TikTok had been making efforts to enable more gaming content on their platform but due the the regulations and restrictions being posed by the Chinese government it is getting more and more difficult for the platform to do that.
The company was experimenting with very small games that could be played for a few minutes before moving on to the next one. This seems like a very good idea where instead of watching a video you get to play a game for a short time. The main company behind Tiktok "ByteDance" also acquired a new studio in order to get more first party games into the system. "Moonton Technologies" was the new studio that was acquired but now it would seem that they have started some serious downsizing and most of the staff is undergoing lay-off or restructuring.
ByteDance still has to keep some staff that are maintaining the ongoing games that are already on the platform but due the current events those people would be looking for other means of survival as well as they would know that they could be the next in line. The main issue in China is that gaming companies need to get the games approved from the Chinese Government. This is a very rigorous process and doesn't really work out that well for many companies.
Chinese Government might have a very small number of people working on this which makes the process of getting the game approval very slow. For example in July 2022 they only approved 172 games as compared to 755 games last year. Because if these strategies gaming industry is losing a lot of revenue and as this business requires a lot of cash in flow to make sure the companies keep on paying the developers this business doesn't seem to be very sustainable in China at the moment.
Lets see how ByteDance and TikTok take their strategy from here in the future. Will they keep on trying to enter and pierce the gaming industry or will they just recline to their video streaming service.
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