
Epic CEO says it won't ban Fortnite players for taking a stance on human rights - Aissen
https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1181946357759844352
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kangnkodos
Why have the League of Legends announcers stopped saying the words "Hong Kong"
in phrases such as the team "Honk Kong Attitude", and instead only say HKA?

Does Tencent control the broadcast/streaming?

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kmfrk
Tencent owns Riot Games who made LoL.

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developer2
To be specific, Riot Games sold the full 100% to Tencent. Tencent owns partial
shares in a lot of companies; when it comes to Riot Games / League of Legends,
that percentage is the full 100.

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kangnkodos
Thanks for correcting me. I see my mistake now.

Tencent controls 40% of Epic.

Tencent controls 100% of Riot/League of Legends.

Epic has no control over Riot/League of Legends.

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goatinaboat
_Tencent controls 100% of Riot /League of Legends_

As Matt Levine observes, an American company can simply ignore its foreign
owner if necessary
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-01/citgo-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-01/citgo-
isn-t-sure-who-its-boss-is)

~~~
Barrin92
that's a very short-term/literal view of the situation. Obviously any American
company at the end of the day can physically do what it wants if it resides in
the US, but if you want to have long term access to the Chinese market or
capital it becomes significantly more of a strategic issue. Just look at the
university conflicts in Australia.

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goatinaboat
_if you want to have long term access to the Chinese market_

I think people are starting to cotton on that there is no such thing. The best
you can hope is for a few years of getting a local partner familiar with your
IP before they boot you out.

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philliphaydon
Epic CEO says a lot of stuff he doesn’t mean or live up to.

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nickthegreek
Even if that is true, they are at least on the record now with a position and
I do feel like that is important. I would hope to see other game companies
make these statements as well.

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jplayer01
Statements mean and accomplish nothing. I thought after decades of being
fucked over and lied to by corporations, maybe the public would become a bit
more suspicious of people like this, but I guess not.

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rifung
Indeed, actions speak louder than words, but in this specific case, making a
public statement is itself a very significant action. After all, it was
nothing but public statements that are the center of the controversy.

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jplayer01
No, the controversy is the punishing of people who dared speak out. Nobody has
spoken out for Sweeney to fire or otherwise punish. So his are empty words.

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loceng
Tencent bought 40% of Epic Games at some point: what's different between
Blizzard and Epic's relationship - is it, as the CEO said, he is the
controlling shareholder?

As many gamers are saying however, him stating this, because Tencent will
profit from their ownership of Epic - they will boycott Epic's games as well.

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jsgo
I'd imagine the ones who are going to boycott Epic games have been doing so
already over the launcher/store. I don't see this event adding more to the
heap. Personally, I'm not one of these people, but I have refused to buy
products for random reasons too so to each their own.

If anything, I'm kind of shocked he's jumping out ahead of an event happening
to Epic Games of a player protesting on behalf of Hong Kong and stating what
they will do, with Tencent being part of their funding. Either this is to push
the "they don't control us" narrative re:Tencent. I don't know how big
Fortnite is in China (seems PUBG is the big one there?) and they relatively
recently bought the developer behind Rocket League I believe which similarly,
don't know how big of a presence they have in China.

Kudos to him whatever the reasoning though. Being willing to draw the ire of a
country that, population wise, eclipses your other larger markets because you
disagree with their handling of a protest is gutsy on his part. Granted,
they're basically printing money with Fortnite so I guess he doesn't have to
care too much to keep the lights on, but still, he is not solely driven by
capitalism as it would be easy to just stay quiet.

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MrGilbert
Well... we also don't know what HAS happened already, behind closed doors.
Maybe there has already been an "order" from Tencent regarding this case. And
maybe Tim already stood up, but couldn't say anything - this would have been
the right moment, so maybe he just used it.

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franknine
May I have "Taiwan" option instead of "Chinese Taipei" for signing up an Epic
account? Even Blizzard is not doing this.

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sb057
FWIW, "Chinese Taipei" is a compromise term accepted by the RoC.

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spathi_fwiffo
Gaining some goodwill for the Epic Store.

Now Valve needs to take the same stance to get back to the status quo.

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tapoxi
They won't. Valve has a huge presence in China, Epic doesn't.

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Konnstann
Isn't 40% of Epic owned by Tencent?

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jsgo
What're they going to do? Sell their stake?

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devy
They will fire the CEO.

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jsgo
If they're structured so that shareholders can do this directly (not a case of
needing to be able to influence the board), they'd have to convince 11% of
other shareholders to either not vote (if just a majority of yays/nays is
needed) or vote with them.

Sweeney on the other hand has allowed Fortnite to become their top item and it
generates money other developers only dream of so I highly doubt other
shareholders are particularly angry with him (they probably love him quite
frankly). He's sufficiently defensive/offensive when things are setup to work
against Epic Games (when Microsoft was ambiguous as to how important Windows
Store would be to the Windows 10 ecosystem. To the chagrin of vocal gamers,
he's aggressively going after Steam which could've frankly crushed Epic Games
Store at the onset if not for how aggressive Epic has been).

Honestly, their best course of action would be to cut bait.

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Phillipharryt
Almost no companies have direct elections because CEOs rightfully hate them,
shareholders get scared and can make uninformed decisions, and the board is
better informed to decide on the behalf of shareholders. In the cases they do
exist, stock is issued with different voting rights to prevent activist
shareholders turning over a company without the board's approval. Also in this
case, even if there was a direct election structure at Epic, there is no other
11% for Tencent to convince. Sweeney himself owns more than 50% of the stock.

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Gonzih
Is that the same company that recently was in the news due to brutal workloads
and work hours?

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gbear605
Most videogame companies are like that. It is definitely horrible, but the
company's attitude toward its employees' work hours is unrelated to its
attitude toward China.

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oarsinsync
Unless you take the view that human rights are human rights are human rights,
and are universal. Being shitty to the humans you pay while paying lip service
to some of the humans that pay you is an interesting and, from some angles,
contradictory position to hold.

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gbear605
Human rights are universal, but one involves literal concentration camps while
the other is people who are voluntarily there, even if it is abusive. I think
that Epic Games should change their policies, and so should the rest of the
game development industry, but I prioritize disliking fascism over disliking
poor working conditions.

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jplayer01
Talk is cheap when you’re not in a position where you have to prove you mean
it. Just look at any number of comments here who seem to be praising Sweeney.
I wish I was a CEO, seems to be an easy job when all you have to do is say the
right words and people blindly eat it all up and believe you.

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not_a_cop75
"There are some that call me Tim."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTbrIo1p-So](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTbrIo1p-So)

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AFascistWorld
His company has virtually zero market share in China too.

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trobertson
His company is China's inroad to the Western games distribution industry.
China is totally cool with Epic allowing anti-China statements as long as it
brings the users into China arms.

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magma17
excusatio non petita accusatio manifesta.

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jeegsy
Ah, it would seem that Epic has a nose for marketing opportunities especially
today when "values" / "we are good folk" marketing is all the rage

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jsmeaton
Pretty unfair comment.

He was asked. He answered.

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serf
He answered the question by linking a Verge hit-piece against Blizzards'
actions, citing Epic's opinion on the matter.

It might be an answer, but it's definitely motivated.

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sdinsn
Epic is owned ~45% by Tencent. So I doubt this is going to be true.

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larkeith
There are several tweets specifically on this in the twitter thread:

Tim Sweeney @TimSweeneyEpic 4h

Replying to @CherrishChoerry @calibrono and 3 others

> Epic is a US company and I’m the controlling shareholder. Tencent is an
> approximately 40% shareholder, and there are many other shareholders
> including employees and investors.

Cherrish Choerry @CherrishChoerry 4h

Replying to @TimSweeneyEpic @calibrono and 3 others

> 40% is a big cut though. They’re already apparently pulling out of the NBA
> League. Can you honestly say if a similar event happened you wouldn’t have
> to, sever ties with said influential figure, i.e the NBA coach/Hearthstone
> Champ

Tim Sweeney @TimSweeneyEpic

Replying to @CherrishChoerry @calibrono and 3 others

> Yes, absolutely. That will never happen on my watch as the founder, CEO, and
> controlling shareholder.

7:55 AM - 9 Oct 2019

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jplayer01
So we’re just blindly believing whatever CEOs say now? There are so many
incentives for them to say whatever the public wants to hear that it doesn’t
make sense to take any of it at face value.

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robbrit
He also now has a strong incentive to stick to what he said. Complying with
China after publicly saying he wouldn't would be an even bigger PR disaster
than what Blizzard is facing right now.

