India Ban Worry: Call of Duty ends partnership with Tencent

Call of Duty:Mobile makers Activision parted ways with the Chinese conglomerate. The game developers have already severed all of its ties to Tencent before they rolled out the season nine update in previous month. Apparently, this move has saved Call of Duty:Mobile to evade the banhammer in which 119 Chinese apps, including PUBG Mobile were banned.


UPDATE: New information from our editorial team suggests that the reports of TENCENT ending terms with COD:Mobile & India’s ban on Chinese applications is unrelated, we are working with the publisher companies to verify the authenticity of this move. We regret if this may have caused inconvenience.


Confirmed by GamingonPhone, Activision has parted ways with the Chinese conglomerate Tencent and their subsidiary TiMi studios. The rumours started rising when the game changed its loading screen. The screen which earlier boasted the names of Tencent and TiMi studios were removed and was replaced by Activision.

According to an official from TiMi Studios, there were two main reasons due to which the ties were broken.

Trump’s executive orders against Tencent

The spokesperson cited that the first main reason was President Trump’s orders that restricted US companies from conducting transactions with Tencent and its subsidiaries. Activision is a US based company and did not want these orders to affect their mobile title in any way. Later a clarification was released that the orders were imposed on certain sectors and not on the entirety of Tencent but Activision played it safe and parted ways with them.

PUBG Mobile ripping off features from COD Mobile

According to the report, PUBG Mobile was copying various features from Call of Duty Mobile. The famous feature and modes like Gun Game, Aerial platforms and various locations were copied. Above all of this, the game “claimed that the features were unique content for their community.” The report speculates that Activision took a different route to keep up with their original content and bring in unique features to live up to the reputation of other Call of Duty Titles. COD: Mobile is bringing in more and more new features, from Gunsmith to Katana, everything is raising the quality of this game.

With PUBG Mobile banned in India and its humongous player-base finding for a new home, its a big opportunity for games like Call of Duty: Mobile to capitalize on this situation and rise their ever increasing player base. Call of Duty evaded this ban with cutting off their links to any Chinese company and hence presumably will not get banned if the government decides to ban more apps in the future.