Coinciding with the May Day holiday, both students and workers have ushered in a rare leisure time of the year. Compared with traveling, carrying the weight forward in the crowded attractions, the whole person slumped on the sofa at home, leaving the dissatisfaction of study and work behind, and immersing yourself in the world of games, which has become a true portrayal of the holidays of countless young people.
Taking this opportunity, various game manufacturers are also actively launching various activities to attract players to kryptonite. For example, "League of Legends" launched the champion skin of the 2021 Global Finals champion EDG team in early May, and "Glory of the King" also launched a number of new skins and limited skin return activities in recent times, which can be said to be wave after wave of new skins and recharge activities.
So many activities will naturally attract many players to recharge. However, what netizens did not expect was that Tencent actually chose to live at this point in time. Recently, according to the feedback of many Weibo netizens, most of Tencent's business recharge has completely cancelled the 93% discount, including WeChat Pay, QQ wallet Q coin recharge, and the iOS "Glory of the King" recharge has also canceled the additional coupon.
For the adjustment made by Tencent suddenly, netizens have expressed great confusion, #King Glory said that the cancellation of recharge offers is a regular adjustment #Topic has also quickly landed on Weibo hot search. The question is, why did Tencent suddenly cancel the existing Q coin recharge offer during the May Day holiday, and what practical impact will the cancellation of this preferential policy have on players? Let's explore.
A deal that was suddenly canceled?
After seeing the message provided by the netizens, Xiao Lei immediately opened the familiar recharge interface and found that the actual situation was indeed the case. In the past, players only needed to pay 0.97 yuan to recharge a Q coin through WeChat Pay and QQ wallet, but now they need to pay 1 yuan, and no matter how much the user recharges, they cannot enjoy any preferential activities.
Most importantly, the actual value of Q coins is closely related to Tencent's various services, and users will use Q coins when they purchase game tokens, recharge QQ members, and accelerate QQ upgrade speed. For example, in the "League of Legends Mobile Game" coupon conversion, 10 coupons are equivalent to 1Q coins, and we used to buy 450 coupons for only 43.65 yuan for skins, but now we need a full 45 yuan. In other words, Tencent's recharge has become the original price, and the price of players recharging coupons to buy skins has correspondingly increased.
Not only that, because of the apple mall's commissioning mechanism, the iOS side of "Glory of the King" has not previously had a recharge discount mechanism, but instead of the mechanism of giving coupons, when the user recharges 450 coupons, the system will automatically give 25 coupons, which is equivalent to about 93% discount. However, because of this policy adjustment, the mechanism of giving extra coupons when recharging on the iOS side of "Glory of Kings" has also been abolished.
Perhaps some readers may feel that this preferential discount is just a small profit, but one or two dollars cheaper each time, even if it is canceled, it is harmless. However, for those users of the Kryptonite Party and the Student Party who are accustomed to recharging up little by little, even if they are cheaper than one piece or two pieces each time, it is not a small number for a long time. For those kryptonites who have thousands of kryptonites at a time, they can save dozens of dollars at a time.
Faced with the sudden cancellation of the discount, Tencent users will naturally feel dissatisfied. "It's really getting worse and worse", "There is no desire to recharge in an instant", "There is a 93% discount on the daily recharge on April 30, yesterday I didn't think it was a Bug", "It seems to be cutting leeks", "When can 1Q coin rise to equal to 1 bitcoin?" And so on.
At the same time, some more rational netizens said that the so-called Q coin discount recharge is originally a preferential activity, and Tencent naturally has the right to end the preferential activity. The problem is that Tencent did not issue an announcement to notify everyone in advance before modifying the rules, but chose to temporarily change its mind during the peak period of recharge during the May Day holiday, which will inevitably cause dissatisfaction among netizens.
Interestingly, according to Xiaolei's survey, this is not the first time that Tencent has seen an increase in the Q coin recharge discount. In the early years, Tencent had launched a 92% discount on Q coins using QQ wallet, but this discount soon became a 5% discount consistent with WeChat Pay, and then it was raised to the most impressive 93% discount.
It can be seen that Tencent is not suddenly canceling the Q coin recharge discount, but gradually reducing the degree of Q coin recharge discount until the final cancellation of the recharge discount.
Why are prices rising?
So the question is, what is the reason for the increase in the price of Q coins?
Personally, I believe that the primary reason is that Tencent has absolute confidence in its own payment channels and no longer needs to divert traffic through discount recharge activities. The reason why Tencent launched the use of QQ wallet and WeChat Pay recharge Q coin to enjoy preferential activities, its essential purpose is to drain the self-operated payment channel Tenpay, and compare it with Alipay, which needs to recharge Q coins at the original price, so that players can consciously choose Tencent's self-operated payment channel.
Today, Tenpay has become an unquestioned giant in the domestic mobile payment market, with a market share of more than 40%. According to the analysis of Debon Securities, at the moment when the "Internet dividend" will be exhausted, the online market is close to the bottleneck, and the sinking market has become the main source of new users for WeChat and Alipay. This may be the reason why Tencent canceled the recharge discount and put more attention on helping small and medium-sized businesses to operate digitally.
Secondly, from tencent's 2021 annual financial report, in 2021, Tencent achieved revenue of 560.118 billion yuan, an increase of 16% year-on-year, and net profit of 123.788 billion yuan, a slight increase of 1% year-on-year, which is the lowest increase in the company's net profit in the past decade. Not only that, in the fourth quarter of last year, Tencent's net profit was 24.88 billion yuan, down 25% year-on-year, which is the second consecutive quarter of Tencent's negative net profit growth in a single quarter after the net profit fell by 2% in the third quarter.
Under the pressure of financial reports, Tencent's games have accelerated the pace of activities. For the players of "Glory of Kings", it is often the previous skin that has just been launched, and even the "first seven" of the previous skin cannot wait, and the next skin will catch up, and various linkage skins, limited skins and recharge activities are mixed together, and even do not give the player much breathing time.
Of course, Tencent Games is not the only one who will face such revenue pressure. As early as April 20, Tencent Video announced the news of the increase in the price of video VIP, the VIP continuous monthly subscription price was adjusted from 20 yuan to 25 yuan, the continuous package season price was adjusted from 58 yuan to 68 yuan, and the continuous package annual price was adjusted from 218 yuan to 238 yuan. It is not difficult to see from this that Tencent's KPI requirements for the following project teams are constantly improving.
Various skins and recharge activities can speed up the progress of revenue, and the increasing membership price can bring about an intuitive increase in the payment rate, and the increase in recharge price brings about the rise of the income of the whole line of products. In the hearts of some users, Tencent's operation is quite a bit of a drinking and thirst-quenching meaning, but the actual situation may not allow them to slow down.
So the question is, what is the actual impact of the cancellation of this preferential policy on players?
In my opinion, the official reply of King Glory is that "this is based on business development and in order to bring a better experience to players, the company's routine adjustments" is actually no problem. As long as players can coordinate and no longer recharge after Tencent suddenly adjusts the preferential policies, then looking at the plummeting flow data, presumably the official is very willing to recharge the Q coin discount "based on business development".
The problem is that this is really unlikely to happen. Judging from the current list situation, even if the Q coin recharge price rises, "Glory of the King" can still firmly grasp the top position of the domestic mobile game paid list, and there will always be people who will pay for Tencent games. These disturbances are right and wrong, and in the end, they only add to the complaints of some players.