ByteDance, the parent company of the famous social media app TikTok, has agreed to acquire Moonton Technology.
The acquisition valued the Shanghai-based studio at a whopping $4 billion.
ByteDance has a roster of subsidiary companies and one of them is Nuverse, and it is Nuverse who closed the deal with Moonton Technology. This acquisition is a step forward for the tiktok company to gain ground in the gaming industry. ByteDance is famous for short video clips on social media apps like Douyin and TikTok. With this acquisition, it is clear that ByteDance is now eyeing the gaming industry and will be a direct competitor to Tencent.
The chinese company shared its thought about the acquisition, “Through cross-team collaboration and drawing on lessons and insights from its own rapid growth, Moonton provides the strategic support needed to accelerate Nuverse’s global gaming offerings.”
Moonton has made it clear in an internal memo that it will continue to work independently from ByteDance. An important consideration here is that Moonton Technology was founded by an ex-employee of Tencent in 2014. The Shanghai-based gaming studio is famous for its multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game Mobile Legends.
However, in 2017 Moonton Technology had to face multiple lawsuits from Riot Games for copyright infringement. Riot Games made allegations that Mobile Legends was a clone of League of Legends. Riot Games later won the lawsuit in 2018 and was awarded $2.89 million.
Recently the company behind Tiktok has made quite an effort in the domain of video games. Last November it launched Pixmain and Danjuan Games. Pixmain to serve as ByteDance’s publishing arm while Danjuan Games was built as a casual gaming platform.
Previously, ByteDance acquired PixDance, Ohayoo, and Nuverse to gain ground in the video game industry. In near future, it is quite plausible that the tiktok company will turn out as the biggest competitor of Tencent in the Chinese gaming industry.
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