tencent
Latest
'Fortnite' is coming to China
The popular battle royale game Fortnite is coming to China, thanks to a partnership between its creator Epic Games and Tencent. The Chinese tech giant, which owns over 40 percent of Epic, will handle distribution and publishing. Tencent will reportedly spend $15 million on Fortnite in China on marketing to its domestic playerbase and clamping down on piracy and illegal clones, the latter of which is a problem in the country.
Report reveals the extent of China's tech sexism problem
Chinese tech companies like Baidu and Alibaba have been using blatant sexism to attract job candidates and advertising jobs for "men only," Human Rights Watch (HRW) has reported. "Major companies like Alibaba have published recruitment ads promising applicants 'beautiful girls' as co-workers," said HRW China Director Sophie Richardson. Furthermore, Chinese authorities have not been enforcing laws that prohibit workplace gender discrimination, it adds.
Alibaba is the latest Chinese internet giant to test self-driving cars
China's Alibaba Group has been testing its own autonomous vehicle technology, the South China Morning Post reports, and is looking to hire an additional 50 self-driving vehicle experts. Alibaba's rivals Baidu and Tencent have also been working on autonomous technology and last month, Baidu received the go-ahead from the Chinese government to begin testing its technology on Beijing roads. Tencent reportedly sent one of its autonomous vehicles for a ride on a Beijing highway earlier this month.
With 'Siren,' Unreal Engine blurs the line between CGI and reality
Epic Games has been obsessed with real-time motion capture for years, but the company is now trying to take its experiments with the technology one step further. Enter "Siren," a digital personality that it created alongside a few prominent firms in the gaming industry: Vicon, Cubic Motion, 3Lateral and Tencent (which just became a major investor in Ubisoft). The crazy thing about Siren is that she comes to life using live mocap tech, powered by software from Vicon, that can make her body and finger movements be captured and live-streamed into an Unreal Engine project.
Ubisoft fights off takeover by entertainment giant Vivendi
Ubisoft is finally free of Vivendi. The entertainment titan behind the Universal Music Group and Dailymotion kept buying more and more Ubisoft shares since 2015 to the point that it became the video game publisher's largest stakeholder. While Vivendi said that it was only interested in a seat in Ubisoft's board, the video game publisher sees its aggressive purchase as a hostile takeover and has been thinking of ways to fight it off for years. Now, it looks like Ubisoft will safely remain a Guillemot family business with help from (PDF) Tencent, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and other investors.
‘PUBG’ arrives on mobile in the US
Two weeks ago, Epic announced that its super popular Battle Royale mode for Fortnite will be coming to phones and tablets. While players debated how using touchscreens could ever be competitive against mouse-and-keyboard players, the game that made the genre a household name snuck up and dropped its own mobile version in the US. Right now, American players can download PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds for iOS or Android -- and both versions are free to play.
Tech giants like Google and Alibaba are working to save endangered species
Google, eBay and other technology leaders are aiming to protect the world's animals. Why? In a widely unregulated social-media world, many tech platforms have become a haven for the wildlife black market, a $20 billion industry. The sale of illegal animal goods -- from ivory to exotic pets -- is the fourth-largest criminal global trade industry behind narcotics, counterfeiting and human trafficking, according to TRAFFIC, a wildlife-trade-monitoring network. In the past decade, the sale of these goods and species has moved from illicit backroom dealings in stores to apps and online shopping ads.
Tencent lets parents reward kids' good grades with game time
If you grew up with video games as a kid, you probably struck a deal with your parents: pass a school test with flying colors and you can play more. Tencent wants to formalize those arrangements. Chief executive Ma Huateng has proposed digital contracts that offer game time to kids (for Tencent games, of course) in return for either reaching certain academic criteria or performing chores around the home. He wasn't specific about when these agreements would be available, but he noted that children could have their friends witness the signing of a contract.
After Math: It's bobsled time!
The 2018 Winter Olympics are starting up but Pyeongchang won't be the only place crowning champions. This week we've already seen Waymo win out over Uber in court; Sasha 'Scarlett' Hostyn, the most successful woman in eSports, was victorious in an Olympic-backed Starcraft 2 tournament; and Amazon came up with yet another way to dominate the delivery market -- 2-hour Whole Foods deliveries. Numbers, because how else will you count the scorecards?
Tencent-backed 'Arena of Valor' World Cup boasts $500,000 purse
Mobile eSports are becoming a big deal. Last year, mobile MOBA Vainglory's big eSports tournament was backed by Amazon. Supercell put on a Clash Royale $1 million tournament last summer, too. Now China's Tencent Games is getting in on the action with plans for a series of eSport tournaments, beginning with the Arena of Valor World Cup in July of this year. The contest will take place in Los Angeles and offer a prize pool of more than $500,000, according to the press release.
China will cap QR-code payments to tackle fraud
China's central bank is issuing regulations over QR-code-based payments. Paying for things by scanning a barcode with the Alibaba or WeChat app is more common than using cash in the region and now the government wants to keep closer tabs on where the money is going. You might laugh at the idea, but QR codes aren't the punchline in the east that they are here. For instance, plenty of cabbies prefer taking QR payments because it means they don't have to handle small change.
WeChat accounts could double as state IDs in China
Some WeChat users in China will soon be able to use the chat app as a state-issued ID card. Financial Times reports that those living in Guangdong's capital city Guangzhou will be able to use facial recognition to link their identities to the app in the Nansha district this week. The feature will apparently roll out across the country in January.
China's most popular game is about to launch in the US
You might not have even heard of Arena of Valor (outside of a Twitch tourney), but it's all-consuming in its native China, with 200 million registered players and over 80 million daily active users. Tencent's mobile-only MOBA game, known as Honor of Kings in its original form, is so popular in its homeland that tournaments are everywhere and the game has time limits to prevent kids from playing too long. And now, Tencent wants it to become a household name in the rest of the world. In a confirmation of some earlier rumors, the tech giant is formally launching Arena of Valor worldwide on December 19th, with users in North and South America getting their first crack at the Android and iOS hit.
'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' is getting a mobile port in China
It was only about a week ago when Tencent announced that it's bringing a localized version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds to China, and earlier today, the tech giant added that it's also porting the PC game to mobile platforms -- an interesting move given that there are already several Chinese mobile clones of PUBG (even smartphone maker Xiaomi has one). While it's hard to imagine how one could enjoy a chicken dinner on much smaller screens and sans keyboard or mouse, Tencent said together with PUBG Corp, they will ensure that this authentic mobile port of PUBG will remain faithful to its PC counterpart in terms of gameplay method, core elements and compliance with local content regulations.
'PUBG' will be tweaked to add socialist-friendly messages in China
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has been this year's sleeper hit, and it's about to officially be released in China. The rub is, it'll have some pretty significant changes given the country's strict state-mandated censorship. Local publisher Tencent will "make adjustment to content and make sure they accord with socialist core values, Chinese traditional culture and moral rules," according to a statement obtained by Reuters. Last month, China said that the game was too violent and that the game's sale would likely be blocked because it strongly goes against the country's "socialist core values."
Tencent is the latest tech company working on autonomous cars
Tencent is pushing beyond its WeChat messaging app and gaming, moving into the autonomous driving space. The Chinese conglomerate will tap its artificial intelligence and mapping initiatives to compete against the likes of Baidu, according to Bloomberg's sources. Back in 2015 Tencent announced it'd partner with electronics maker Foxconn (responsible for the iPhone and countless other gadgets in your house) to make smart vehicles. That happened in the same 24 hours that Baidu announced similar motives.
Clap for China's president anywhere, anytime with this app
If you wanted to applaud Chinese president Xi Jinping's recent speech but got stuck in traffic or were halfway around the world, well, there's an app for that now. Chinese internet titan Tencent has released a game that lets you tap the screen to clap during one of the eerily choreographed pauses amid a typical presidential address. Okay, so it's technically a "who can tap the most" game -- but it's still shrouded in performative adulation for a public official, which is only creepy if your government doesn't regularly force you to do it.
A Chinese tech giant tried to buy Spotify
Spotify is known for being fiercely independent, but that go-it-alone attitude might have been put to the test in the past several months. A TechCrunch source understands that Spotify rejected a buyout bid from Tencent, the Chinese internet giant behind WeChat, earlier in 2017. Reportedly, Tencent saw Spotify as an opportunity to expand its streaming music influence beyond China, where it thrives through services like QQ Music and KuGou. The insider doesn't say whether or not talks got to the point where a price came up.
Lilium secures $90 million to develop its electric VTOL plane
Like a few other startups, Lilium wants to make our flying car dreams come true with an electric VTOL craft you can summon with an app. Thanks to $90 million worth of new investment from China's Tencent and others, the startup may now have a leg up on its rivals. It will use the funds to drastically expand hiring in order to take the electric jet into the next stages of development.
Tencent becomes the exclusive Chinese home of the NFL
The NFL has signed a deal with Tencent that'll see the Chinese giant becoming the exclusive home of the game for the next three years. As well as most pre and regular-season games, Chinese fans will be able to watch both the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl. In addition, Deadline Hollywood says that ancillary shows, such as the Draft, Hard Knocks, Game Day and A Football Life are all included in the deal.