That development was revealed by Wu Yunyang, a co-founder of Lingxi Games who was responsible for the Alibaba subsidiary’s Ant Engine project, in his personal blog post earlier this week. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Wu, who wrote that he had left the unit on Monday, said his departure was because he felt that the company “no longer wants to develop its own game client engine, [or] does not agree with my development plan for the Ant Engine”.
“Perhaps Alibaba’s gaming unit has more urgent things to do now, and thus cannot wait for the benefits [Ant Engine] would bring in three to five years,” Wu said.
Alibaba did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The company’s Hong Kong-listed shares on Wednesday closed 2.43 per cent lower to HK$76.15.
Zhan Zhonghui, who headed Lingxi Games, and co-founder Chen Weian stepped down in March. Zhan was replaced by an experienced, albeit younger, video game producer Zhou Bingshu.
In his blog post, Wu pointed out that Alibaba’s flagship mobile game Three Kingdoms Tactics and other titles are still based on its own codes and old self-developed game engine. There was no plan to migrate these games to other commercial engines, he wrote.
After that acquisition, Wu stepped down from management and focused on developing a modern game engine for the company.
Launched in 2019, Three Kingdoms Tactics made more than US$1 billion in its first two years of release. The game remains popular, ranking seventh among China-developed titles in terms of monthly overseas revenue growth in March, according to data from Sensor Tower.
