Tencent Ethical Dilemma
Hi, Welcome to my Blog! In this mini case study, I am going to analysis the Ethical Dilemma behind the China's biggest game and communication application company: Plagiarism in many video games. In China, Tencent has dominated over 50% of mobile gaming market, while the NetEase Game on the second place only have around 15% of market share.
From Website: Tencent Dominates China's mobile gaming market (Blazyte, 2018)
Although Tencent is a leading company among China, it still having some unenthical decisions. As you may may heard of the most famous comments about Tencent:"Tencent is always plagiarizing, but never get a lawsuit."(Unknow, 2010)The reason of that is Tencent never launch a full-new game, insteads of launching every similar game copied from competitors, and depends on its huge market share in China's game market and its strong finance support to defeat other small companies and stole the market share from them.
However, based on the report writen by CNBC, the writer said, the plagiarism happened is not due to the manager was ignore the law, but it was because many in newsrooms there have been ignorant of the laws. What we should know is, not just in Game market, few years ago, people can download every digital properties, for example, music, movie, and books for free. Since people back then are lack of awareness of intellectual property right. In this case study blog project, I will focus on Tencent ethical dilemma on plagirism and unsecure user information.
There is a report from the Japan Times states that in 2008, the content from Tencent applications such as pictures, chat histories and videos are being directly given to police in some cases(Cook, 2019). Also, there are evidences showed that in order to avoid get lawsuit, Tencent has using some strategy to achieve their plagiarizing, which includes paid $400 million in 2011 to buy 93% stake of Riot(League of Legends developed company), then bought the remaining 7% in 2015. In the same year, Tencent released the King's honor, which is also an online battle arena that similar to League of Legends, the one and only difference is the kings honor can only operate on IOS and Android platform(Unknown, 2015). I will introduce the social response in the following blogs.
References
Blazyte, A. (2018, July 25). Statista. Retrieved
from Tencent Dominates China's Mobile Gaming Market:
https://www.statista.com/chart/14846/tencent-dominates-chinas-mobile-gaming-market/
Unknow. (2010, July 28). GFW认证. Retrieved from 自由还是自宫，这是个问题:
http://tingpan.blogspot.com/2010/07/tencent-king-of-plagiarism.html
I am shocked at how much plagiarism Tencent has committed. It is interesting how the leadership of the company finds ways, such as buying stake in a company, to not get sued for plagiarism. The company is basically bullying other companies and stealing their ideas for apps and games. It seems like there should be regulations in China to stop this sort of thing from happening. Do you know of other companies that they have stolen ideas from and bullied? How much money is Tencent worth? Do you think that the CEO is to blame for all of the unethical actions? Also, I am surprised that I have not heard about Kings honor. It makes me wonder how popular the game really is, especially in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteHi Alexis,
DeleteThank you for your thoughtful comments! This is a game platform back to 2002 named Hao Fang war platform, which Tencent steal their ideas for the design of game platform. Also, they stole the sofeware application icon from KouGou Music to its own QQ music. The tencent market value is around $69 billion, which is too big to fight back for other small companies. I do not think the CEO is the one to blame for all the unethical actions, I think the China's society is one of the reason that cause for unethical actions. People nowadays trying to make money unscrupulous, not just Tencent, but also there are some start-up companies will go public(IPO), raise the money from public, and claim bankruptcy very quickly to make the unethical money. There is an oversea version of Kings honor called Arena of Valor, which is also developed by Tencent for the users overseas. However, most of the Chiese who live abroad are still prefer to play the Kings honor, since it is very popular in China, and almost everyfriend back home will play this game.
Hi Peijin,
ReplyDeleteI loved the post! This isn't surprising to me how a 69 billion dollar company defeats its competition with the use of plagiarism. Many would say that it's unfair but Tencent is buying off their competitors and using the ideas for themselves. The issue is that it's completely legal and the only way to prevent it is by placing rules and regulations against companies that buy out other companies for ideas. That just goes to show the injustices within the economy and the amount of power certain companies have over others. Also, do you believe that this strategy is used in today’s market? I just want to know if there have been any changes made by the government on companies who practice this strategy.
Hi Marcos, thank you for your positive and thoughtful comment! I believe this kind of injustice is still within the economy, and probably also happen among the "Titan" of the industry, since the leading company are "too big to fall".
DeleteFor Tencent, I did not find any recent article or news reported Tencent plagirism again.
Enjoyed reading your introduction to the topic. I can only imagine the frustration of game creators having their name discredited. Do you think that game creators should halt production and leave Tencent to make their own games? Do you believe that since it is legal, they think it is ethical?
ReplyDeleteSince Tencent has bought the 100% stake of Riot, so Riot cannot "leave" Tencent anymore, because now Tencent "own" Riot. In other words, Tencent is the parent company of Riot, therefore, using the idea or creation from its child (Subsidiary) is legal but it is still unethical. In my option, in the long run, Tencent grab the opptunity to make huge amount of money and capture the market share. However, in short run, this kind of action is considered shady and unethical.
Delete