ByteDance have confirmed that they are currently in talks with companies incuding Chinese gaming giant Tencent over the possible sale of their ongoing games concerns.
The TikTok-owning social media giant has been steadily backing out of its gaming interests for the past few months with moves to sell Moonton and a sharp about turn on their plans for Nuverse (publishers of Marvel Snap) in November.
The company effectively ceased production on new games and set plans in place to sell off anime-style role-playing game Crystal of Atlan and sci-fi survival game Earth: Revival to third parties. Now it seems that after speculation, ByteDance's big plans to make a great escape may be coming true.
Tencent and Bytdance have been inching closer to each other after Tencent began leveraging ByteDance’s advertising platforms to promote the newly released DreamStar in December.
Change of plan
It's estimated that so far the company has spent around 30 billion yuan on video game acquisitions and investments involving over 20 studios since 2019 with frustrations first arising around the inability to grow Moonton - creators of Mobile Legends Bang Bang - despite doubling the studio's headcount.
It seems that having invested in games to help weather any storm that international bans on their Chinese-homed TikTok breadwinner may face, the company are feeling less panicked about potential TikTok bans and are instead more concerned about how Chinese regulations could impact their new gaming offshoots.
While their Nuverse publishing enterprise has - on the surface - been a huge success, with Marvel Snap being our Game of the Year at the 2023 Mobile Games Awards, it appears that ByteDance has grown dissatisfied with the level of investment in game production required to keep the wheels turning, new products refreshed and the money rolling in. After spending $14 million thus far on developement and future plans without a major launch it appears that ByteDance are getting cold feet about the whole market.
This, versus the fire-and-forget social media leviathan TikTok where user generated content and cross promotion effectively feeds itself, producing ever greater profits.
All eyes on ByteDance
News of the possible sell-off came from a ByteDance representative on Tuesday came after local Chinese media outlet LatePost reported that Nuverse was in negotiations with Tencent regarding a sale. And while talks with Tencent are confirmed, the firm has indicated that discussions are on-going elsewhere too, with the likes of Nuverse, Moonton and more potentially going to the highest bidder.
Right now it's not known how far (and how far away from gaming) ByteDance are willing to go and which interested parties will have deep enough pockets to step in and take on the challenge.
