ByteDance is preparing an Honor of Kings competitor and is reshuffling personnel in this regard
The TikTok developer is on the verge of a serious expansion into the games market. Large-scale releases, diversification and competition with Tencent are ahead. So the gaming direction of the company will finally have its own director.
According to Reuters, citing its sources, it will be Yan Shou, who was previously responsible for strategic development, investment and gaming business at ByteDance in general (Shu was also responsible for strategy at Tencent for several years).
Such a shift is explained by the fact that it is games that the company considers as the “next important source of growth.” Now ByteDance plans to release a game similar to Honor of Kings*.
* Recall that Honor of Kings (also known as Arena of Valor) is Tencent’s highest—grossing development. It is not known exactly how much she earned, but some analytical companies estimate only her monthly earnings, most of which fall on the Chinese market, at $ 1 billion.
Video games became a strategic direction for ByteDance a year ago. The company has launched several projects at once. At the same time, she decided to develop the publishing direction.
It’s too early to talk about the first results of internal development, where more than 1,000 people work, but as a publisher ByteDance is already making great progress. In the Chinese New Year, three of the five most downloaded games in the Middle Kingdom were published by the authors of TikTok.
The diversification that the company is striving for today is important not only from the point of view of capital. It can become a safety rope for ByteDance, which has come under fire from senators in the United States.
In October, a number of American politicians demanded that the National Security Agency assess the risks of TikTok. Also, one of the deputies expressed doubts about the legality of the company’s purchase of an American application Musical.ly , part of which formed the basis of TikTok.
Earnings from the gaming direction will be able to compensate ByteDance for the loss of the American market in the event of an unfavorable scenario. However, now it looks unlikely. So for now, games are most likely to be primarily considered as one of the main future channels for monetization of the traffic available to the Chinese company.
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