the last thing that people want to hear coming from Tencent in the business world. Especially since, according to Reuters, he also cautions that Tencent’s mobile gaming division is expected to still see trouble. Pinning his hopes on WeChat’s new short-form video format may also smack to many of the formerly market-leading social media platforms now playing catch-up to others like TikTok.

“He warned that the video gaming business group would have to get used to Beijing’s strict licensing regime, and the number of new games China would approve would remain limited in the long run.”

As the end of the year approaches, there’s still numerous twists and turns to go in the mobile gaming industry. However, it may be that the biggest moves are going to be on a macro business level. It certainly seems that with this story many will be wondering how much of this can be confirmed, and whether indeed Huateng is set to do anything about this supposed ‘corruption’.

As part of their mobile gaming efforts, Tencent also recently upped their stakeholding in one of Nikke: Goddess of Victory developers Shift Up.