I think the concept that Tencent is asking Epic to infect your computer with malware is a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
I work for a western studio for which Tencent is a majority shareholder, and I can tell you, Tencent hasn't even hinted at wanting any of our data, let harvesting more.
As far as I can tell, their motives are simple and capitalistic. Somewhat ironically, it was all the western potential acquiring companies that had agendas that were very ethically distasteful to us.
Tencent certainly complies with Chinese laws in china, but can you blame it? Wouldn't you comply with the law of your country?
intelligence services play the long game. Gradually exert pressure, put friendly management in place, move supporting services to Chinese data centers, etc. Maybe it takes 10 years. They aren’t in any rush.
Even if you're the CTO of a US company that's being infiltrated by a foreign intelligence agency, there are only three possibilities:
* You are a foreign intelligence asset and and any denials on your part are lies.
* You are not a foreign intelligence asset, but you know that strange things are afoot and have informed the FBI. In order to not jeopardize the counterintelligence investigation, you have been instructed to play dumb, and hence, any denials on your part are lies.
* You are not a foreign intelligence asset and you have not noticed the infiltration. In this situation, you're not lying when you deny that anything's going on, you're just ignorant.
Of course, if your company isn't being infiltrated by foreign intelligence, you will also, correctly, deny that the company is being infiltrated. I'm not saying that his company is being infiltrated or compromised; I'm saying that there's virtually zero informational value in someone in his position denying such a thing because no one would ever admit it.
> Tencent certainly complies with Chinese laws in china, but can you blame it? Wouldn't you comply with the law of your country?
Since you've put yourself out here as CTO of a Tencent owned company... I've heard that in China, Fortnite requires a Chinese "real ID" to play. Aka China knows exactly who you are at all times.
They also "punish" you for playing more than 3 hours at a time if you're under 18.
And I can't prove, but assume they also record all conversations (otherwise... What is point of using real id??)
This doesn't sound like something Epic games would want to be associated with if Tencent wasn't a major shareholder. Are you saying you've had no pressure at all to implement similar features and make your games "more friendly to the Chinese market"?
To me it feels just like China buying up slivers of hollywood so nothing critical of the regime makes the big screen
The question is if this chinese id is requirement from gov to enter the market... how many corporations would refuse (EA for example)? Especialy with Fortnite which is sure to be super profitable.
I am not saying Epic/Tencent is good or anything just that you don't need to be partialy owned by chinese company for this to happen. It is financial capitalist decision. Similar to why other companies want to enter china market.
It would be more suspicious if Epic was doing it even when Fortnite woulnt be profitable in china.
> I work for a western studio for which Tencent is a majority shareholder, and I can tell you, Tencent hasn't even hinted at wanting any of our data, let harvesting more.
How would you know if they did? Most employees have zero interactions with their employer's investors.
Because I am the CTO of the company, and because the only interaction Tencent has with our company are during it's board meetings, which I am also a member of.
I was working for a telco hardware and software manufacturer and I remember when about 15 years ago, I was the QA, who was sent to China with an engineer to implement "a feature" onsite (yes it was a backdoor). Everybody could guessed in my team, why are we were sent there. Also worked at a cinema control software company and we had to implement the same feature.
So yeah, it only take one engineer to implement a feature. (or a bug)
And you could have mentioned that fact in your original post. This just reads like you baited someone into what was a reasonable response. I'm not sure why that'd be necessary so maybe it was entirely unintentional on your part.
I don't want to give examples of specific companies for what I hope are obvious reasons.
But in basically all cases western companies were much more interested in buying us for our users, which they could then subject to whatever their business model is. Selling ads, selling subscriptions, selling data, whatever.
Our companies profit was actually a negative to these western companies since it simply increases the price that they would have to pay to get at the users.
Yes, there is a difference between giving all your information by your own free will and the state spying on everything you do.
On the other hand how many knows how much Facebook and Google collects about you and where that information ends up some time later? There was a lot of scifi about the information society and how that could derail in the future, where machines decides if you might commit a crime in the future and take preventative meassures. We are not far away from it now, just takes a few small jumps in the imagination to end up there :-)
I work for a western studio for which Tencent is a majority shareholder, and I can tell you, Tencent hasn't even hinted at wanting any of our data, let harvesting more.
As far as I can tell, their motives are simple and capitalistic. Somewhat ironically, it was all the western potential acquiring companies that had agendas that were very ethically distasteful to us.
Tencent certainly complies with Chinese laws in china, but can you blame it? Wouldn't you comply with the law of your country?