The secret Chinese company that owns everything... is Tencent. Well, not everything, but they own Riot Games, maker of League of Legends, 40% of Epic Games, maker of Unreal Engine (one of the two dominant video game engines, the other being Unity), and parts of Discord and Roblox as well, as well as other game makers in Europe, South Korea, and Japan.
But where Tencent really owns everything is inside China. In addition to being the biggest game maker as well as the conduit for practically all foreign games into China, Tencent also owns WeChat, the app that does everything -- chat (as its name implies), plus it has a Public Accounts service -- a blogging/newsletter system -- a service called Moments which is a social networking system like Facebook, Channels, which is a short-form video service (which is losing out to TikTok), and the all important WeChat Pay, which is the payment service everyone in China uses and no one uses cash any more. And because every restaurant and movie theater and everything else uses WeChat's Mini Programs service instead of creating their own full-fledged app in the App Store, with the Mini Programs hooked into WeChat Pay, WeChat essentially has taken over the function of the App Store within China.
All of this has given the Chinese government a central point of control for surveillance, censorship, and data gathering for its social credit system. That has a lot to to with why people outside of China have been reluctant to switch from their own country's apps to WeChat. TikTok stands out as the one Chinese app that has been able to break into foreign markets.
This video dramatizes (overdramatizes?) Tencent's rise from being an ICQ copycat to the dominant powerhouse that it is today, as well as its recent struggles to stay in the good graces of the Chinese government.
As for the future, apparently they, like the company formerly known as Facebook, have set their sights on becoming a "metaverse" company.
The secret Chinese company that owns everything - MagnatesMedia
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