In a move that will surprise no one, Chinese developer Tencent has started to introduce games for its popular messaging application WeChat (known as Weixin in China). The first step in the company’s rollout is a beta version of LinkLink, a game first revealed this morning.
We’ve known that WeChat, in its attempts to battle for users amidst competition from messaging companies such as Line, Kik, and KakaoTalk — all of which have released games for their respective platforms already — has been looking into releasing games and other features for quite some time.
In fact, Tencent is already known for its online multiplayer games on its QQ Games web-based service, which makes the expansion to WeChat even more natural.
LinkLink is reportedly the first in a total of eleven games that will be making their way to the messaging service as well as the QQ platform. Users of the WeChat platform will be able to share LinkLink with their friends, which as of July 3, makes for over 195 million active users including 70 million located overseas.