Epic Games insists ‘not taking orders from Tencent’

During a Q&A session at GDC last week with Epic Games Store heads Steve Allison, Sergey Galyonkin, and Joe Kreiner, one attendee questioned the increasingly popular rumors on Reddit and Twitter. : Tencent, which invested in Epic in 2013, is ‘the real party’ running the company.

“I wonder if abandoning the Unreal Tournament community came from Tencent’s idea?” Attendees ask questions.

After letting the community laugh in the room, Steve Allison of Epic Store asserted: “Tecent has no say in our business. They didn’t tell us what the team was doing. They gave no opinion on what we should do. They don’t decide for us. They are not in our office. Everything we do is with our team, and it’s all about Tim [CEO]. And Tim doesn’t take orders from Tencent. Trust me.”

In 2013, before Fortnite became a global phenomenon, Tencent acquired a 40% stake in Epic for $330 million. Tencent owns a lot of big guys: The Chinese tech tycoon fully owns Riot Games, Supercell (the developer of Clash of Clans) and holds a 5% stake in Ubisoft.

“Obviously that’s Tencent’s massive investment in Epic Games a few years ago, and we like them as a company, and they’re a partner of ours, but Tencent doesn’t run Epic Games,” said Allison. continue. “They are not in our office. We share nothing with them. In fact, we compete with them. They run PUBG. We compete with them.”

“So does Tencent have anything to do with the Epic Store?” asked the attendee.

“Not at all,” Allison insisted.

There is currently no evidence that Epic is being controlled by anyone other than itself. On Twitter and elsewhere, Tim Sweeney explains and defends all of Epic’s recent trends, and feels he and the leadership have the idea and launch Epic Store because they see this as an opportunity to Steam challenge. The team constantly promotes the 88/12 profit split, a better standard than the current game industry, and for those who want to be promoted on the Epic Store.

After the investment in 2013, Sweeney said, “Two Tencent representatives join Epic’s board of directors, in addition to three directors and two observers elected by Epic.” So what influence do these two representatives have on Epic’s decision? In February tweets, Sweeney said board members were “participating in the discussion and voting based on the company’s interests,” but that Tencent “did not make decisions” for Epic. Sweeney is the controlling shareholder of Epic Games, not Tencent.

Epic is an American company. There are investors and equity holders from all around the world, including Tencent in China. It’s normal for companies of this scale have international shareholders.

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) January 23, 2019

“Epic is an American company,” Sweeney tweeted in January. “There are investors and shareholders from around the world, including Tencent from China. It is a bonus for companies of this size to have international shareholders.”

According to PCgamer