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WeWork might be getting into the esports game

WeWork might be getting into the esports game

Troubled US start-up WeWork might be looking to move into the video games business.

As reported by Bloomberg, the office space firm filed the 'Play By We' trademark with the UK's intellectual property Office, which was published last week having been filed in July. That followed a priority filing in Mauritius from January of this year. WeWork has also applied for a Play Be We filing with Canada's IP authority CIPO as well as Europe's EUIPO.

In the UK, Play By We has been filed for usage alongside business services in the games sector, shared office space, entertainment services and providing facilities for business meetings, trade exhibitions and business events.

WeWork has been looking to hire for this new venture with the company seeking a 'content and experience manager' - whatever that is - in addition to a New York-based delivery project manager.

WeWork is, of course, the start-up backed by SoftBank's Vision Fund that attempted to IPO in recent months only for this to fail and the company to more or less fall apart as a result. CEO and founder Adam Neumann is being ousted. At the start of the year, the company was valued $47bn, a figure that has no dropped to around $10bn since.

It's possible the company will not be doing anything with this trademark given that the trademarks were filed in July, before WeWork's recent woes. We're also willing to bet that the company wanted to land the WeGame name before finding out Tencent had that locked down. 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.