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Signage at Tencent Holdings' booth at the Smart China Expo in Chongqing on September 4, 2023. Photo: Bloomberg
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Tencent to close live-streaming service Now in latest consolidation move amid economic headwinds

  • The seven-year-old live-streaming and short video service will officially cease operation on December 26 due to ‘business adjustments’
  • Live-streaming sites operated by popular video platforms are facing a tougher business environment under stricter oversight from Beijing
Tencent
Iris Deng
Iris Dengin Shenzhen
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Tencent Holdings is closing its live-streaming service Now, as China’s biggest social media and video gaming company continues to consolidate its video businesses.

The seven-year-old live-streaming and short video service will officially cease operations at 11am on December 26 due to “business adjustments”, the company said in a notice posted on the website on Tuesday.

Now’s webpage version already stopped live streaming on Tuesday and no longer accepts new registrations, but users can still log on to the app and use the balance in their accounts, according to the notice.

Now users can choose to refund unused virtual assets and gifts or transfer them to Huya, a separate Twitch-like game live-streaming platform backed by Tencent.

Tencent launched Now in 2016, allowing users to conduct and watch live broadcasts and chat with other users, amid an explosion of live-streaming services in the industry.

The move is part of Tencent’s ongoing efforts to consolidate its sprawling businesses across social media, gaming, video and more, as the tech giant cuts costs and axes underperforming operations amid economic headwinds.
The decision to close Now came after Tencent announced on Sunday it would put an end to Moo, a small music streaming service, on December 31, and an earlier decision to shut down eight-year-old online audio platform Penguin FM in September.

Last August, the company closed Kandian, its content creation app, two months after it pulled the plug on video game-streaming platform Penguin Esports.

Live streaming sites operated by popular video platforms such as ByteDance-owned Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and anime and video streamer Bilibili, are facing a tougher business environment under stricter oversight from Beijing.

Chen Shaojie, founder and CEO of US-listed video game live-streaming platform Douyu, was arrested in November after reports of gambling-related live-streaming sessions on the platform.
In May, internet regulator the Cyberspace Administration of China launched a rare on-site inspection of Douyu in central Hubei province to address “serious” problems related to the platform, including pornography.
Both Douyu and its main rival Huya count Tencent as a major stakeholder. At the height of Beijing’s regulatory crackdown on the country’s internet sector in mid-2021, China’s antitrust watchdog blocked Tencent’s attempted US$5.3 billion merger of the two platforms.
Tencent has since tightened its control over Huya, with its senior executive Lin Songtao taking over as Huya’s chairman in May.
The fall of Now contrasts with the rapid rise of short video and live streaming under the company’s flagship super-app WeChat, which Tencent founder and chief executive Pony Ma Huateng calls “the hope” of the company.

WeChat Channels, the video function within the multipurpose app launched in 2020, has become a new growth driver for the company with its advertising and e-commerce potential. Its total views grew by 50 per cent in the third quarter compared with the same period last year.

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