Chinese authorities have apprehended the founder of DouYu, a game-streaming site backed by Tencent, after officials began investigating pornographic and gambling – illegal content – on the platform several months ago.
The company told the state-owned Cover News media outlet they “lost contact” last month with Chen Shaoji, the 39-year-old CEO of the Nasdaq-listed group, according to reports by the FT and various gaming news-sites.
Officials from China’s internet watchdog sent a team of officials to Douyu’s office in May for “rectification” and supervision after the vulgar content was discovered, the reports said.
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Chen is the latest of a series of tech entrepreneurs who have fallen offside with authorities since Alibaba’s Jack Ma voiced criticism of officials in late 2020 – a controversial speech that sparked a furious crackdown on internet companies and led to a sector-wide crackdown, plus a major restructuring the Alibaba Group.
Chen was credited with making DouYu a leading game and e-sports platform, drawing about 50 million users a month to view a wide range of content, from war games to live cooking shows, the FT said.
The company was said to have 6.6 billion yuan ($906 million) of cash and investments on its books this year, but its market cap was less than a third of that.
- Jim Pollard
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