ByteDance Owner of TikTok Is Reportedly Building a Steam Competitor Called GameTop

Valve could soon have a new, powerful competitor for its gaming service Steam, as the Chinese internet company Bytedance, which also includes TikTok, is planning its own games marketplace, according to media reports.

Tough competition for Steam from China?

Job advertisements from Bytedance have recently appeared on job portals in China, according to which the company is working on a new gaming platform called “GameTop”. The TikTok parent company is now looking for new employees to help set up the Steam alternative. Anyone who thinks that Bytedance will only target its home market of China with the service is wrong.

According to the job advertisements, Bytedance expressly wants to serve “overseas” markets with the new GameTop service, which usually means western countries. Some time ago, Bytedance began to pursue a changed strategy in the games market after previously attempting to gain a foothold with huge financial expenditure.

Bytedance wants to address international markets

Instead of pumping huge amounts of money into marketing and purchasing game companies and franchises, the new head of Bytedance’s games division is now moving forward in a more small-scale and at the same time more efficiency-oriented manner, according to the Chinese magazine, among others ITHome.

GameTop is apparently intended to be built up with a lot of resources to become an internationally attractive alternative to Steam. According to the job advertisements, Bytedance is, among other things, aiming to equip the service with a profile system, awards, points, social features and AI functions for creators in order to retain users in the long term and encourage them to actively use it. If this succeeds, GameTop could sooner or later leave other Steam alternatives such as GOG or the Epic Games Store behind.

Steam is still the undisputed market leader among gaming platforms in the PC sector. However, there has recently been a lot of back and forth about Valve’s strategic decisions and the company’s interventions in operations and the selection of games available via Steam, which are damaging the service’s previously flawless image.