Jason Fung, the former head of TikTok’s gaming division, is establishing Meta0, a blockchain gaming firm.
Despite the caution of industry titans, Jason Fung, the co-founder of a blockchain gaming startup and the former head of TikTok’s gaming section, told Reuters in an interview that the company is beginning as a result of the rising interest in blockchain games.
After working at TikTok for two years, the 34-year-old stopped working there last month. In an effort to compete with competitor Tencent Holdings, TikTok and its Chinese owner ByteDance have aggressively expanded into the $300 billion global gaming business at the same time as his departure. This relentless growth has produced a variety of outcomes thus far.
The rising enthusiasm among investors and business owners in blockchain gaming is also demonstrated by a new generation of online games built on blockchains that enable players to exchange items in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Fung, whose new company is called Meta0, asserted that he left TikTok because he saw an opportunity to address the segregated nature of the infrastructure options now available to developers looking to create blockchain games.
However, take into account this more compatible option: In a Hong Kong interview with Reuters, he referenced well-known modern blockchains.
“So we decided to move forward. Let’s launch this company together. Fung, who worked for Vanessa Pappas, the chief operating officer of TikTok, and was stationed in Shenzhen, said, “Let’s quit my cozy corporate position at TikTok and take a big risk.
According to Fung, Meta0 has completed its first round of funding and has a founding staff of six people in addition to the two co-founders.
Regarding the other co-founder, the rest of the team, or the money, he steadfastly declined to divulge any information. He said the company planned to sell tokens in addition to seeking money from strategic and venture capital investors.
Proponents of blockchain games claim that the gaming industry will be affected because cryptocurrency may make virtual items more tradable and even transfer game ownership to players. Some games’ virtual economies have collapsed soon after player buy-in, and blockchain games have occasionally been connected to scams.
The bulk of well-known gaming companies, like Sony, Microsoft, Tencent, and Tencent, have not yet placed any big wagers on blockchain games.
As TikTok’s global head of strategy and operations for gaming, Fung was tasked with creating gaming content and testing novel features including hosting mini-games on the app.
Under Fung’s direction, TikTok and ByteDance aggressively entered the gaming market, with ByteDance purchasing Moonton, a gaming studio, for $4 billion, and TikTok experimenting with mini-game components on its app.
In the attempts, there have been both triumphs and failures. ByteDance’s portfolio of mobile games generated more than $1 billion in sales internationally over the previous 12 months, according to data tracking company Sensor Tower’s report from last month.
But in addition, ByteDance shut down its 101 Studio in Shanghai last month and fired half of its 300+ staff members. The first development branch of the corporation to dissolve because of performance concerns was 101 Studio, a result of ByteDance’s 2019 acquisition of Mokun Technology.
Fung, who before joining TikTok headed the e-sports units of Alibaba Group Holding and Electronic Arts in Asia, declined to comment when asked who would follow him there.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
