Tencent games removed from Huawei app store over revenue dispute

Tencent sells top-ranked online games, while Huawei has a 41.4% share of the China mobile phone market

Tencent, the world’s largest gaming company, also owns Los Angeles-based Riot and has a 40 per cent stake in Maryland-based Epic. Reuters

Tencent's online game offerings have been removed from Huawei's app store since the two companies failed to reach an agreement on revenue sharing, Tencent and a source said on Friday.

"Due to the failure of Huawei's mobile game platform to renew its contract with our Mobile Game Promotion Project Agreement as scheduled, relevant products of Tencent games were suddenly removed from the shelves early this morning," Tencent said in a statement.

"At present, active communication is being made to try to resume as soon as possible," it said.

Tencent sells some of the top-ranked online games worldwide, while Huawei has a 41.4 per cent share of the China mobile phone market and 14.9 per cent of the global market, according to data from market research firms International Data Corporation and Canalys.

A source said the games were removed because the companies could not agree on a revenue sharing deal for the app store sales. Huawei insists on receiving a 50 per cent cut, the source said.

Huawei did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

Tencent did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment on whether the firms had disagreed about revenue sharing.

There was already some resistance from games developers to Huawei's revenue demands.

This included Shanghai-based developer Mihoyo, which last year decided not to place its hit game Genshin Impact on Huawei's app store because it did not agree with the commission structure for sales.