> Do you see companies that aren't partially owned by Chinese interests doing things like this?

I think this is kind of cheating (Tencent, Alibaba, etc. have zillions of small-ish investments). I was mostly thinking about Apple, Google, heck, even the NBA.

> without considering Tencent's influence

At 5% ownership, Tencent doesn't have the muscle to force Blizzard to do anything it wouldn't have already done of its own volition.

What is going to be more interesting to me is to see what Riot Games, who is wholly owned by Tencent, does when the inevitable Hong Kong protests come in during this years Worlds. There's even a Hong Kong team in the mix, and there's already reports surfacing that Tencent has directed casters not bring up Hong Kong.

If I were the caster, I probably would simply not "live"stream it.

Seconds delay lets you pull the cord before it goes public and or change feed.

Minutes potentially let you omit the footage and do some super rough and ready edits.

Not that I want that to happen...

Activist investors often have less than 10% stakes in the companies they’re trying to institute changes in. 5% is not a meaningless amount to hold.

Agreed, but Epic Games, which is 40% owned by Tencent, is now claiming it won't do what Blizzard did:

https://www.insider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ban-player...

I hadn't thought about the parallel to activist investors, that's a very good point. I've seen the hell raised by folks like Carl Icahn...

>At 5% ownership, Tencent doesn't have the muscle to force Blizzard to do anything it wouldn't have already done of its own volition.

And at 40% ownership, Tencent apparently also doesn't have the muscle to force Epic Games to do anything:

https://www.insider.com/epic-unlike-blizzard-wont-ban-player...