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Meta Confirms In-Chat Basketball Game for Threads Is an Internal Prototype

The experimental feature reflects Meta’s push to boost Threads engagement against rivals.

Overview

  • Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi surfaced a screenshot showing a basketball game running inside a Threads private chat.
  • Meta says the prototype is under review, is not in public testing, and has no announced timeline for release.
  • The mini-game appears to let users swipe to shoot hoops and compare scores within one-on-one conversations.
  • Coverage notes that built-in chat games could help Threads stand out from X and Bluesky and echo casual gaming available in Apple’s Messages via GamePigeon.
  • Meta previously tried chat-based games on Instagram, and the effort comes as Threads reports about 400 million monthly users globally with lower U.S. usage than X per Pew data.