The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2025
ASUS posted a video attacking Tencent's anti-cheat, then apologised and took it down
The official ROG account on Bilibili claimed Tencent's ACE harmed performance; it turned out to be wrong, forcing a public retraction.
ASUS · 2025-11
What happened
In November 2025, an ASUS Republic of Gamers account on Bilibili published a video titled 'Close ACE anti-cheat system, protect your computer performance'. It claimed Tencent's ACE anti-cheat software hurt PC performance and advised users to turn it off.
The video was quickly challenged. Tencent's game-security team and users pointed out that the claims were inaccurate and that the footage was misleading. ASUS China issued an apology, admitted the video contained 'erroneous descriptions and untrue evaluations', removed it and said it would punish those responsible.
For a hardware brand that depends on partnerships with game publishers, publicly attacking a widely used anti-cheat system was an unusual unforced error. The case shows how a single social video can damage both a brand's credibility and its relationships with platform partners.
Why it happened
- The video was produced without verifying how ACE actually affected performance.
- ASUS's content-review process failed to catch claims that contradicted its partnership with Tencent.
- The ROG account treated a technical opinion as a marketing message without legal or partner review.
- The retraction came only after public pushback, not before publication.
The lesson
When a hardware brand depends on software partners, public attacks on that software need fact-checking at the same level as a product claim.
Aftermath
ASUS removed the video, apologised on Bilibili and stated it would strengthen content review. Tencent did not publicly escalate further.
Sources
spotted an error? The club wants to know.
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