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HONG KONG, Nov 27 (Reuters) - TikTok maker ByteDance plans to wind down its Nuverse gaming brand and retreat from mainstream video games, four people familiar with the matter said.

ByteDance told Reuters it had decided to restructure its gaming business after a review, without giving further details.

"We regularly review our businesses and make adjustments to centre on long-term strategic growth areas. Following a recent review, we've made the difficult decision to restructure our gaming business," the spokeperson said.

The sources said ByteDance will tell employees on Monday to stop working on unreleased games by December, and that it will look for ways to divest from titles already launched.

The decision is likely to impact hundreds of employees, some of whom learnt about the move at the weekend, the people said.

The Chinese technology firm has no plan to return to the $185 billion global video games market, they added, declining to be identified as the information was not public.

Casual gaming brand Ohayoo, whose games feature on Douyin - TikTok's sister app in China - will not be affected, neither will casual games that run on TikTok, one of the people said.

Reuters reported this month that ByteDance had started seeking buyers for game developing subsidiary Moonton Technology. It also overhauled its virtual reality company Pico, cutting much of its content team.

ByteDance's 2019 creation of Nuverse was widely seen as a major push into global gaming and a strategic element of its competition with domestic rival Tencent Holdings (0700.HK), the world's biggest gaming company.

But Nuverse's performance has been patchy. Its best-known game is "Marvel Snap", an online card game that amassed a cult following but was not a commercial hit.

Other titles include action games "One Piece: The Voyage" and "Crystal of Atland".

Nuverse came into focus again in 2021 when ByteDance formalised its status as one of its six business units under a broader structural overhaul.

To build up production capacity, Nuverse acquired external studios including C4games in 2021.

ByteDance says to restructure Nuverse in retreat from gaming business

TikTok maker ByteDance plans to wind down its Nuverse gaming brand and retreat from mainstream video games, four people familiar with the matter said.

www.reuters.com

 

[Ronin_7]

Gaming business seems to be a mess across many companies.

Google killed Stadia
Meta laid off ALOT of people
Amazon too

Etc.

 

[StueyDuck]

but... Phil said he just gosh darn had to buy all the publishers because all the meanie head doo-doo companies that were coming in to take over gaming?

 

[Bernkastel]

but... Phil said he just gosh darn had to buy all the publishers because all the meanie head doo-doo companies that were coming in to take over gaming?

Seems like Phil has not paid any rent for staying in your head.

 

[StueyDuck]

Seems like Phil has not paid any rent for staying in your head.

How dare I think about the industry in a thread talking about how a company is struggling in the industry in an online enthusiast forum based mostly on said industry.

Derp!!

 

[Panajev2001a]

but... Phil said he just gosh darn had to buy all the publishers because all the meanie head doo-doo companies that were coming in to take over gaming?

It will surprise you, but… Phil’s lied . …

 

[ReBurn]

From Marvel snap to Thanos snap

 

[Zones]

Insomniac right now to Marvel Entertainment: all your IP are belong to us.

 

[Bernkastel]

Derp!!

What is this new zoomer lingo?

 

[Three]

Seems like Phil has not paid any rent for staying in your head.

He's right though. Google, Amazon, Meta and now Bytedance (tiktok company) have all struggled to enter gaming. Not long ago Phil was trying to make some of them out to be the boogeyman who were going to take over (while internally discussing Sony as their "only real competitor" in emails of course). It's relevant to mention that as it turns out all these companies were not a threat at all despite some claiming they were.

 

[CamHostage]

Weird, I thought Marvel Snap was a hit; it's one of the few mobile timesuck games where I know a few people who play it.

I guess it's not a Tiktok-sized hit, so it makes whatever sense that they're looking elsewhere for new billions, but it's lame that even big companies spend only a little bit of time in a market before they bounce and cut their staff.

 

[Kadve]

The jobs of as many as 700 hundred people was apparently made redundant because of this. At least 2 games/projects has been cancelled too.

ByteDance's latest layoffs have reportedly gutted the publisher of Marvel Snap

TikTok's parent company ByteDance is apparently winding down its gaming business, including the Nuverse brand.

au.news.yahoo.com

Tech site 36Kr claims that as many as around 700 employees across ByteDance's gaming business group are impacted by this restructuring, with all but two in-development projects already terminated. The likes of Tencent, NetEase and MiHoYo may eventually benefit from ByteDance's seeming defeat, but it's also a cautionary tale for these local competitors bound by China's ever-changing gaming regulations.

 

[Bernkastel]

(while internally discussing Sony as their "only real competitor" in emails of course).

So they are aware of the market they are competing in .

He's right though. Google, Amazon, Meta and now Bytedance (tiktok company) have all struggled to enter gaming. Not long ago Phil was trying to make some of them out to be the boogeyman who were going to take over. It's relevant to mention that as it turns out all these companies were not a threat at all despite some claiming they were.

Why should I care about how they presented themselves in front of court to complete their acquisition? Considering the other side was making it out to be a "monopoly in mobile cloud gaming".

 

[March Climber]

Business in general seems to be a mess across many companies.

Fixed.

It’s all a case of the profit graph line must always go up.

 

[Three]

So they are aware of the market they are competing in .

Why should I care about how they presented themselves in front of court to complete their acquisition? Considering the other side was making it out to be a "monopoly in mobile cloud gaming".

It was how he presented himself to the public, the court only exposed the internal emails that showed the exact opposite. You don't need to care about any of it, that's just how it was.

 

[Ozriel]

He's right though. Google, Amazon, Meta and now Bytedance (tiktok company) have all struggled to enter gaming. Not long ago Phil was trying to make some of them out to be the boogeyman who were going to take over (while internally discussing Sony as their "only real competitor" in emails of course). It's relevant to mention that as it turns out all these companies were not a threat at all despite some claiming they were.

When did Spencer mention Bytedance as a threat to them in gaming?

 

[Cyberpunkd]

But Nuverse's performance has been patchy. Its best-known game is "Marvel Snap", an online card game that amassed a cult following but was not a commercial hit.

How TF a F2P card game with Marvel IP was not a commercial hit? What sort of money laundering scheme is this?

 

[yurinka]

Google, Amazon, Meta and now Bytedance (tiktok company) have all struggled to enter gaming.

In the list of top grossing companies for game revenues Google is the top 6 thanks to the 30% tax of Google Play, above EA or Nintendo:
https://newzoo.com/resources/rankings/top-25-companies-game-revenues

How TF a F2P card game with Marvel IP was not a commercial hit? What sort of money laundering scheme is this?

It was a big commercial hit that generated over $100M because it's a great card game, uses super popular IPs and not aggresive monetization, you can perfectly play and have fun without paying. It's made by the Heartstone creator refining the formula to make it easier to learn.

It's a very successful game, the most successful cards games as of now, but maybe not in a scale of success big enough for a company like ByteDance, who generates $85.2B/year.

 

[Three]

When did Spencer mention Bytedance as a threat to them in gaming?

He didn't mention Bytedance specifically but if you read post #2 then #3 you'll hopefully get the context.

In the list of top grossing companies for game revenues Google is the top 6 thanks to the 30% tax of Google Play, above EA or Nintendo:
https://newzoo.com/resources/rankings/top-25-companies-game-revenues

Oh absolutely, but we aren't talking about the app store that has existed forever, we're talking mainly about the publishing and content creation part of it.

If we're talking about the app store then google had "entered gaming" way before 2012 making any statements about them doing so past that date kind of stupid.

 

[Bernkastel]

It was how he presented himself to the public, the court only exposed the internal emails that showed the exact opposite. You don't need to care about any of it, that's just how it was.

Why are you so concerned about how he presented his stance in court? It changes nothing.

 

[Three]

Why are you so concerned about how he presented his stance in court? It changes nothing.

Whatever gave you the idea that I'm concerned about anything?

 

[yurinka]

Oh absolutely, but we aren't talking about the app store that has existed forever, we're talking mainly about the publishing and content creation part of it.

If we're talking about the app store then google had "entered gaming" way before 2012 making any statements about them doing so past that date kind of stupid.

Ok, so when you said they "struggled to enter gaming" instead of that you meant "struggled to enter gaming publishing and content creation".

The thing is Google, Amazon, Meta, ByteDance are all mostly platform holders, who like MS, Sony, Nintendo, Tencent or Apple make most of their money from their store, backed finantial strength from non-gaming areas that create some synergies for them. When MS mentioned that their rivals were more people like Amazon, Google etc they meant that, more than game publishing or development.

Regarding publishing, I don't have numbers but I'd say Goggle failed because they only published self published/developed games for Stadia and ended shutting them down.

Amazon, as I remember they had some cancelled game (something common that happens in any publisher) but also released some highly successful MMO.

Meta only publishes for VR as exclusives for their platform and their VR platform is the market leader, so even if I don't have sales numbers of their games (I have about the general VR market, which has been growing and is spected to grow way more in the next few years) I consider it a success.

Regarding ByteDance, Marvel Snap is the top performing card game having generated over $100M and I have no idea about what other games they have but apparently they'll keep for themselves some casual games and will restructure their rest of gaming business firing 700 of their 150,000 employees, shutting down some studio and selling the rest (like Moonton, wich a couple years ago was valued at around $4B, so I assume they had very successful stuff). Not sure if successful or not, but seems that their performance wasn't enough for the context of a company that generates $85B/year. I'd say they were successful but not as profitable as they expected or that didn't grow as they expected.

 

[Tarnished]

Hopefully, this won't affect Snap, the devs have said it won't but it's not like they'd say "Yeah, the game is dead soon, stop buying stuff in the shop". I started playing it about 3 months ago and I really enjoy it, it's definitely my favorite card game and it actually has a really good F2P user experience. Playing in pools 1 & 2 was very fun, then it went downhill at the start of series 3 which is a massive grind and needs to be improved, I'm now about 50% of series 3 complete and having fun again.

 

[Three]

Ok, so when you said they "struggled to enter gaming" instead of that you meant "struggled to enter gaming publishing and content creation".

The thing is Google, Amazon, Meta, ByteDance are all mostly platform holders, who like MS, Sony, Nintendo, Tencent or Apple make most of their money from their store, backed finantial strength from non-gaming areas that create some synergies for them. When MS mentioned that their rivals were more people like Amazon, Google etc they meant that, more than game publishing or development.

This would have made no sense though in terms of 'entering gaming' because the App store and Google Play have been dominant for well over a decade. So them being a new threat and entering gaming was related to buying publishers or studios associated with the gaming that we know, not them already making money from their mobile OS platforms.

Regarding publishing, I don't have numbers but I'd say Goggle failed because they only published self published/developed games for Stadia and ended shutting them down.

SG&E studios like Typhoon barely made many games to begin with but what they did was not exclusive to Stadia as far as I remember. That's if I understood what you're saying correctly.

Amazon, as I remember they had some cancelled game (something common that happens in any publisher) but also released some highly successful MMO.

Some of their games didn't perform badly but the Amazon Games division isn't doing amazing either. They weren't immune to the layoffs.

Meta only publishes for VR as exclusives for their platform and their VR platform is the market leader, so even if I don't have sales numbers of their games (I have about the general VR market, which has been growing and is spected to grow way more in the next few years) I consider it a success.

Overall I would say that it's been successful even if they too have had big cuts at Reality Labs and their game studios.

With all these companies it was more the irrational fear that somebody like facebook would buy massive publishers if MS didn’t. That weird take actually existed in the past if you remember. Reality is that the likes of Meta weren't entering gaming the way most people envisaged, not whether Quest, the App store etc are successful or not.

Regarding ByteDance, Marvel Snap is the top performing card game having generated over $100M and I have no idea about what other games they have but apparently they'll keep for themselves some casual games and will restructure their rest of gaming business firing 700 of their 150,000 employees, shutting down some studio and selling the rest (like Moonton, wich a couple years ago was valued at around $4B, so I assume they had very successful stuff). Not sure if successful or not as a whole, but seems that their performance wasn't enough for the context of a company that generates $85B/year.

Hopefully everybody lands on their feet and the games continue to do well.

 

[yurinka]

This would have made no sense though in terms of 'entering gaming' because the App store and Google Play have been dominant for well over a decade. So them being a new threat and entering gaming was related to buying publishers or studios associated with the gaming that we know, not them already making money from their mobile OS platforms.

SG&E studios like Typhoon barely made many games to begin with but what they did was not exclusive to Stadia as far as I remember. That's if I understood what you're saying correctly.

Some of their games didn't perform badly but the Amazon Games division isn't doing amazing either. They weren't immune to the layoffs.

Overall I would say that it's been successful even if they too have had big cuts at Reality Labs and their game studios.

With all these companies it was more the irrational fear that somebody like facebook would buy massive publishers if MS didn’t. That weird take actually existed in the past if you remember. Reality is that the likes of Meta weren't entering gaming the way most people envisaged, not whether Quest, the App store etc are successful or not.

Hopefully everybody lands on their feet and the games continue to do well.

Phil Spencer wasn't talking about buying publishers or studios at all, he was talking about chasing a multibillion userbase going with their ecosystem going beyond their own console (and since the majority of gamers are in mobile, he was talking mostly about mobile) basically via cloud gaming:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/5/2...itors-phil-spencer-cloud-gaming-amazon-google

He mentioned Google and Amazon there because they are the main (western) competitors of Azure in the business of renting servers and servers related services trying to assume that would help them in cloud gaming and also trying to downplay in a bad PR stunt their main competitor, the game sub that has over twice the userbase of GP and also has cloud gaming (plus most cloud gaming patents, that MS has to pay to use).

Regarding Stadia, they had games under development in-house as the Jade Raymond projects team that left, created Haven and later sold it to Sony. Both the gamedev tech they started to build at Google and the 3 game pitches they had at Google (Sony wanted all 3, Haven decided to start only with Fairgame$). Stadia/Raymond's team also had 2nd party games, some of which were published as Stadia exclusives. When Stadia did shut down, they gave the rights to the devs so they could port them to other platforms (example: Gylt, I know personally the people who run their studio).

Regarding Amazon or Meta yes, they had some failed projects and firings, like many other publishers. In any case, Phil isn't worried about Amazon or Meta massively buying publishers, because he knows they don't need it and don't intend to do it. He also knows that only Sony and Nintendo would be the one who if acquiring someone would keep them away from Xbox. People like Tencent or Embracer may acquire studios or publishers but will keep them 3rd party because they have their business diversified across all platforms.

 

[Three]

Phil Spencer wasn't talking about buying publishers or studios at all, he was talking about chasing a multibillion userbase going with their ecosystem going beyond their own console (and since the majority of gamers are in mobile, he was talking mostly about mobile) basically via cloud gaming:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/5/2...itors-phil-spencer-cloud-gaming-amazon-google

He mentioned Google and Amazon there because they are the main (western) competitors of Azure in the business of renting servers and servers related services trying to assume that would help them in cloud gaming and also trying to downplay in a bad PR stunt their main competitor, the game sub that has over twice the userbase of GP and also has cloud gaming (plus most cloud gaming patents, that MS has to pay to use).

He wasn't but that's what was the talking point from everyone who read what was said because that's where everyone saw it going. You said it yourself, via cloud gaming. That required content and studios and has nothing to do with what was already a successful app or play store. It was more about content acquisition for entering markets not existing ones. This was inferred even in the article you posted

"That means Microsoft is getting ready for future console wars that will take place in data centers"

Everybody thought that the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon would be entering the cloud gaming space and buying publishers and studios previously known for console and PC content and that was where the "real" competition was. They sort of did with Luna and Stadia but it wasn't what people had envisaged with them throwing their weight around. Just search "MS rather than facebook" on gaf and see. I know Phil didn't actually see Amazon, Google and Facebook as the real threat and was belittling the actual real competition, the internal emails said as much too. That's my point.

 

[phant0m]

Gaming business seems to be a mess across many companies.

Google killed Stadia
Meta laid off ALOT of people
Amazon too

Etc.

Making modern games is really expensive and there's SO much content available everyone is competing for play time/engagement time. people only have so much time in the day and either move quickly between games or just stick to "their" game

 

[yurinka]

He wasn't but that's what was the talking point from everyone who read what was said because that's where everyone saw it going. You said it yourself, via cloud gaming. That required content and studios and has nothing to do with what was already a successful app or play store. It was more about content acquisition for entering markets not existing ones. This was inferred even in the article you posted

"That means Microsoft is getting ready for future console wars that will take place in data centers"

Everybody thought that the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon would be entering the cloud gaming space and buying publishers and studios previously known for console and PC content and that was where the "real" competition was. They sort of did with Luna and Stadia but it wasn't what people had envisaged with them throwing their weight around. Just search "MS rather than facebook" on gaf and see. I know Phil didn't actually see Amazon, Google and Facebook as the real threat and was belittling the actual real competition, the internal emails said as much too. That's my point.

Most games available in Amazon, XBL, PSN, Google Play, Apple App Store, PS cloud gaming, Xcloud, Stadia, Luna etc. aren't from their platform holders, they are 3rd party. No need to acquire publishers and devs to get their stores or services with content.

Devs and publishers are the ones who go to chase their audience, to stores or services that give them a ton of customers. Sony and Nintendo have them in console, Amazon have them buying physical games, Apple and Google have them in the mobile gaming market (the main one where Sony or MS want to expand in the future).

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Update: