Chinese company ByteDance, the owner of popular video service TikTok, has agreed to sell video game developer Shanghai Moonton Technology to Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group, Bloomberg writes, citing an internal company document.
The parties have already entered into an agreement and intend to finalise the agreement in the near future, Moonton CEO Zhang Yun Fan said in a memo seen by the agency. The CEO himself and members of his management team will keep their jobs, while other employees will be offered “various incentive options.”
The memo does not disclose the financial terms of the deal. According to a knowledgeable Bloomberg source, the companies valued Moonton at about $6 billion.
ByteDance acquired Moonton in 2021 for about $4 billion. The sale of this asset will allow it to focus on developing generative artificial intelligence technologies.
Montoon specialises in producing multiplayer games for mobile devices. Its game “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang”, which is particularly popular in Southeast Asian countries, has been installed more than 1.5 billion times.
Savvy Games is a unit of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund (PIF).