People have life, old age, illness and death, the moon has clouds and sunshine, and game products also have a life cycle. Shutting down, stopping, winning and losing soldiers is a common thing, but sometimes, things will always have accidents.
On March 30, the dress-up mobile game "Cloud Dress Feather" developed by Xishanju and released by Tencent announced that it would cancel the original suspension process and continue to provide services for players. Subsequently, a claimed Weibo of the China Consumer Association was listed on the 8th hot search: "After I will pay attention to and promote, "Cloud Dress Feather" issued an announcement to suspend the suspension process and continue to provide game services." ”
Many players were excited by this news, saying bluntly that for the first time they felt that "rights protection is useful", and some more rational players were worried about the future of the game after the suspension of service - whether it would become a stand-alone version, or there would be a possibility of sudden suspension in the future.
Players' fears are justified. As we all know, in the case of less than a last resort, the game company is the one who is most reluctant to stop the product, and once the suspension is announced, it is basically the income arithmetic problem that has reached the point of being unsustainable. Although the current success of "continuing life", how to develop in the future, whether it can ensure updates and quality, are unknown.
With the recent announcement of the suspension of many old products, the problems encountered by "Cloud Dress Feather" are obviously not unique.
Women continue to oscillate towards the game, and it is not easy to do long-term games
"Cloud Dress Hagoromo" was launched in 2018, when the power of women to the market first appeared, and on June 27, the day of non-deletion, "Cloud Dress Hagoromo" topped the Free App Store list, and then ranked among the top seven on the best-seller list.
The game adopted the "dress-up" and "love" gameplay preferred by women in the survey at that time, and was once considered to be "ancient wind and warmth" because it was based on traditional culture such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas. At the same time, thanks to the development of Unity3D, "Shine Warm" was launched a year earlier than the later release, forming a first-mover dislocation competition and being optimistic.
At that time, whether it was the development of Xishanju or the release of Tencent, there were plans for "Cloud Dress Feather". Xishanju has planned the layout of the current world, offline experience store, etc., and Tencent also said that it will help Xishanju to make the original IP of "Cloud Dress Feather" bigger and stronger.
But then we learned that at the end of 2017, after "Love and Producer" activated women to the market, a large number of manufacturers flocked to the market, but after more than 4 years of love themes, although there were frequent excellent works on the theme of love, not many could withstand the test of the market to achieve long-term operation.
As of February 2022, through GameLook statistics, it was found that the high proportion of female users on the market accounted for only a quarter of the love themes in the TOP16, on the contrary, the product positioning non-female products shined.
The sudden rise of women to the market at the end of 2017, and the sharp turn in the wind direction in the following years, caught game manufacturers by surprise, and "Cloud Dress Feather" felt the same feeling for this change.
Suddenly, the player's awareness of rights protection increased
On February 20 this year, "Yunsheng Haoyi", which has been online for 3 years and nearly 4 years, officially announced that due to the imminent expiration of the agency agreement between Tencent and the developer of the "Yunsheng Haori" game, after friendly consultation with the developer, the official regret announced the termination of the operation of the "Yunsheng Haoyi" mobile game in Chinese mainland, and released the final suspension time: April 22, that is, two months later.
Due to the suddenness of the incident and the dissatisfaction with the compensation, some players reacted strongly, and eventually complained to the China Consumer Association to defend their rights.
In fact, on March 18, before March 30, the China Consumer Association had already stated that it had received centralized feedback from players on the "cloud feather game problem" and said that it had paid attention to it. How to pay attention to us is unknown, but eventually the scene at the beginning of the article happened.
Players have resistance to the suspension of service belongs to the common feelings of people, but there are thousands of suspension games, why is it that "Cloud Dress Feather" has caused the China Consumer Association to mediate? The reason can actually be answered from three aspects: manufacturers, players and legal progress.
From the perspective of manufacturers, the suspension of "Cloud Dress Feather" occurred suddenly, from the announcement to the official suspension, leaving players with only 2 months, although its practice is in line with the relevant regulations of the Ministry of Culture on the suspension of the game earlier, but 2 months is still emotionally difficult for players to accept. In addition, players believe that the game is still doing activities to recharge before the announcement of suspension, which stimulates the game's only remaining loyal old players.
From the player's point of view, "Cloud Dress Hagoromo" users are mainly female players with delicate minds and rich emotions, and it just so happens that "Cloud Hagoromo" has a strong cultivation element, players bet not only money, but also feelings and painstaking efforts, and it is more difficult to get the understanding of players without warning.
From the perspective of legal progress, the Civil Code came into effect this year, in which Article 127 of the General Responsibility Part stipulates that if the law has provisions on the protection of data and online virtual property, follow those provisions. This is the first time that the concept of online virtual property has been written into the civil basic law, although some experts pointed out that whether the game equipment is virtual property is debatable, it still marks that the rights and interests of players are better protected, and more importantly, the relevant legal popularization activities have also enhanced the awareness and motivation of players to protect their rights.
Income is difficult to cover team expenses, how to get together and disperse
Players protect their own virtual property, and the China Consumer Association assists in safeguarding their rights reasonably and legally, but GameLook is as curious as some players, why do the game products of large manufacturers say that they are out of operation?
GameLook learned from third-party statistics that the cumulative turnover of "Cloud Dress Feather" since its launch in 2018 is estimated to be about 300 million yuan. In 2019, a year after the game was launched, the monthly flow of "Cloud Dress Feather" can still be maintained at about 5 million, and by 2021, the monthly flow will drop to about 1 million, and then in 2022, the monthly flow of "Cloud Feather" has been less than one million.
In the proportion of game accounts, the iOS platform is 30%, the domestic Android channel is generally 50%, deducting various expenses such as commissions, the income distributed by the distribution is generally less than half, and this half also needs to be divided by the publisher and the developer, and the revenue share obtained by the developer is very limited.
From the perspective of overall flow and agency gold, Xishanju may have recovered its costs and profits from "Yunsheng Hagoromo", but from the perspective of the current monthly flow of less than one million, the actual income that Xishanju can actually get from "Yunsheng Hagoromo" may be 100,000-200,000 yuan per month. And a game to maintain the state of research and development, at least need to invest in business, planning, operation, art, program five positions to perform their duties, only more than 100,000 yuan per month income, can support "Cloud Feather" to retain a complete R & D team? How many sets of 3D fashions can you make? It's really hard.
For the publisher Tencent, according to the public data of the financial report, in 2021, tencent employees scale of 112,000, the total annual remuneration cost of 95.523 billion yuan, simple calculation can be seen that Tencent employees per capita monthly salary of more than 70,000, to the "Cloud Dress Feather" income scale, even covering Tencent employee salary expenditure is a problem, do not mention the investment in advertising costs for publicity.
Although the industry is not without precedents for low-cost operating products, for example, Japan is also in March this year, the Japanese two-dimensional online game "Hero Warrior" announced the suspension, the game values, characters, scripts, scripts, art and post-maintenance are completed by an employee, the direct reason for the suspension of the game is also the employee himself is deeply tired, afraid of sudden death.
But "Cloud Hagoromo" is a 3D game, research and development and the standard and complexity of art resources are higher, a set of 3D fashion less to say that the production cycle is in a few weeks, "Cloud Hagoromo" wants to learn from the Japanese counterparts low-cost research and development maintenance is basically not feasible, so the game will turn to a stand-alone version of the probability is higher in the future.
All in all, non-stop service is a good thing for old players, but for game manufacturers and players, this game has left us and is good to gather and disperse.
····· End ·····
GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material