On March 14th, market news reported that Tencent has taken over some of ByteDance's game business, including the anime tactical competition project (S1) of Shenzhen Yinli Studio and the anime open-world project (J5) of Jiangnan Studio, both of which have been incorporated into Tencent's Guangzi Studio.

It is worth mentioning that Shenzhen Yinli Studio is one of the teams under ByteDance that focuses on game development. It's like helping each other out.

In addition, former ByteDance employees have joined Tencent's newly established subsidiary, Salus Network Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.

Public information shows that Salus Network Technology was registered on December 21, 2023, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tencent Group.

As of press time, neither Tencent nor ByteDance has responded.

Intelligent Collision of "Cloud + AI"

Last November, ByteDance officially announced that its game business, Chaoxi Guangnian, would undergo significant business contraction. Not all in-development products would be cut, excluding UGC platform and AIGC categories, and some confidential projects would remain.

Subsequently, it was reported that ByteDance recently established a new AI department called Flow, which focuses on the AI application layer.

Even the remaining business in the game segment is closely related to AI.

ByteDance no longer intends to let games "jump down" but instead embrace the currently popular AI.

In just half a year, ByteDance has launched seven products in succession, and Zhang Nan, the former CEO of Douyin Group, will lead a team to launch an AI image and video product. In addition, Volcano Engine has built a distributed cloud-native platform and a cloud-native computing platform system.

Can the intelligent collision of "Cloud + AI" make ByteDance, which has been "unknown," a sensation?

Although ByteDance has not responded to Tencent's acquisition, in an internal letter that evening, ByteDance announced a series of organizational adjustments to its game business, including Hua Wei, the head of human resources, taking over as the head of the game business; and Yan Shou, the former head of Chaoxi Guangnian, transferring to the company's finance department.

A relevant person in charge from Chaoxi Guangnian said, "The content is true, and this is a normal personnel adjustment."

For specific information, we will have to wait for Tencent and ByteDance to respond personally!

Tencent Cloud: The First in Gaming Cloud

It has to be said that ByteDance has found a good "father" for its "child".

Last year, according to the latest "China Game Cloud Market Tracking Study, 2022H2," Tencent Cloud won first place in multiple dimensions such as overall scale, number of cloud game streams, and peak CDN traffic bandwidth, thanks to its global node layout and internationally leading game technology accumulation.

Currently, over 90% of leading Chinese game developers choose Tencent Game Cloud, including well-known game giants such as Perfect World, Haoteng Jiake, and Youzu Interactive.

As one of the three major clouds in China, Tencent Cloud relatively focuses on areas such as social media, gaming, and live streaming, while Alibaba Cloud focuses on enterprise-level and industry cloud computing, and Huawei Cloud is more prominent in the government and enterprise sectors.

As early as 2020, Tencent Cloud's first 5G edge computing center was officially opened to the public, becoming the first cloud vendor in China with overall delivery capabilities.

It is reported that the 5G edge computing center can help users quickly launch cloud games and obtain a low-latency, high-quality gaming experience on devices such as mobile phones and PCs.

At present, Tencent Cloud has built cloud infrastructure spanning 26 regions in five continents around the world.

As China's first cloud computing enterprise with over one million servers, Tencent Cloud has over 2,800 acceleration nodes globally, covering more than 70 countries and regions.

Riding on Tencent's "cloud," ByteDance's game business will once again soar to the clouds.

Final Thoughts

It is no longer surprising to see cloud giants interconnecting commercially.

From Ali's Xianyu going live on WeChat Mini Programs, to Taobao supporting WeChat payments, to users being able to join DingTalk meetings through WeChat...

Whether it's "breaking down walls" or helping each other out, acquiring each other's assets, the big players are moving faster to "break the ice."