After years of extreme competition marked by many legal disagreements and public spats, Tencent and ByteDance, 2 of China’s biggest tech companies, appear to have actually buried the hatchet. Beginning Jan. 21, Tencent will allow users to livestream their gameplay of “Honor of Kings,” among China’s most popular video games with almost 150 million active regular monthly users, on ByteDance-owned app Douyin, the Chinese variation of TikTok. In a declaration, Tencent revealed strategies to welcome the prominent XYG e-sports club to livestream “Honor of Kings” throughout a technical screening stage from Jan. 14 to Jan. 17. This will be followed by a three-day livestream occasion beginning Jan. 18, including Zhang Daxian, China’s leading video gaming livestreamer. Early indications of a thaw in between the 2 business emerged in December. Zhang, who increased to popularity on the Tencent-backed video game livestreaming platform Huya, began streaming on Douyin and previewed “DreamStar,” a brand-new Tencent video game. Gao Dongxu, primary expert at EntBrains, a domestic consulting company focusing on the show business, stated the partnership was a “win-win” for both business. Speaking With Sixth Tone, Gao discussed that while the brand-new channel permits Tencent to promote “Honor of Kings” and bring in more gamers, it likewise enhances ByteDance’s development in the livestreaming sector. He included that the collaboration would enable livestreamers to increase their earnings streams. “It’s not simply a brand-new channel; it’s a premium channel for Tencent,” he stated. The collaboration likewise comes at a time when ByteDance is supposedly downsizing its video gaming sector efforts, with strategies to downsize its video gaming branch’s labor force, stop specific jobs under advancement, and offer its existing video game titles. Both ByteDance and Tencent did not react to Sixth Tone’s ask for remarks. In domestic media, the longstanding fight in between the tech giants has actually been called the touteng fight– a portmanteau of Toutiao, ByteDance’s app platform, and Tengxun, Tencent’s Chinese name. Covering different organization domains from brief videos to mobile video games, the competition reached a peak in 2018 when ByteDance’s creator Zhang Yiming implicated Tencent of content stopping and app plagiarism. Tencent’s creator Ma Huateng defined the accusations as “slander.” Service outlet Huxiu reported that in between 2019 and 2021, Tianyancha, a business database, taped 948 conflicts in between the 2 business, mainly including ByteDance’s problems about Tencent obstructing links to its apps and Tencent’s counterclaims of ByteDance infringing on its copyrighted material. In a now-deleted 2021 post, ByteDance implicated Tencent of avoiding more than 49 million users from sharing Douyin links on Tencent’s messaging apps WeChat and QQ. Obstructing material from rivals has actually been a well-known and enduring practice amongst web giants, causing a web of constraints within their particular communities. This even captured the attention of regulative authorities, triggering a regulation in 2021 for platforms to take apart such barriers. In the wake of increased regulative pressure, significant web business, consisting of Tencent, started crucial reforms. Tencent now enables WeChat users direct access to Alibaba’s e-commerce platform. Editor: Apurva. (Header image: VCG)
Tencent and ByteDance Pause Feud, Team Up to Livestream Games
