Tencent Launches Mobile Game in Support of China's President - Players can "Clap" for Xi Jinping

Tencent launched a new mobile game today in China in support of president Xi Jinping where players can "Clap" for president Xi Jinping. The faster players tap their screen the more they clap! The game seems to have leaderboards too so there's some competitive element involved. The game was released just in time for the opening of the Community Party Congress and gives players a way to cheer on the government.

The WallStreetJournal described the game:

The game is played on smartphones. Users watch snippets of Mr. Xi’s three-and-half hour speech that he delivered at the opening of China’s 19th Party Congress, then have 19 seconds to “clap” as many times as possible rapidly tapping a finger on their smartphone screen.

At the end of the 19 seconds, players receive a score (how many times they clapped), and are invited to share it with friends via WeChat. -WSJ

While this is unusual news for most readers it does show the difficulty of operating a business in China. I suspect the only reason Tencent made this "game" was to appease China's communist government, especially after a government newspaper condemned Tencent earlier this year for making Arena of Valor (a mobile MOBA) too addicting. Tencent is the world's largest gaming company and owns League of Legends developer Riot Games, Supercell, about half of Epic Games, and has stakes in countless gaming companies including Activison Blizzard.