Penguin esports exit shuffle intensified, game live or good business?

Changes in the industry landscape

With Penguin Esports officially announcing its closure, a long farewell between anchors and fans is being staged. By June 7, Penguin Esports will discontinue all product features and subsequently delete account data and profiles.

Game live broadcasting is changing, and platform shutdowns occur from time to time, but unlike the previous panda, battle flag, and national live broadcast shutdown, Penguin e-sports is not a defeat and withdrawal in the melee, but more like a business adjustment for market changes. In February and March this year, the head anchors of Penguin E-sports have left one after another, but no relevant lawsuits or disputes have been exposed, compared with the noisy scene when the anchors jumped jobs a few years ago, the exit of penguin e-sports anchors is particularly calm.

This change is not unrelated to the current situation of the cold environment of the game live broadcasting industry. On April 13, Qing Li (pseudonym), the anchor of "Glory of kings", told the Times Weekly reporter that for small and medium-sized anchors, the popularity of various game live broadcasting platforms has recently declined.

"The biggest problem with game live broadcasting is that the market is relatively small, it is only a segment of live broadcasting, and there is no way to feed too many platforms." On April 13, Li Wei (pseudonym), an industry insider familiar with the live broadcast industry, told the Times Weekly reporter.

Not only is the market cold, but the supervision of the game live broadcasting industry is also tightening. On April 14, a person from the Game Guild told the Times Weekly reporter that due to the protection policy of minors, minors cannot participate in live broadcasting, and most of the game anchor groups are now over 23 years old.

It is foreseeable that after the exit of Penguin E-sports, the game live broadcasting industry will continue to shuffle in the more fierce market competition, and the game live broadcasting platform needs to find new growth points in addition to the original live broadcast business.

Live streaming or go to the video number

Penguin esports has begun to exit. On April 13, a reporter from The Times Weekly found that Penguin E-sports could not register new users. In March, the official website of Penguin E-sports issued a notice inviting anchors to enter the WeChat video number, but the QR code of the docking group has now expired.

The Times Weekly reporter learned from people close to Tencent that the Penguin E-sports Product Center, which is responsible for Penguin E-sports, has employees who have said that they are looking for other positions within Tencent or job hopping.

According to the announcement released by Penguin E-sports, the settlement agreement signed by Penguin E-sports with the host and the entity involved in the game union will be terminated on June 7. On the issue of whether Tencent will coordinate the transfer of penguin e-sports anchors to other platforms, on April 12, the relevant person in charge of Tencent told the Times Weekly reporter that everything is subject to the announcement.

In 2016, Penguin E-sports was founded by Tencent.com, QQ Mobile Games and Tencent Interactive Entertainment, spanning OMG (Online Media Business Group), SNG (Social Network Business Group) and IEG (Interactive Entertainment Business Group), which was one of Tencent's star products at that time.

However, in 2018, Tencent's structural adjustment, OMG and SNG were split.

In 2021, Tencent promoted the merger of the larger Huya and Douyu, and had planned to buy Penguin E-sports for $500 million from Douyu to participate in the merger plan. After the merger was halted, in August 2021, IEG established the Penguin Esports Product Center, which became one of IEG's many products.

The Times Weekly reporter learned from the above-mentioned people close to Tencent that by mid-April, the Penguin E-sports Product Center had only more than 80 employees, which was quite small in the IEG with a total number of more than 20,000 employees, and the number of people was not as small as some game studios.

At the end of February this year, the anchor Ofeko, who has 3.71 million followers at Penguin Esports, announced that it would stop broadcasting. In March, anchor Han Paopao announced his departure from Penguin Esports. Subsequently, Huya signed anchors such as Mozi, and Douyu signed Han Run, Wind Guide, and Beisheng. Douyin and B station have previously received anchors such as Dishi and Deyunse from Penguin E-sports.

From the perspective of the industry pattern, the exit of Penguin E-sports is more of an active business adjustment within Tencent. According to the Data of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, by the end of 2020, the game live broadcasting market will be about 60% of the share of Huya and Douyu, and Penguin E-sports will account for only 3.4%. Considering that Huya has been controlled by Tencent, the industry generally believes that it is of little significance for Penguin E-sports to continue to develop independently.

After the closure of Penguin E-sports, Tencent's live broadcast and video resources will be further integrated. Previously, Penguin E-sports had invited anchors to enter the video number. On April 14, an anchor with many years of experience told the Times Weekly reporter that the live broadcast business of Penguin E-sports may be transferred to the video number, and QQ has recently launched a small world function to benchmark Douyin.

The industry ushered in new changes

Right now, the game live broadcasting industry where Penguin Esports is located is changing.

Behind the poor performance of the game live broadcasting platform, the growth of the number of users has encountered a bottleneck. The above-mentioned game guild person explained to the Times Weekly reporter that game live broadcasting is not as popular as in previous years, one reason is that users have more choices, and now the time of game lovers also includes video e-sports self-media.

The decline in paying users is related to the willingness to spend.

"Behind the previous shutdown of tentacle live broadcasting is the decline in user consumption on the platform and the failure of the business model of the platform company to adjust in time." On April 14, industry insider Wang Meng (pseudonym) told the Times Weekly reporter that the current internal and external environment is more similar to that time, and the game live broadcast platform is facing pressure.

In the face of the cooling of the industry, the feelings of small and medium-sized anchors are very obvious.

Qing Li has been in the game live broadcasting industry for nearly 4 years, he told the Times Weekly reporter that he usually mainly in the Douyu live broadcast, from the middle of 2021, he obviously felt that the growth rate of live broadcast popularity slowed down, and then, the live broadcast popularity began to decline all the way.

Recently, the number of live broadcasts has become less and less frequent. In his view, the overall traffic of the current game live broadcast is declining, and the competition is very fierce, so it is better to abandon the broadcast and transfer line.

"Big anchors are popular, small and medium-sized anchors are in a bad situation, at least to enter the top 100 of the game national service to be considered famous in the industry." Qingli indicated.

In addition to the two major development models commonly used by game live broadcasting platforms, high-paying anchors and snapping up event copyrights, the platform is also seeking new growth points.

For game live broadcasting platforms, there is an urgent need to expand new businesses and find new growth points. In this case, many industry insiders said that the industry reshuffle will continue, and there will be new changes in the pattern.

At the earnings call, Douyu management said that it will continue to expand cooperation with game manufacturers and strengthen self-made content investment and community construction around games. The penetration rate of Medium and Mild Game Users of Douyu is relatively low, and it will attract this part of the users with comprehensive game content and community operation.

On April 15, the relevant person in charge of Douyu told the Times Weekly reporter that the relevant explorations include cooperating with the "League of Legends Mobile Game" game manufacturers to build a player community.

Huya is also actively expanding new business. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Huya's overseas product Nimo TV had more than 30 million monthly active users, driving Huya's overseas business revenue to increase by more than 110%. Dong Rongjie, CEO of Huya, said on a conference call after the earnings report that Huya will cultivate content creators, further improve operational efficiency and explore new business opportunities.

Does this mean that the game streaming industry has hit a ceiling?

An industry analyst said that the game live broadcasting industry has experienced rapid development in the early stage, and now it has reached the stage of transformation and upgrading, and the planning of the e-sports industry will also drive the standardization of the game live broadcasting industry.

He believes that the future growth point will still appear in diversification, and the core profit model may open up operations through upstream and downstream to obtain more profits.

Another game live broadcasting platform person believes that the current operation of some live broadcast platform operations is not unrelated to the barbaric growth of the industry in the early days, but it can also be seen that the head live broadcast platform already has a wealth of e-sports anchor resources, star team resources and self-made content resources, which is equivalent to forming a first-mover advantage and moat advantage, and other Internet giants want to enter from short videos in a short time, which is not an easy task.