Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox
TikTok owner ByteDance is reportedly exploring options to sell Shanghai developer Moonton Technology.
Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters the company has been meeting with several potential buyers. ByteDance has declined to comment.
The reported discussions have been happening two years after ByteDance acquired the Moile Legends: Bang Bang developer in a deal that valued the studio at $4 billion. It was a major step forward in the TikTok parent establishing itself in the games industry.
However, the company has been seemingly downsizing its games operations in recent years, with hundreds of redundancies in September 2022 following by further job cuts in December.
These followed the 2021 restructure that cemented Nuverse, ByteDance’s gaming arm that includes Moonton and Chinese developer C4Games, as one of the business’ key pillars.
Moonton has been involved in an ongoing legal dispute with Riot Games, which claims Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a copy of its flagship game League of Legends.
Last year, a US court dismissed Riot Games’ lawsuit and ruled that China would be the most appropriate forum for this dispute. As a result, Moonton is due to face Riot parent Tencent in court.
