Did Donald Trump Just Ban Fortnite?

Donald Trump has had a real hard-on for shutting down TikTok, the popular Chinese social media website. Unlike most of the things Trump says and does, this isn’t entirely crazy, as TikTok collects a lot of user data, though not really any more than, say Facebook. It just that Trump knows how much of that data Facebook and Amazon and similar companies give to the US government and assume TikTok owners likewise share the information they collect with the Chinese government, which is not a stretch to imagine.

Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at TikTok and Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat on Thursday which bans “any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with ByteDance Ltd.”

Trump also signed a similar order about TenCent, a large Chinese gaming company and that is where things get interesting. If you play games on your phone, you’ve probably seen the Tencent logo on at least one game.

Tencent also40% of Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite, and 100% of Riot Games, the owners of League of Legends. If they aren’t divested to new owners in 45 days, it could be illegal to play Fortnite.

Probably not, though, as Trump only really seems interested in WeChat, though Donald Trump accidentally banning the world’s most popular video game and then doubling down on it as if he did it intentionally to save face would not be out of character for him at all.

Honestly, it would be hilarious if after all the stupid things Trump has done and all the campaign promises he failed to deliver on (where’s that wall he was talking about?), the thing that costs him the election is gamers rising up.