The world of gaming is going through, to say the least, a peculiar time. Starting with the positives, the year 2023 will be remembered as one of the most prolific in terms of both quantity and quality of titles (Starfield, Baldur’s Gate 3, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom being good examples of this). However, this hasn’t stopped companies from laying off employees left and right. Now it’s ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, planning a deep restructuring of Nuverse, their gaming brand.
A company spokesperson explained that “following a recent review,” ByteDance has “made the difficult decision to restructure” all its gaming-related businesses (Nuverse). Sources close to Reuters claim that ByteDance’s intention is to completely exit the sector. Furthermore, games that were still in development will also be definitively canceled next December.
The only surviving entity from this withdrawal will be Ohayoo, a label dedicated to publishing casual titles and operating through Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Certainly, ByteDance had made a strong bet on gaming. In October 2022, we learned about the company’s plans to dedicate a section within TikTok to games. We’ve also seen them acquire major companies like Shanghai Moonton Technology, the developer behind the popular mobile game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. The studio was bought in 2021 for $4 billion.
On the other hand, Nuverse was a very important part of ByteDance. We can’t forget it’s behind powerful titles like Marvel Snap, which has already boasted generating over a hundred million dollars in revenue. For now, the official Marvel Snap account on X has called for calm and stated that “SNAP will continue to operate and improve in the future.”
