Alibaba Group Holding has discontinued the game engine project at its video gaming subsidiary, prompting the departure of another founding member of the unit, as the e-commerce giant pares down investment in its non-core businesses.
That development was revealed by Wu Yunyang, a co-founder of Lingxi Games who was responsible for the Alibaba subsidiary’s Ant Engine project, in his personal blog post earlier this week. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Wu, who wrote that he had left the unit on Monday, said his departure was because he felt that the company “no longer wants to develop its own game client engine, [or] does not agree with my development plan for the Ant Engine”.
A game engine is a software development framework, also known as a game architecture, that provides settings and configurations to optimise and simplify how video games are created on a variety of programming languages. Examples of game engines include Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, Unity from Unity Technologies and Cocos from Chinese firm Cocos Technologies.
An aerial view of Alibaba Group Holding’s headquarters in Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province. Photo: Agence France-Presse
“Perhaps Alibaba’s gaming unit has more urgent things to do now, and thus cannot wait for the benefits [Ant Engine] would bring in three to five years,” Wu said.
Alibaba did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The company’s Hong Kong-listed shares on Wednesday closed 2.43 per cent lower to HK$76.15.
Zhan Zhonghui, who headed Lingxi Games, and co-founder Chen Weian stepped down in March. Zhan was replaced by an experienced, albeit younger, video game producer Zhou Bingshu.
A screenshot of mobile game Three Kingdoms Tactics. Photo: Alibaba
In his blog post, Wu pointed out that Alibaba’s flagship mobile game Three Kingdoms Tactics and other titles are still based on its own codes and old self-developed game engine. There was no plan to migrate these games to other commercial engines, he wrote.
A veteran of China’s video games industry, Wu established Guangzhou-based studio Ejoy with Zhan and Chen in 2011 after working for nearly a decade at NetEase, China’s No 2 video gaming company. In 2017, Ejoy was acquired by Alibaba and renamed Lingxi Games.
After that acquisition, Wu stepped down from management and focused on developing a modern game engine for the company.
Launched in 2019, Three Kingdoms Tactics made more than US$1 billion in its first two years of release. The game remains popular, ranking seventh among China-developed titles in terms of monthly overseas revenue growth in March, according to data from Sensor Tower.
A screenshot of various mobile games developed by Alibaba Group Holding subsidiary Lingxi Games. Photo Handout
Alibaba’s latest move at Lingxi Games comes as other Big Tech companies, including TikTok owner ByteDance and Kuaishou Technology, have scaled back their video gaming operations amid economic headwinds and regulatory pressure.
Last November, ByteDance slashed hundreds of jobs at its video gaming studio Nuverse after telling employees that it would close most game projects that have not been released online.
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