The 34-year-old left TikTok last month after two years with the firm, and his exit comes as TikTok and its Chinese owner ByteDance are aggressively entering the $300 billion global gaming market to take on rival Tencent Holdings. Expanding, an effort that has yielded mixed results so far.
It also reflects the growing interest among entrepreneurs and investors in blockchain games – a new generation of online games built on blockchain that allow players to trade in the form of commodities. non-fungible token (NFT).
Fung, whose new venture is called Meta0, said he left TikTok after seeing an opportunity to offer a solution to the different nature of the existing infrastructure available to developers looking to build blockchain games.
“Right now, if you look at any developers, when they implement NFTs or blockchain in their games, they have to choose a single blockchain, be it Polygon or Solana or Binance Smart Chain. But there is a need for a more interoperable option. Imagine,” he told Reuters. Referring to the popular existing blockchain Hong Kong.
“So we decided, let’s do it. Let’s co-found this company. Let’s leave our cushy corporate life at TikTok and take a bigger risk,” said Fung, who was based in Shenzhen and worked for TikTok. Reported to Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas. ,
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Meta0’s founding team consists of six members in addition to the two cofounders, and the firm has just closed the first round of funding, Fung said.
He declined to disclose details of the other co-founders, the rest of the team or the investment. He added that the company is looking to issue tokens as well as raise funds from venture capitalists and strategic investors.
big names clear
Advocates of blockchain games say they will disrupt the gaming industry as cryptocurrencies could make virtual goods more tradable and even distribute game ownership to players. But blockchain games are also sometimes associated with scams, and the virtual economy of some games collapses soon after players buy them.
Most of the established gaming companies like Tencent, Sony and Microsoft are yet to make any big bets on blockchain games.
As global head of strategy and operations for gaming for TikTok, Fung was tasked with expanding gaming content and testing new features such as hosting mini-games on the app.
With the acquisition of ByteDance, TikTok and ByteDance expanded aggressively in gaming during Fung’s tenure.
Including the $4 billion purchase of gaming studio MoontonAnd TikTok is trying out the mini-game feature on its app.
Efforts have seen both successes and failures. Last month, data tracking firm Sensor Tower said that ByteDance’s portfolio of mobile games has generated more than $1 billion in worldwide revenue over the past 12 months.
However, ByteDance also liquidated its Shanghai-based 101 studio last month, laying off half of its more than 300 employees. A product of its 2019 acquisition of Mokun Technology, 101 Studios was the first development unit that ByteDance shut down as it struggled to perform.
Fung, who headed the e-sports units at Alibaba Group Holding and Electronic Arts in Asia before joining TikTok, declined to comment when asked who might replace him at TikTok.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Blockchain gaming is a hot investment trend
Despite warnings from some in the industry, blockchain games have become one of the hottest investment trends discussed by crypto tycoons from Silicon Valley to Dubai.
before recently
crypto market downturnAccording to a report by investment banking firm Drake Star Partners in April, the blockchain gaming industry raised a record $1.2 billion in the first quarter. Last year, a total of $3.6 billion was raised for the sector.
“We have created a protocol for game developers, and we take a flexible, blockchain-agnostic approach to the development of their games,” said Fung, discussing the future prospects for blockchain gaming.
“With a protocol that we are developing, developers can easily build on their game-leveraging strengths of different blockchains, and allow users the flexibility to move their NFTs cross-chain.”