Reuters reports that Chinese media entertainment and tech conglomerate
Tencent is shutting down its Penguin Esports subdivision by early June. Word is:
"Tencent said on Thursday that Penguin Esports had stopped taking new users or
live-streaming hosts and had also blocked existing users from topping up their
accounts with immediate effect. The app will be removed from all app stores and
will stop operating by June 7, it added." Tencent's decision to shutter
this Twitch-like service in China is chalked up to changes in its business
strategy. However, the article notes that regulatory crackdowns by the Chinese
government have made the environment for such a service increasingly
unwelcome:
The company said on its official WeChat account that the
decision to shut down the six-year-old platform, where hosts could live-stream
themselves playing games in a model similar to Amazon's Twitch, was made because
of "changes to its business development strategy". It did not elaborate.
Beijing last year blocked the company's attempt to create a $10 billion
videogame streaming behemoth through the merger of the market's top two players
Huya and DouYu on antitrust grounds. Huya said at the time it planned to merge
Penguin Esports into the new entity.
A wide-ranging Chinese regulatory crackdown has targeted tech giants over the
last year and a half, forcing them to revamp once common market practices and
driving Tencent and peer Alibaba Group to draw up layoffs plans, Reuters has
reported.
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