On June 17th, multiple presses reported about TikTok owner ByteDance, indicating it had shut down the 101 Studio in Shanghai, one of its main game studios, and half of the employees had left. The 101 Studio had more than 300 employees and according to Jiemian News, which claimed to have the inner source, Byte Dance started the personnel adjustment one month ago.
The 101 Studio was acquired by ByteDance in 2019 from 37 Games and soon became one of Byte Dance’s main game studios. In Feb 2022, there was a rumor about 101 Studio that it was working on a Genshin-Like open-world project. Byte Dance soon denied that rumor.
Currently, it is still unclear the reason behind the shutdown, many people believe it is related to the “game license freeze” from August 2021 to March 2022. During that time there were zero game licenses issued which gravely impacted the game industry in China.