ByteDance has recently been recruiting gaming talents and setting up its own plan to develop mobile games, Caijing‘s Late Post reports.
The new game developing plan, Oasis project, is currently spearheaded by the company’s strategy and investment department. The Oasis project team has more than 100 members and is currently working on the demos of nine games, according to Caijing.
ByteDance, the company behind viral short-video sharing app TikTok and news aggregation app Jinri Toutiao, declined to comment when contacted by KrASIA.
Earlier this year, the Beijing-based company bought two game publishers, Mokun Technology and Shanghe Internet Technology. These acquisitions were widely seen as a move to challenge Tencent, its arch rival and the largest gaming company in China.
Though ByteDance has the capacities, including distribution channel, agents and research and development team, to develop its own games, it’s unlikely to pose an immediate threat to Tencent, Liao Xuhua, a gaming analyst at Beijing-based data consultancy Analysys, told KrASIA.
“To be honest, a 100-member R&D team for heavy games is rather shabby,” he said, adding that it’s getting harder and harder for heavy game research and development team to survive because of the worsening prospect of the industry.
