Game face pinch works sold on e-commerce platforms.
Recently, "part-time game face pinching division monthly income of tens of thousands" rushed to the hot search, the game face pinching division this emerging profession into the public vision, triggering heated discussion. The so-called "pinch face" refers to the player setting the image characteristics of the game character by himself, and the player can "pinch" his favorite character shape like a clay man.
A distinctive face in the game becomes the identity of the player's personality, but "five minutes of the game, two hours of pinching the face", want to pinch a good and unique image, both time and thought. In order to save time and effort, some players will pay for the pinch face data they want. Under such market demand, the profession of "face pincher" came into being.
Face pinching is not a high-paying profession as imagined, and only a few earn tens of thousands of dollars a month. And as an emerging profession, it is still in the sloppy period. Portrait infringement disputes involved in face pinching and the protection of individual original works are all issues that need to be solved urgently.
"Paid face pinching" is in the spotlight
100 yuan can customize the personal game image
Search for "pinch face" on the e-commerce platform, you will see many merchants selling face pinch data - most popular games will provide face pinch data sharing function, players can export the created face shape into data, for other players to copy and use.
The reporter observed that the merchants who sell face pinch data on the e-commerce platform are mainly divided into two categories, one is based on the self-made or consumer customization of the face pincher, emphasizing the original attributes of the face pinch work, and the price span is very large.
For example, a face pincher has designed a number of face shapes for the popular 3D online game "Forever Destroyed", and sold them at a price of 25 yuan a year in its online store, and currently has created a total of 197 face pinch data for the game, with monthly sales of more than 300 copies. There are also some face pinchers who sell 3D mobile game face pinch data, including "Peace Elite" and "A Dream of Jianghu", and a delicate face shape is as low as 0.45 yuan, and hundreds of copies can be sold every month.
Face pinch works can also be customized personally, but the price is more expensive. Consumers can send their own customized character pictures to the face pincher, and the two sides can price according to the difficulty of pinching the face. But the number of people who buy custom pinch faces is small, and the monthly sales are mostly in single digits.
The reporter asked a face pincher about the price of customizing 3D faces in the game "Forever Destroyed". The other party quoted 100 yuan, saying that the fastest 4 hours can be copied from the photos provided to make renderings. "If you are not satisfied, you can propose a modification, but if you are still not satisfied after many modifications, you can apply for a refund."
Judging from the feedback from most gamers, the image of the game character has become an important part of the virtual social network of some players. Xiaolin, a junior who likes to play online games, told reporters that "paying to pinch your face" is a very normal phenomenon in the game circle, because the game is played by yourself, and the character image is very important to look good. "The characters I pinched in the game myself are not particularly good-looking, and I am a little inferior to others, and I have thought about spending money to pinch one."
The Anxiety of the Face Pincher:
Monthly income of 100,000 is rare, and the industry's income is unstable
"Before, I had self-media write about my experience, playing the title of "100,000 a Month", which scared me." Ye Yue (pseudonym), an original head pincher on an e-commerce platform, expressed the view that "it is very difficult to earn 100,000 yuan a month, and the income is not stable." But this still attracted questions and ridicule from netizens, causing her a lot of pressure.
HC-DEVIL, a well-known face pincher in the industry, has previously expressed the same view in an interview. He set up a 5-person face pinching team, which can achieve more than 100,000 yuan of store turnover a month during the peak season, but this is not the norm, and it is closely related to the popularity of the game. "Many articles on the Internet are headline parties, if a part-time face pincher can earn tens of thousands of dollars a month, who will still go to work?"
The worry-free of being in the second year of high school may be more in line with the reality of the general face pincher. He has been engaged in the game of pinching his face for about 5 years, at first because his pinched face was praised by many people in the game, and some people asked him for data. Slowly, he became interested in pinching his face, and after seeing someone selling face pinching data online, he felt he could give it a try too.
Worry-free told reporters that he usually makes a video on the website first to promote his face pinching works. This trick is very effective, at most 20-30 people come to him every day to buy data. Because the fee is not expensive, his monthly income from pinching his face is hundreds of dollars. "It may be that for the sake of me as a student, some bosses will add money to invite me to drink milk tea."
In addition to making a profit by selling face pinch data, there are also face pinchers who have discovered new "business growth points". Mr. Lin, who runs a content studio, is also a veteran game fan with years of experience in game face pinching. His part-time face pincher career began in 2021, when he played a popular game, for fun purposes, he shared a face pinch video on the video website, "I didn't expect to be inexplicably on fire, so I began to share more face pinch videos and data online, so I accumulated some fans and popularity." With the influence of face-pinching videos, there are game companies looking for opportunities for cooperation, so he also received some advertiser orders, "before and after, you can also have a considerable income."
The industry lacks a certification mechanism
Someone crawled and pinched face data to sell in a package
Game industry commentator Zhang Shule believes that "pinching the face" is not a new content at the moment, the early years of the "QQ show" has been able to provide users with personalized collocation, thanks to the rapid development of highly free 3D games in recent years, the experience of pinching the face has been greatly improved. "Essentially, it is still the traditional art of game products, and some people call face pinching the introductory experience of the meta-universe, but this is more of a gimmick." Pinching the face is at best a necessary plug-in in the metaverse, just as the metaverse needs background music, but the background music is not a metaverse element. ”
Zhang Shule believes that the face pinch service still belongs to the niche market at present, and after relying on the e-commerce platform to be aggregated, there is a "money scene", but the market demand and scale are small, can not accommodate too many businesses, suitable for small and micro entrepreneurs with relevant talents and no entrepreneurial principal as the source of the first bucket of gold.
Video UP master Feige Fager became popular because of sharing funny face pinch videos, he believes that "face pincher" is a very promising and valuable profession, but it needs to constantly cooperate with new games to maintain vitality. Once the game's popularity has passed, people are no longer keen on the face pinching activities, then the face pincher will have to quickly open up the market in the next popular game.
In the view of many original face kneaders interviewed, the income and prospects of paid face pinching not only depend on the popularity of the game, but also closely related to the aesthetic level of the face pincher himself and the awareness of all parties to protect the original works. The elaborate avatar is just a piece of data, and due to the lack of relevant authentication mechanisms, it is very common for face pinch data to be stolen and resold for a second time.
Nandu reporter found in the interview that there is a group of merchants on the e-commerce platform, selling the so-called "pinch face collection" at a low price. They collect and sort out, network crawling means to obtain a large number of face data shared by players online, and then package and sell at a low price. For example, a set of 3D online game face pinch data in an online store is only 4.8 yuan, but it contains more than 2200 face pinch data, including the works of some original face pinchers. Due to its cheap price, the product sells more than 5,000 copies a month, and the profit far exceeds that of the original face pincher. In some online stores, the reporter has seen that the list of merchants lists a series of original face pinching works of Ye Yue.
"Now to encourage content innovation in China, we must first let the original content have money to earn, and the industry can survive." HC-DEVIL said in an interview with the media.
Someone illuminated the star image and pinched the face
Lawyer reminder or infringement
Face pinching is essentially just some data, and the replicability of data is easy to copy often burn the painstaking efforts of the game face pincher. The face pinching works created by Mr. Lin, a face pincher, have been stolen by some merchants or individuals, but because his face pinching is mostly promoted in cooperation with game companies, and the data copyright belongs to the game company, he has not defended his rights.
Mr. Lin believes that it is difficult and unrealistic for an original face-pinching work to apply for a patent. He gave an example of if someone pinched a face with a celebrity and then applied for a patent, does that mean that other people can't use the face anymore, "Isn't that a mess?"
Lawyer Chen Zhen, a senior partner at Beijing Dehe Heng (Guangzhou) Law Firm, believes that the image created by the player by pinching his face in the game meets the definition of the work in the Copyright Law and can constitute the work. The created image can be used independently and its rights are owned by the player. Lawyer Chen Zhen said that the illegal reproduction and dissemination of original face-pinching works by merchants or individuals infringed the intellectual property rights of face-pinching artists. He suggested that face pinchers should pay attention to keeping records of their own creative manuscripts and creative processes as evidence of copyright. Legally recognized means of deposition such as timestamps and blockchains can also be used to fix the results of creation as the basis for rights protection. When infringing acts are seen, they can protect their legitimate rights and interests by reporting to the operation platform, retaining evidence for prosecution, and so on.
As for the player's use of the "face pinching system" to deliberately shape the image of public figures, Chen Zhen's lawyer analyzed that the act constituted an infringement of the celebrity's portrait rights, and may need to bear legal responsibilities such as stopping the infringement, compensating for losses, and eliminating the impact. Where a game platform facilitates the dissemination of such an image, it may constitute contributory infringement. "The Civil Code stipulates that no organization or individual may infringe on the portrait rights of others by means of planning, defacing, or falsification by means of information technology. Without the consent of the portrait rights holder, the portrait of the portrait rights holder shall not be made, used or disclosed, except as otherwise provided by law. ”
At the same time, lawyer Chen Zhen also said that in the process of pinching the face, the difficulty in determining the infringement of portrait rights is "like not like", that is, if everyone recognizes a star, it may constitute infringement.
For those who want to devote themselves to the face pinching industry, Zhang Shule suggested: "First of all, there must be a strong desire to create, and secondly, it is best to have the corresponding art skills and 3D modeling capabilities, which is also a job of artistic creation." It is not possible to make quick gains, it is necessary to have a long stream of fine water, and as the outlet cools down, it is necessary to continuously turn to similar fields to obtain more stable benefits; finally, it is impossible to open the brain hole and combine face pinching and more artistic creations to form a more valuable cross-border form. ”
Written by: Nandu reporter Wei Zhixin Intern Chen Jiaqi