• General
  • June 28, 2020
  • 4 minutes read

Tencent Preps Twitch Rival

Tencent CEO Pony Ma. Photograph by Vivek Prakash/Fortune, under Creative Commons license Chinese tech and gaming giant Tencent is currently…

Tencent CEO Pony Ma.

Photograph by Vivek Prakash/Fortune, under Creative Commons license

Chinese tech and gaming giant Tencent is currently rolling out a live-streaming service for the U.S. market that’ll rival Twitch, the Amazon-owned game streaming service that currently dominates the U.S. streaming market. The new rival is named Trovo Live and was formerly called Madcat. Thanks to Tencent’s deep pockets, Trovo is launching with a $30 million partnership program intended to reward content creators beginning from next month, July. Trovo is still in beta testing and seems to have largely gone unnoticed outside the gaming community. Currently, Trovo’s live-streams only draw viewers in the hundreds even though its Discord chat channel currently boasts more than 5,000 members. The new game-streaming service has courted some creators from the likes of Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and Microsoft’s soon-to-be-closed Mixer platform.

Tencent leads the gaming market in its home country of China and apparently has enough resources to challenge a dominant foreign game streaming service like Twitch, but success in the American market may seem tough for a foreign company. Trovo’s roll-out happens to come at a time of increased scrutiny of Chinese ownership of popular apps operating in the US. The likes of TikTok and its rival, Zynn, have drawn concerns from some US lawmakers, most notably Senator Marco Rubio, who expressed concerns of Chinese platforms being “used as a tool by the Chinese Communist Party to extend its authoritarian censorship.”

Trovo’s privacy policy statement notes that its servers are located in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the U.S., but with its support and engineering teams located at global offices including China. These support and engineering teams will have access to user information.

Right now, games streaming on Trovo include EA’s Apex Legends, League of Legends, PUBG, the Call Of Duty franchise, Fortnite, and Destiny 2.




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