It's time for the annual statistics of game companies to go bankrupt (review: 2020, 2021).
This time is still based on the data of Qichacha to count the game companies in 2022. In order to further screen companies that actually engage in game R&D business, the statistics exclude companies that only have the word "game" in their business scope, and use the registration of software copyrights as a screening condition. However, this list includes business transfers, deregistration of subsidiary entities, and deregistration of companies after dissolution, etc., and there will still be defects.
There are fewer companies that go out of business, but...
Last year (January 1, 2022 ~ December 21, 2022), a total of 475 game companies were cancelled or revoked. The trend of the optimized filter data is the same as last year, and the number of companies that have closed down has declined. The overall trend is that the peak of the bankruptcy wave occurred in 2019, and the number of failed companies last year was still higher than before the peak.
On the other hand, 2022 saw a low tide in the formation of new game companies, the last time this happened in 2019 - also after experiencing the suspension of the version number, and then restarting the distribution. Perhaps because there is a time lag in the impact of the suspension of version numbers on the confidence of startups, the number of new companies may regain with reference to the previous trend.
Among these game companies with relatively short established years, about 30% of the companies established in 2017~2019 have been cancelled/revoked. Nearly 300 (about 7%) of the companies established in 2022 are in the same situation, but none of the companies established last year that closed in the same year have registered trademarks or soft copies, and there is basically no actual progress.
Companies that actually survive for less than a year may be engaged in marginal business, such as Shenzhen Goose Game registered "Uni" and "Xinkou" two chat and social soft books, Dongguan Tingxuan Network is a game promotion agency and game box traffic business; Most of the game companies that have survived for nearly 20 years have survived the Java game era, and in the case of difficult transformation, they have already been empty.
For example, China Entertainment Wireless claimed to be the first game company in China to set up a branch in Taiwan in the early years, and the company once had a lot of noise with its rapid iteration of products, one of the masterpieces "Pet Kingdom" achieved the sixth generation in 2012, but the era of Java games will eventually pass.
China Entertainment Wireless also tried to transform into mobile games. In 2013 and 2014, he launched mobile games such as "Sword of Hell" and "The Great Summoner", but I never heard much from the company since. Until 2018, China Entertainment Wireless preemptively registered trademarks such as "Goddess Rebirth", "Matrix", "Pokemon" and so on, which attracted the attention of Warner Bros., Nintendo and other companies, and last year after these trademarks were successively ruled invalid, China Entertainment Wireless finally ended in bankruptcy.
Among the game companies that have collapsed, the majority of them have decided to cancel due to bankruptcy or other reasons, or have been suspended after more than six consecutive months. Except for some board game companies, many companies simply can't raise money.
For example, Shenzhen Deep Space Taibai once developed "Floating Island and Warriors", but suddenly switched to lottery winning heart meridian analysis software in 2019, and the employees who were owed wages the following year took the company to court, and the company owed more than 90,000 yuan in salary that year. In 2021, Deep Space Taibai auctioned and sold three software copyrights including "Floating Island and Warriors", and the final 14,500 yuan raised was still far from filling the previous arrears.
Xuzhou Phantom Network has developed the two-dimensional game "Order of Gods: Backlight", and the production team said that they are only at the level of an ACG fandom in terms of funds and personnel. At the beginning of 2019, the company issued IOUs to two departing employees, with a total of 360,000 yuan in wages, and was finally sued by two employees. After one of the employees received the figure from the boss, he even admitted that it was worth 400 yuan and deducted it from the amount of the IOU.
Later, Phantom Network found a company with little publishing experience to release the game, and it didn't even get on the iOS version. The company was filed for bankruptcy liquidation by departing employees in 2022, and ended hastily after its business license was revoked in the same year.
Basically, the fact that game companies have gone bankrupt is the result of a long period of accumulation, and most of them reflect the poor management of the past few years.
There are big factories that invested or fell
Some of these fallen companies have been invested by large manufacturers, which on the one hand means that the research and development direction of the game is recognized by the big manufacturers, and on the other hand, the risk of game death is slightly reduced. But successful financing doesn't mean a long-term talisman.
Considering that the game team may have been disbanded long ago, only deregistered in 2022, or may not have been entered by platform information, this financing data may not reflect the neat situation. However, from the general financing situation, the majority of companies that have obtained angel round financing have basically not experienced multiple rounds of financing, and there are not many companies that have had multiple opportunities to adjust their business.
At the end of the day, the product is naturally the source of the problem. It may be that the product is not up or finished and is stillborn, or it may simply be because the game is not enough to support the company, which eventually leads to a shortage of funds.
Shanghai LeShu Network should be said to be a model of product failure, and the most critical problem may be "Once Upon a Time There Was a Spirit Sword Mountain" that was confirmed to have died this year.
Founded in 2015, the company received investment from Caesars Culture and The Paper in 2017, holding 16% and 4% respectively. "Once Upon a Time There Was a Spirit Sword Mountain" appeared at the Tencent Game Conference in 2020, and the production team said that "after more than 3 years of painful torture, the project finally barely came out to meet people", and 2017 was also the time for LeShu Network to register relevant software copyrights. Last year, Caesar Culture said that the game was commissioned to be customized by an external research and development team, presumably the LeShu Network was the development team referred to.
The game was provided by Caesars Culture and Tencent after signing a cooperation agreement, but because the game development version has not passed Tencent's acceptance, Caesars Culture has not left any more opportunities for project development. After Caesars Culture and Tencent officially terminated their contracts, the research and development of "Once Upon a Time There Was a Spirit Sword Mountain" stalled, and LeShu Network fell.
As an independent game team, Shanghai Yingstate Technology has to give up faster. In the middle of 2020, Shadow Technology exposed a relatively mainstream Roguelike ARPG "Cyber Siege", and in the same year received 1.2 million investment from Warrior Network, which held 8% of the shares, and the production team this year actually had only 8 people.
After receiving the investment, the game was reset under the name "Star Sea Vanguard: ASTRAY", deleting the original commercial card drawing system and changing it to a more traditional Castlevania-type gameplay. In May 2021, "Star Sea Vanguard: Divergent Encounter" began its first test, and at the end of the month, the game was shut down due to extreme lack of funds, and the project team was completely disbanded on the same day.
Less than a year passed between the time the investment was received and the project was dissolved.
The lack of funds is one thing, and the project team also mentioned, "If we don't inject any commercial design that affects the core experience of the game, this product still cannot impress most players, which means that this game as a commercial product has failed and been wrong from the beginning of the project." In the end, the company was retained until last year and was deregistered.
Star Sea Vanguard: Divergent
Beijing Jingji actually has a clear plan for the consumption of funds. In 2016, the company received angel round investment from GSR Venture Capital, and in the same year, the company's two-dimensional game "Imperial Spirit Record" was launched in the Hong Kong market. In March 2019, Mirror Dimension received another investment from Diandian Interactive, which holds 30% of the shares. Kagami Dimension's new investment can be said to be spent on a knife's edge.
In 2019, Imperial Spirit Records announced that it would stop updating its content but continue to operate, and the company began to develop and promote its new titles "My Star Knight" and "Breaker: Sealed God" in the next two years. Until the end of 2021, Kagami Dimension said that it was in a state of loss for a long time, shut down the operation of "Imperial Spirit Record" and "Breaker: Feng Shen" and applied to cancel the main body of the company, and finally fell more than 2 years after being invested.
The sound of Nanjing water illusion seems to last a little longer in comparison. Formerly known as a video game portal founded in 1999, Sound of Water was officially established at the end of 2014 to develop games, and less than two years later received investment from Bilibili, which holds a 20% stake.
At the end of 2015, the audio game "Zion Zaiyin" was launched, and the domestic version was released by Bilibili, which was also very suitable for the atmosphere of Bilibili at that time because of the official authorization of the V family; In 2017, "Incredible Band" developed by one person was launched, and Xindong was responsible for domestic distribution; In 2018, the sequel to "Zion Zaiyin", "INVAXION", was finalized to continue to be released by Bilibili and began to experiment with the PC version.
In the next few years, there was no new news, in fact, in 2021, the sound of water illusion was exposed and disbanded, and the original projects were also suspended and removed from the shelves, and the company was cancelled last year. In the field of audio games, where revenue is not easy, it is a long time for the sound of water illusion to last for 5 years.
Perhaps because paid buyouts are mainstream in the field of PC single-player games, it is inevitable that controversy and variables will occur.
Beijing Phantom Feather Technology was founded in 2014 and received investment from Xindong the following year, which holds a 10% stake. Phantom Feather Technology has been focusing on the sandbox game "Phantom" since its inception, when the game said it was made in UE4, and it was revealed that Chen Xinghan, the producer of "Wind Journey", served as a consultant, and the company also discussed plans to go to E3 the following year after being visited by Sony.
In 2015, Sony's people visited Phantom Feather Technology
But as a result, the game did not make as expected. "Phantom" was only released on Steam in May 2017, and the 98 yuan price and empty content of the game have attracted a large number of players' dissatisfaction, and the current reviews on Steam are mostly bad. At first, the producers did not rectify the bad reviews in time, until less than half a year later, "Phantom" announced iterative changes in the direction of multiplayer online.
As for the time for the completion of the plan, Phantom Feather Technology has expressed "2~3 months" and "2~3 years". It can be found that the game has not been updated since the beginning of 2018, and the company was suspended at the beginning of last year.
Announcement from Phantom Feather Technology
There are also games that look good and simply did not advance to the day they hit the shelves. Beijing Flowflow Interactive received a million-dollar angel round investment from companies such as Songhe Capital in 2017, and at the end of 2021, the company released a live-action video of the stand-alone ARPG "Chaos Sunset", which was expected to be available on Steam by the end of 2022. But when the planned time came, it was not the game that was on the shelves, but the decision to dissolve the company.
"Chaos Sunset"
Start over after falling
If some companies fall, there are companies that persist. Obtaining investment from large factories may not be worry-free for many years, but smooth financing can naturally create better conditions. Some of the startups on this death list deregistered their entities in 2022 and turned to re-starting or using new entities with the investment support of other game manufacturers.
According to Hangzhou Jiyu Network, this is their 2.5th entrepreneurship. The company's founder Cheng Qianfeng worked at NetEase in the early days, and founded Hangzhou Mingjiao Digital Technology in 2016, the company launched a synthetic placement RPG "Brave Love Synthesis" in 2019, and subsequently developed a VR room puzzle game "Enigma" with a wide range of genres and the Chinese style action game "Renxia".
Enigma was supposed to launch on Steam in August 2018, but it has been delayed until the company decided to disband in January last year.
Cheng Qianfeng founded Jiyu Network for the second time, and received angel round investment from Game Trigger, which holds 10% of the shares. Originally called Bad Pixel, Ren Xia and Enigma have also been brought to the new company. According to the company, it also has a main body called Seed Engine Studio, which has developed "Vampire Survivor" like "The Brave Live", showing the readiness to chase the trend.
Shanghai Ice Rain Network was founded in 2014, within 3 years after its establishment, the company developed "POPO Bird", "Dream Traveler", "Piano Master" and other single-player mobile games, in 2019 launched the casual competitive game "Unknown World", less than a year later the game was discontinued and removed, Ice Rain Network in the game industry no new news, until last year announced the cancellation of the company's main body.
The choice to write off at this time may be because the founder has newly pulled the investment. In addition to Ice Rain Network, founder Chen Shengtai also registered Shanghai Ice and Air Network (founded in 2017) and Shanghai Fun Sky Network (established in 2021), both of which received investment in Polk City in July this year, the latter of which holds 24%.
Now the ice network is mainly a card game, and it is under research a roguelike placement card game, presumably the "Twilight Hero" tested by Polk City in 2020, which was also when the ice network registration game "Twilight Legend" was soft. Just last month, Polk City got the version number of "Tales of the Twilight".
Less than half a year has passed since the investment was obtained to the version number of the cooperative product, and it is estimated that everything is still smooth after using the new company body this time.
《Twilight Hero》
In comparison, Tianjin Zhizi Network had less entrepreneurial pressure at the beginning. Founded in 2015, the company has obtained angel investment from Shenzhou Taiyue Wutong Fund and strategic investment from China Taiyue Group, with a total holding of 27%. A year and a half after the establishment of the company, the company mainly focused on the SLG mobile game "Sailcraft", but after 2017, it has not registered game software-related software books, and decided to dissolve in January last year.
The second month after the dissolution, founder Liang Wei founded a new company, Beijing Starpattern Technology, and in May of the same year, he received investment from Electric Soul Network, which held 20% of the shares. The core team of Starstripe Technology was established in 2015, presumably it is still the original team of Zhizi Network, and after this venture turned to cooperate with Electric Soul Network, Starstripe Technology registered the software copyright "Starship Through the Stars", which does not rule out the possibility of continuing to do SLG.
Puppet Planet received investment from Xiaomi (holding 10% of the shares) and developed "Xiaomi Racing" in the early years, according to the official website page at the time, the company focused on the development of racing games. However, there has been no new cooperation progress in the following years, and judging from a batch of soft books registered by the company in 2020, Puppet Planet seems to have begun to transform into casual idle games to go overseas.
At the end of 2021, Beijing Meihui Entertainment, one of the shareholders of Puppet Planet, received investment from Zhuhai Huitou (TT Voice). The next year, the puppet planet decided to disband, and shortly after the official dissolution, the founder of the company became the major shareholder and actual controller of Mei Interactive Entertainment, and the research and development experience of "Xiaomi Racing" was also classified under Mei Interactive Entertainment, the difference is that Xiaomi is no longer a shareholder of the company.
epilogue
The impact of the industry reshuffle period may not be reflected in the changes in industrial and commercial information in time, and it is difficult to conclude whether the company that pursues dreams in the future can reduce the moment of broken dreams.