TikTok Owner ByteDance Poised to Close ‘Marvel Snap’ Game Publisher Nuverse
ByteDance, the privately held Chinese tech giant that owns TikTok, is poised to slash most of its games operations, including Nuverse, which publishes “Marvel Snap.”
“We regularly review our businesses and make adjustments to center on long-term strategic growth areas,” a ByteDance representative said in a statement sent to Variety. “Following a recent review, we’ve made the difficult decision to restructure our gaming business.”
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ByteDance will retreat from its mainstream video games operation with the loss of some 1,000 jobs, according to news reports Monday from Bloomberg, Reuters and other outlets.
Nuverse, the unit for most of ByteDance’s games, is understood to have told employees that it will halt nearly all games that have not yet launched. These will shut down in December.
Games with active players, including anime-style role-playing game “Crystal of Atlan” and survival game “Earth: Revival,” plus “One Piece: The Voyage / Fighting Path” and “Dragonheir: Silent Gods,” will continue to operate while ByteDance seeks to divest the assets to other publishers, in order to sustain their long-term operations and protect the interests of players.
ByteDance plans to keep the most innovative gaming projects and related technologies. Other sources say that it will hold on to smaller social games activities that can be played within Douyin, the Chinese twin of TikTok.
“Marvel Snap” is a digital collectible card game developed by Second Dinner and published by Nuverse. Bloomberg also reported that ByteDance is considering selling Shanghai Moonton Technology, a games company it paid $4 billion for in 2021.
The moves would refocus ByteDance on social video apps TikTok and Douyin and e-commerce. It has also made moves into music streaming and AI this year.
Games have been increasingly heavily regulated within China over the past three years, with authorities increasingly stringent about protecting young users’ health. They have intervened by delaying new license approvals or permits allowing monetization and the introduction of requirements that platforms limit game-play by minors. The cycle of regulation may now have turned more favorable and permits are being green-lighted again, but analysts suggest that the games market is headed for slower growth than in recent times.
ByteDance, as a privately held entity, is not required to publicly disclose its financial position. However, occasional disclosures to investors have been reported by financial media. These show that ByteDance is approaching Facebook owner Meta in term of revenue. The company was reported as having $85 billion in revenue in 2022, while revenue for the first half of 2023 was reported as $54 billion.
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