TikTok wants to enter the games market and tests in Vietnam, says agency

TikTok is running trials in Vietnam so users can play games on its video app, in a move that is part of the company’s plans to enter the video game market, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Featuring games on the TikTok video platform would increase advertising revenue as well as the amount of time its more than 1 billion users spend on the app.

TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, also plans to release games more widely in Southeast Asia, the sources said. This movement could occur as early as the third quarter, said two of them.

A TikTok representative said the company has tested simpler, HTML5-based games for its app through partnerships with third-party developers and studios like Zynga. The company, however, did not express any interest in a stronger bet on the video game market.

In the United States, only a few games appear to have been released, including Zynga’s “Disco Loco 3D,” a music and dance challenge game, and “Garden of Good,” where players grow vegetables to trigger TikTok donations for the non-profit organization Feeding America.

According to two sources, TikTok plans to be primarily based on the ByteDance game suite. Users of Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, have been able to play games on the platform since 2019.

While the company starts with minigames, the ambitions go beyond that, said one of the people who had direct knowledge of the matter.