ByteDance’s in-house developed title Crystal of Atlan is their first homegrown success story, as the eighth best-selling mobile game in China on iOS in July.

As broken down by news outlet Technode, this is a major new development for ByteDance’s subsidiary Nuverse as previous hits such as Marvel Snap have been developed by partners (Second Dinner) rather than in-house. While it’s far from the biggest game in the Chinese market, given its competitive nature, the game’s sudden rise to prominence is cause to sit up and take note.

Crystal of Atlan’s upward trajectory continues with more than $29m of revenue in July, with special mention given to ByteDance’s active promotion of the title on Douyin (the Chinese name for TikTok) as a reason behind the title’s continued success. With the hashtags related to the game reaching more than 3.5bn views on the platform. Nuverse has also worked with KOLs (key opinion leaders aka influencers) that have helped further boost the game’s popularity.

A new Tencent?

In many ways, ByteDance and Tencent are very similar companies. Both run some of the largest social media platforms in their country, that being Douyin (TikTok) and WeChat respectively. However, so far ByteDance has proved that it can play the video game-game just as well as Tencent with their partnerships via subsidiary Nuverse already securing an award-winning title in the form of Marvel Snap.

But what Crystal of Atlan shows is that their games success so far isn’t just a fluke, and that ByteDance has genuine in-house talent that can provide growth where their partners may not be able to. There have, of course, been stumbling blocks on the way with layoffs at the company earlier in the year and it’s not yet clear how important game development is to the company overall, but, Crystal of Atlan offers us insight into the potential that Nuverse, and ByteDance, have in the gaming space.