In one fell swoop, ByteDance has established a foothold in the Southeast Asian gaming scene. The creator of social media platform TikTok acquired Moonton – the studio behind popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) Mobile Legends – for around US$4 billion.
Spearheaded by its video gaming arm Nuverse, this effort seeks to challenge fellow Chinese tech giant Tencent, which helms MOBA games Honor of Kings and League of Legends.
“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,” ByteDance said in a statement.
The move is a blow to Tencent’s aspirations to strengthen their grip in the region. In fact, sources told Reuters that China’s biggest video games and social media company had a bid for Moonton matched by Bytedance and the rest is history. Observers are hailing it as a massive acquisition for ByteDance.
Moonton chief executive Justin Yuan said that the company will help ByteDance make further inroads into the video game market but will operate independently. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, surpassed 1 billion downloads in November and is arguably the hottest game in Southeast Asia today.
The move is even more spicy given that it sets up ByteDance against gaming behemoth Tencent. The backstory: the founder of Moonton Xu Zhenhua was a former Tencent employee who was forced to pay his former employer 19.4 million yuan (US$3 million) in 2018 for breaking a non-compete clause in his contract.
Revenge, as they say, is best served cold. In this case, it is also worth a thousand times more.
