Tencent says Beijing likely to support metaverse – as long as it obeys China rules

SHANGHAI: Chinese social media giant Tencent Holdings expects Beijing to allow ‘metaverse’ virtual environment services, now the talk of Silicon Valley, to operate in China – provided they fall in line with Chinese rules.

In some of its first public comments on the metaverse, Tencent, China’s biggest company by market value, welcomed the potential for gaming business opportunities in a post-earnings call on Wednesday, but acknowledged China’s version of the metaverse would need to be different to the rest of the world’s.

“There’s a lot of technologies that’s related to the development of games as well as for the metaverse,” Tencent president Martin Lau told analysts on a call peppered with questions about the metaverse.