Everything is a games platform

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Everything is a games platform.

Not just the classic platforms like console, PC, mobile and browser, you can now play games on Discord, LinkedIn and Telegram. Over the years, various social, entertainment and tech companies have tried to get in on gaming to mixed success.

Snap eventually shut down its games division. TikTok experimented with games on the app, before focusing on its games marketing potential. Discord previously tried becoming a games marketplace before changing its strategy. While they didn’t lead to success, it’s clear games were seen as an opportunity to engage users and maybe even generate a new revenue stream.

These social apps have so far failed to match the success of Tencent’s WeChat Minigames, hugely popular in China. Jakub Remiar wrote an article last month that showed there were 845.4 million WeChat users in China, with Minigames generating $2.3 billion in revenue during the first half of 2024, up 60% year-over-year. The Minigames market is expected to surpass 500 million users in China this year, with an average daily play session of 60 minutes per day, per user.

So far, WeChat appears to be an outlier of a chat app becoming a games platform. I’ve said before that high levels of engagement in a social platform does not necessarily equate to easy success for a games division. Social and tech companies need to have a clear, coherent long-term strategy led by industry experts, and be willing to make significant investments over time in people and quality content. 

WeChat’s success comes from that investment, and perhaps its unique position as an ‘everything’ app, which has yet to be seen in the West.

The next wave

Elsewhere, a number of new players have entered the games space. The New York Times has found massive success with its games, with titles like the acquired Wordle accessible through its website, attracting tens of millions of weekly users.

LinkedIn is trying its hand at games, while Discord is back with Activities opening up to all developers to create experiences on the platform. Netflix wants to become a platform for games investing heavily in bringing titles to its subscription service, though is currently going through a shakeup of its gaming operations under new games president Alain Tascan.

Then there’s Telegram, which is attracting an increasing amount of attention as a games platform and a haven for web3. It has a user base of approximately 950 million, and, according to The Open Network (TON) Foundation’s games lead Inal Kardan, around 20% of those users are playing at least one game each month.

Speaking to our sister-site BlockchainGamer.biz, Gamee chairman Bozena Rezab previously had 300,000 daily active users playing its mini-games. The new version of Telegram has seen its audience grow to 55 million users. The report warns that much of this activity could be driven by bots, however.

Whether these attempts to provide new destinations for gaming prove fruitful in the long-term remains to be seen. Oftentimes, the business case for platform holders outweighs the one for developers, ultimately bringing about their failure.

But everyone, it seems, wants in on games.