The US government, currently headed up by the Trump administration, are reportedly discussing whether to push Chinese conglomerate Tencent to divest their investments in US game companies. Tencent currently own League of Legends developers Riot Games and Back 4 Blood developers Turtle Rock Studios, while also holding stakes in the likes of Epic Games, Ubisoft, Remedy, and Paradox Interactive.

The Financial Times report that the government have held meetings designed to assess whether Tencent’s investments in US and Finnish gaming companies pose a risk to US national security. A meeting on the topic was reportedly scheduled to take place on Tuesday, March 3rd, but was postponed due to scheduling issues.

All of this is taking place ahead of a meeting between Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping currently planned to take place in China next month. US government concerns over Tencent’s gaming investments potentially allowing the company access to a ton of data on US players, and whether that’d constitute a “significant intelligence collection source” date back to Joe Biden’s time in office.

Early last year, the US government placed Tencent on a list – known as Section 1260H – of companies it believes have links to the Chinese military. As of writing, Tencent are still on that list, despite quickly stating last year that their inclusion on it was down to a “misunderstanding” – one that they were prepared to sue the US government over if it couldn’t be worked out.

Naturally, if Tencent were forced to ditch their US gaming investments, that could lead to significant upheaval for various firms on the laundry list of studios and publishers that concerns. Whether they will actually be forced to is another question, given that a large element of this bickering over Chinese investments in the US appears to be rooted in posturing on the part of both massively powerful states over who’s the top dog in a world where attempting to prove that with direct force could well result in all of us being blown to radioactive smithereens.