A source familiar with the situation told AFP on Monday that Chinese tech giant and TikTok owner ByteDance is laying off hundreds of employees in its gaming division. The move represents a retreat from the competitive video gaming industry.
According to the source, Nuverse, a video game publisher that is a subsidiary of Beijing-based ByteDance, is currently conducting a round of layoffs that will affect “several hundred people.”
“We regularly review our businesses and make adjustments to center on long-term strategic growth areas. Following a recent review, we’ve made the difficult decision to restructure our gaming business,” a ByteDance spokesperson said in a statement.
The decision to exit the video game industry comes despite significant investments by ByteDance in Nuverse over the last several years in an attempt to catch up to industry leader Tencent.
While the division would be significantly downsized, the current cuts did not represent a complete shutdown of its gaming business, according to an AFP source,.
According to the source, the staff reductions are intended to help ByteDance focus on core businesses and streamline the organization, and games that have not yet been released will be shut down in December.
According to the source, games with active players, such as the popular mobile action title Crystal of Atlan, will continue to operate as the company looks to divest assets.
Nuverse, which was launched in 2019 to challenge Tencent’s dominance, has not achieved the commercial success that ByteDance had hoped for.
Tencent, another Chinese tech behemoth, is the largest revenue player in the global video game sector, dominating the Asian market and investing in game studios around the world.
