After developing social media apps like TikTok, ByteDance made a big push into the gaming market with its Nuverse brand. Now the company may be reversing course.
Nuverse is a developer behind titles like Marvel Snap, One Piece: The Voyage, and Warhammer 40,000: Lost Crusade. According to a report from Reuters, ByteDance is scaling back Nuverse and looking to sell off Moonton Technology, its other development brand.
“We regularly review our businesses and make adjustments to center on long-term strategic growth areas,” a ByteDance spokesperson told Reuters. “Following a recent review, we’ve made the difficult decision to restructure our gaming business.”
The move could affect hundreds of people working for Nuverse and Moonton Technology, as ByteDance looks to be pivoting away from the gaming industry entirely.
The news came as a surprise for Nuverse employees, per Reuters, who learned about the restructuring with all of us on Nov. 27, but ByteDance seemed to start moving in this direction earlier this month. On November 9 TechCrunch reported that the company had laid off hundreds working on Pico, its brand focused on VR development. According to the report, this will not affect casual titles from its publisher Ohayoo and the games that are playable inside of TikTok.
Marvel Snap goes on
Marvel Snap is one of the genuine successes that have come out of Nuverse in recent years. In the wake of the Reuters report, the official Marvel Snap account on X shared a tweet saying the game “will continue to operate and flourish in the future” despite any changes happening at Nuverse. How that will exactly play out remains to be seen.
Marvel Snap was our mobile game of the year in 2022, and it’s definitely grown a healthy fanbase since then. The game made $50 million in its first six months on the market, and it’s still one of the most compelling mobile card games out there.
