For gamers, especially those who play external games, problems such as high latency, stuttering, and dropped have always been important factors affecting the game experience. Especially during the online process, a series of problems caused by network fluctuations are even more troubling. As a result, many players will choose to use accelerators to improve network quality for a better online experience.
Tencent also has an online game accelerator, but it has ushered in unexpected changes in recent days.
Tencent Accelerator will stop the acceleration of external service games
At the same time, the refund channel is opened
On April 13, Tencent Online Game Accelerator announced that Tencent Online Game Accelerator will be upgraded to "Tencent Game Manager" on May 31, 2022 and gradually stop the old service, and the upgraded products will only support national service game acceleration, while opening the refund channel.
According to reports, Tencent Online Game Accelerator is a game accelerator software produced by Tencent, which can accelerate its online games and hot online games on the market at home and abroad, reduce game latency, and reduce stuttering. Usually, when players play external games, they choose to use accelerators to improve network quality.
It is understood that in December 2021, Tencent Accelerator issued an announcement showing that due to the adjustment of Tencent Accelerator's product strategy, new recharges will not be accepted for the time being.
After 263 days, the game version number was restarted and issued
Tencent products are not listed
In addition, it is worth noting that on the evening of April 11, the State Press and Publication Administration released the "April 2022 Domestic Online Game Approval Information", and a total of 45 games got the first batch of game version numbers in 2022. These include 5 client games, 1 Switch game, and the remaining 39 are mobile games.
The approved games include products from many well-known game manufacturers, such as Youzu Network's "Junior Three Kingdoms: Pocket Battle", 37 Mutual Entertainment's "Dream Voyage", Xishan Jushiyou's "Sword Net 3 Origins", Chuangmeng Tiandi's "Careful Fire Candle", Heartbeat Network's "Party Star", Lilith's "Life Party", etc., while Tencent and NetEase do not have products listed.
In 2018, the game version number pressed the pause button once, and that time lasted for 265 days. This time, the number of days the game version number was suspended was 263 days.
Although it is a few days less than the number of days when the version number is suspended, the situation of "lack of grain" this time is even more serious than the last time. Because since 2019, although the game version number has been released normally, the number is much less than before. For example, in 2021, the cumulative number of game version numbers issued is only 755, which is 54% in 2020, 48% in 2019, and only 8% if compared with 2017.
The most direct impact of the sharp reduction of the version number is to reduce the number of games that can be commercially operated, and the suspension of the version number has caused many companies without "grain storage" to fall into a state of "lack of grain", and the company's operation has also fallen into a crisis.
This can be seen from the financial data of some listed companies last year. For example, Tencent, even if it stores a certain number of version numbers, in the third and fourth quarters of 2020, the revenue growth of its local game market is only 5% and 1%, far lower than the previous level. For listed companies mainly in the game business, some of them recorded a sharp decline in net profit in 2021.
Tencent is making efforts in global game development
In response to the suspension of the game version number, some executives of the head game company said that the current regulatory authorities require the entire industry to increase investment in the protection of minors, and the industry is also doing this thing, and the release of the version number may also be delayed because of this.
With the recovery of the issuance of game version numbers, it also means that this round of adjustment of the game industry may come to an end, and the future will enter a new period of development.
However, in the long run, strong game supervision is the main positive impact on China's game industry, which is also in line with the trend of high-quality national tourism research and development, long-term operation, and expansion of overseas travel. In particular, the total number control of the version number will enhance the cautious degree of game manufacturers in setting up projects, and "anti-addiction" and content review are more conducive to avoiding the young age and shoddy production of game products.
Therefore, as far as the local game market is concerned, the threshold for game content production will be higher and higher in the future, which is conducive to improving the quality of game content. The game industry's extensive growth method of blindly pursuing quantity and scale and despising quality brands has completely become a thing of the past.
In addition to deeply cultivating the local game market, the overseas game market is also becoming the choice of more and more game manufacturers. According to the "2021 China Game Industry Report" released by Gamma Data, in 2021, the actual sales revenue of China's self-developed games in overseas markets was 18.013 billion US dollars, an increase of 16.59% year-on-year. And from the average growth rate in the past five years, the share of mainland games going to sea is showing a steady upward trend.
In the third quarter of 2021, Tencent made it clear that it is increasing investment in global game development, while also building local publishing and operational capabilities to support business development in multiple regions. In the fourth quarter of 2021, compared with the low growth of the local game market, Tencent recorded a rapid growth rate of 34% in the international market, with a revenue scale of 13.2 billion yuan.
Its game live broadcasting platform has also recently announced the suspension of operation
How big is the impact?
Coincidentally, just a week ago, on April 7, Tencent's game live broadcasting platform Penguin E-sports announced its delisting announcement, announcing that it would terminate operations at 23:59 on June 7, 2022.
It is reported that the delisting and suspension of Penguin e-sports has long been traceable, and many well-known game anchors have left the nest before, which has made the outside world speculate.
On March 2, penguin e-sports large and medium-sized anchors successively rolled off the line. On March 1, many penguin esports anchors made parting remarks on Weibo, such as @Han Paopao, which has 7.567 million followers, and @Tianba-Manson, a medium-sized anchor with 649,000 followers.
Mozi, who has 3.17 million fans, predicted on February 26 on Weibo that February 28 would be "his last live broadcast on Penguin E-sports".
Penguin e-sports was founded in 2016, at that time, it was a period of blossoming in the live broadcasting industry, and Tencent's intention to establish Penguin E-sports was also very obvious, that is, it hoped to seize the market of game live broadcasting through penguin e-sports.
Unlike other live streaming platforms, Penguin Esports has Tencent's natural content ecosystem matrix. It has the live broadcast rights of Tencent games such as "Glory of Kings", "Peace Elite", "League of Legends" and so on, and at the same time has Tencent social platforms and portals to divert traffic.
Photo/ Penguin Esports official website
It is lamentable that after six years, Penguin E-sports ended with delisting, and Tencent has established a more stable moat in the field of game live broadcasting.
To the outside world, Penguin E-sports is not an independent business of Tencent, so its operation status has not been known. But in 2020, when Tencent plans to promote the merger of Huya and Douyu, Penguin Esports has become a trading chip, and its operating data has been disclosed.
According to Huya's previous filings with the New York Stock Exchange, Penguin Esports' revenue in 2019 and the first half of 2020 was $1,193 million and $462 million, respectively, while net losses for the same period were $310 million and $210 million, respectively.
In the risk warning about the Penguin esports business, the document also mentions that since its inception, Penguin Esports has incurred a significant cumulative net loss. And the business may continue to lose money in the future, but in contrast, in 2020, Huya and Douyu are both in a profitable state.
So, Penguin Esports is a long-term loss-making business. For Tencent, if the strategic position of a business is important enough, it does not hurt to have losses, and there are not a few such businesses within Tencent. However, like Penguin E-sports, which relies on Tencent's ecological advantages, has not improved in market competition, and Tencent has a new strategic support in this field, it is not surprising that it has become an outcast.
According to a previous report by Ai Media Consulting, in the third quarter of 2020, the number of monthly active users of Penguin E-sports was 5.46 million, while the monthly active users of Huya and Douyu in the same period were 74.2 million and 59.6 million, respectively. It can be seen that the gap between the user volume of Penguin e-sports and the head platform has been very obvious.
This gap is also reflected in the market capitalization. On October 12, 2020, while Huya and Douyu were advancing the merger, Douyu and Tencent also signed a restructuring agreement. Under the agreement, Tencent will transfer its live game streaming business operated under the "Penguin E-sports" brand to Douyu for a total price of US$500 million, and plans to integrate Penguin E-sports with the merged Huya and Douyu. According to the stock price at the time, the market value of Huya and Douyu reached $5.7 billion and $4.4 billion, respectively.
Although the cooperation between Huya and Douyu was not successful in the end, so that Tencent did not achieve business integration in the field of game live broadcasting, Tencent still has enough voice in this field.
Since its first investment in Huya in 2018, Tencent has continued to increase its holdings in Huya. As of the end of March 2021, Tencent held 47.4% of the equity of Huya and enjoyed 69.7% of the voting rights, and was the actual controller of Huya.
During the same period, Tencent held 37.2% of the equity of Douyu and enjoyed 37.2% of the voting rights, and although Tencent was not the actual controller, it was also the largest shareholder of Douyu.
Therefore, in the field of game live broadcasting, Tencent can basically meet the needs of business development through its holding of Huya and its investment in Douyu. And the penguin e-sports that continue to lose money have become a cost burden.
At the 2021 annual report communication meeting, tencent president Martin Lau said, "At present, the Internet industry is encountering structural challenges and changes, and Tencent, as a participant, will also take the initiative to adjust." In the past, the industry was competition-driven and invested heavily; now, compared with short-term gains, we pay more attention to long-term business development and invest more healthily, especially in the optimization of marketing costs, operating costs and labor costs. We have also optimized the cost of our loss-making businesses in order to maintain healthier growth. ”
However, from the perspective of the industry, the departure of Penguin E-sports may also be a turning point in the game live broadcasting industry. 21st Century Business Herald has proposed in the article "Observation of the 2021 Annual Report of the Live Broadcasting Industry: The Era of Profitability has Ended, and the Transformation and Development is Imminent", and it has become the development trend of the entire live broadcasting industry from profit to loss.
Among them, Huya began to lose money in the fourth quarter of 2021, while Douyu incurred a loss for the entire year of 2021. For game live broadcasting platforms, it is impossible to compete with the trend of peaking user scale, and at the same time, increasingly stringent supervision also requires the development of the industry to be more standardized.
So next, the existence of penguin e-sports has no pain, Tencent should be more prepared to deal with when Huya and Douyu also began to lose money, how to adjust the posture to seek more healthy and sustainable development.
Source丨Public Information, 21st Century Business Herald (Poplar), Southern Metropolis Daily
Editor of this issue Peipei Jiang Intern Kailin Li