JAKARTA - Chinese social media giant Tencent Holdings expects Beijing to allow its 'metaverse' virtual environment service, which is now the talk of Silicon Valley, to operate in China, provided it complies with Chinese government rules.
In its first few public comments on the metaverse, Tencent, China's largest company by market value, welcomed the potential gaming business opportunity in its earnings report on Wednesday, November 10, but acknowledged that the Chinese version of the metaverse needed to be different from the rest of the world's metaverse.
"There's a lot of technology related to game development and also to the metaverse," Tencent president Martin Lau told analysts over the phone peppered with questions about the metaverse, cited by Reuters.
Investors have been researching the prospects for the evolving world of virtual reality since Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook which recently changed its name to Meta Platforms Inc, announced that he would devote his company's future to building the metaverse.
Microsoft and Disney have also said that they are also working on their own metaverses.
"The Chinese government will support the development of the technology as long as the user experience is truly provided under the regulatory framework," said Lau, from Tencent.
Amid the spirit of the metaverse, other questions have been raised among tech investors about how it might thrive in China, where the internet is tightly censored and authorities have been carrying out a broad crackdown on once-free giants, including Tencent, since last year.
Regulators have banned all crypto transactions, tightened oversight of the gaming industry, and also warned against "blind" investments in metaverse-related stocks.
Lau said while there would likely be a different set of rules regarding the metaverse for China and the world, this "is not fundamentally against the development of the metaverse.
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Tencent, the world's largest online gaming company by revenue, is by far the lead in China in the virtual world concept, which has also attracted competitors such as NetEase and TikTok owner ByteDance, according to data firm NewZoo.
Lau says there are "multiple pathways" to metaverse opportunities, such as through interactive play or social networks that serve as 'playgrounds'.
"We have many of the technology and capability building blocks that allow us to approach the metaverse opportunity," he said.
Tencent owns a 40% stake in Epic Games and has a joint venture with Roblox Corp, both of which are working on their own metaverses.
The company, whose businesses also include social network and messaging app WeChat, which is dominant in China, has also registered more than 20 metaverse-related trademarks for its app in China and is working on more immersive multiplayer games.
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