Featuring games on its platform would boost advertising
revenue as well as the amount of time users spend on the app — one of the
world's most popular with more than one billion monthly active users.
Boasting a tech-savvy population with 70 percent of its
citizens under the age of 35, Vietnam is an attractive market for social media
platforms such as TikTok, Meta Platforms's Facebook and Alphabet's YouTube and
Google.
TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, plans to roll
out gaming more widely in Southeast Asia, the people said. That move could come
as early as the third quarter, said two of them.
The sources declined to be identified as the information has
yet to be publicly disclosed.
A TikTok representative said the company has tested bringing
HTML5 games, a common form of minigame, to its app through tie-ups with
third-party game developers and studios such as Zynga, but declined to comment
on its plans for Vietnam or its broader gaming ambitions.
"We're always looking at ways to enrich our platform and
regularly test new features and integrations that bring value to our
community," the representative said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment.
Reuters was not able to learn TikTok's plans for rolling out
gaming features in other markets. Although TikTok users can watch games being
streamed, in most regions they are not able to play games within the TikTok
app. In the United States, only a couple of games appear to be available.©
Reuters
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