A video game from the creator of TikTok

Hi all, this is Zheping in Hong Kong. ByteDance’s oft-troubled quest to conquer gaming in China may finally have a worthy champion. But firs [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi all, this is Zheping in Hong Kong. ByteDance’s oft-troubled quest to conquer gaming in China may finally have a worthy champion. But first… Today’s must-reads: • Apple won a court ruling [over its App Store’s policies]( • A startup is seeking to keep lies from [triggering the next bank run]( • A tank storage company [suffered a data breach in Malaysia]( Bang banging on the door TikTok’s owner learned the hard way that cooking up a blockbuster video game isn’t the same as serving 15-second viral clips. ByteDance Ltd. has a history of buying game studios and exclusive distribution rights — it knows the value of an engaged and spendthrift gamer audience — but that has yet to bear much fruit. Still, the Beijing-based company persists in its effort to chip away at domestic industry powerhouses Tencent Holdings Ltd. and NetEase Inc., hoping to [jumpstart]( a games business much as it disrupted social media with TikTok and its sibling app Douyin. Things took a positive turn last week when China’s censors approved ByteDance’s biggest mobile game for a domestic rollout. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a battle arena title that generates an [estimated]( $12 million in sales and 4 million downloads every month. In 2021, ByteDance [acquired]( the game’s developer, Moonton, for around $4 billion, months before Chinese regulators stepped up scrutiny of splashy acquisitions by big tech firms. Mobile Legends has been an unequivocal hit since its 2016 release, especially in Southeast Asia, but it has never been available officially in China. The market for battle arena games on the mainland is currently dominated by Tencent — mainly Honor of Kings on mobile and League of Legends by subsidiary Riot Games Inc. on PC. With ByteDance’s backing, Mobile Legends offers a viable rival to Tencent’s games in China. Honor of Kings owes much of its success to Tencent’s WeChat acting as an informal marketing channel. You wouldn’t want to miss out when your WeChat buddies get mic’d up and slash their way through an arena battle. ByteDance’s Douyin could create a similar effect. Until now, the company hasn’t had the incentive to juice the popularity of any particular title, opting instead to let its AI recommendations generate money from brands and marketers. Because Mobile Legends is a proven hit elsewhere, it’s a relatively safe bet for ByteDance in China. The company could use a win here. Like most of its peers, ByteDance had to cut thousands of jobs and forfeit loss-making businesses to survive two years of China’s unsparing regulatory crackdowns and Covid-induced restrictions. Chinese regulators also had stopped approving new games for months in 2021 and 2022. Last June, ByteDance [shut down]( a Shanghai games studio it acquired just three years earlier, as it retreated from the development of costly high-end games. By contrast, Moonton is a rare successful investment that ByteDance has left to operate in near-autonomy. There’s a side storyline in this drama. Tencent has a short-video service on WeChat that competes with ByteDance’s biggest apps, and it’s gaining momentum. ByteDance’s foray into gaming is an apparent retaliatory strike. It’s far too early to talk of ByteDance dethroning Honor of Kings or other Tencent titles, but China’s games market is finally starting to show signs of renewed life. —[Zheping Huang](mailto:zhuang245@bloomberg.net) The big story Silicon Valley startups are bracing for a[tough summer ahead](, plagued by mass layoffs, plummeting venture capital investment and the chaotic collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. More than 400 unicorns haven’t raised new funding since 2021; when they do, many will need to consider taking lower valuations. Get fully charged Watch: Margins and AI are the two main things to [watch for this tech earnings season](, said Mark Mahaney, an Evercore managing director, in a TV interview on Bloomberg Technology. Drone firm Aerodyne tapped Citigroup to help arrange a funding round [ahead of an IPO](. Taiwan’s industrial production plunged in March amid [a slump in global demand](. 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