This article is from the public account "CNGgame"
Recently, NetEase CEO Ding Lei said in his speech that the so-called capital winter is that game companies take themselves too seriously, he pointed out that capital is to let you make fast money, and if you can't make fast money, you will shout cold winter, causing controversy in the industry. In fact, Ding Lei interprets the cold from the essence of the pursuit of the game to rely on himself, as to whether the cold winter is really coming? According to gamma data (CNG new game research) monitoring, the number of angels and A round investments in the game industry is rapidly declining, and the capital that entered early also quietly withdrew with the help of listing, mergers and acquisitions, etc., capital outflows, and the financing environment of the game industry deteriorated, thus forming what the industry called "capital winter".
Wang Xu, general manager of Gamma Data (CNG Zhongxin Game Research), believes that capital is profit-oriented, especially VCs and PEs often require dozens of times the profit. Affected by the industry structure, the difficulty of small and medium-sized game enterprises to achieve rapid value-added in the short term has increased, resulting in a reduction in institutional investment willingness, mainly in, first, the market concentration has increased, this year's listed companies have seized about 70% of the industry revenue, squeezing the living space, channel resources are more difficult to obtain, the low threshold stage of the initial competition of the Internet open platform has also passed, and the opportunity for small and medium-sized teams to "hold their thighs" is getting smaller and smaller. Second, the overall improvement of product quality, the cost of IP purchase raises the threshold, and the user payment requirements are getting higher and higher, resulting in an increase in the difficulty of recovering operating costs. Third, the mobile game industry is impetuous, the capital market tends to be rational, the number of angels and A rounds of investment plummets, mergers and acquisitions are mostly initiated by professional game listed companies, and it is becoming more and more difficult to pull investment with Demo or semi-finished products, even if the investors have to look at the data performance after the product is launched.
Data: Angel investment cases plummeted to single digits in the second half of the year
The change in industry capital was confirmed in this year's capital operation case statistics. According to the long-term monitoring of the Startup State Database by Gamma Data (CNG Zhongxin Game Research), angel investment in the field of game animation fell from more than 50 in the first half of 2014 to single digits in the second half of 2015. In terms of Series A investment, the number of cases remained above 30 in the first and second half of 2014, while the number of cases fell sharply in 2015 and fell to single digits in the second half of 2015.
On the other hand, according to relevant media reports, in the game industry in 2015, the capital operation initiated by listed companies has reached 36, involving an amount of more than 50 billion yuan. With the help of more convenient financing channels, listed companies have opened a crazy "buy, buy, buy" rhythm for the game industry.
According to the analysis of Gamma Data (CNG New Game Research), a large number of mergers and acquisitions does not mean that capital remains "enthusiastic" about the game industry, on the contrary, it is a signal for capital to withdraw. Studies have shown that the sharp decline in the number of angels and Series A indicates that the number of newly funded small and medium-sized companies is decreasing significantly. At the same time, when listed companies use the funds obtained from the stock market for mergers and acquisitions, the main channels for game companies to obtain financing in the early stage of entrepreneurship - PE, VC are accelerating their exit, and the merger and acquisition funds are not necessarily used within the game company, but help to achieve a smooth exit of investors.
For small and medium-sized enterprises, these enterprises often have urgent requirements for funds in order to seek the improvement of research and development and operational strength. Therefore, after the capital market became colder in the second half of 2015, small and medium-sized enterprises had to alleviate the cash flow shortage through layoffs, and even partially collapsed, making the survival situation more difficult.
The result: the stronger the listed companies, the more they absorb most of the industry's revenue
On the one hand, the negative impact of the hot and cold conversion of the capital market. For small and medium-sized game enterprises, the reduction in the number of angel A round investments has caused financing difficulties, and small and medium-sized enterprises have not only reduced their competitiveness, but even face direct survival difficulties; listed enterprises have the advantage of having more convenient and low-cost financing channels, and use them to expand, intensify market competition, and squeeze living space. On the other hand, the change in revenue structure has also intensified the tilt of industry resources to listed game companies, resulting in the effect of "the stronger the stronger".
Gamma Data (CNG Zhongxin Game Research) monitored 17 major listed game companies such as Tencent, NetEase, and Palm Fun, whose game business had a combined revenue of more than 66 billion yuan in the first three quarters, and is expected to exceed 88 billion yuan in the whole year, accounting for 63% of the industry's total revenue. Analysts pointed out that even excluding the overlapping performance of different companies due to the share, the total revenue of the game business of the nationally listed game companies is expected to exceed 70% of the total revenue of the industry, and this does not include companies that are successfully privatizing or privatizing.