The turmoil over Blizzard's shutdown of the national server has not yet dissipated, and there have been controversial incidents caused by the suspension of the game in China.
Recently, under the official Weibo of "Too Busy", many players expressed their "hope that Huaqing Feiyang can respect the reasonable demands of players, retain game data and propose reasonable solutions." ”
Every day, players will come to Weibo to urge the official to come up with a reasonable solution, and the official of "Too Busy" only released a questionnaire survey to collect players' opinions after announcing the suspension in February, and the time was until 12:00 on February 20, and said that the production team would conduct questionnaire sorting, discussion and evaluation.
But more than a month has passed and there is still no follow-up, and all players can do is to leave messages and urge under the official Weibo.
It is reported that "Too Busy in Charge" is an ancient otome love mobile game developed by Beijing Huaqing Feiyang Network Co., Ltd., which was officially launched in August 2020. Otome games, that is, female-oriented love games, game through the interaction of female protagonists with male characters, thus advancing the plot.
"Too Busy" has achieved good results in otome genre games since its launch, and when it launched in August 2020, "Too Busy" received more than 3 million pre-orders across all channels.
In just two years, the game has become unsustainable, and the rights protection and complaints of players have also made the issue of how to protect game assets appear in the public eye again.
"The Boss is Too Busy" "stops" from the beginning to the end
In 2020, the otome mobile game market broke out, and big manufacturers such as Tencent, Netease, and Mihayou entered the market. From Huaqing Feiyang, who has been involved in the otome mobile game market, he set his sights on the ancient otome mobile game, and on August 7, 2020, "The Boss is Too Busy" was launched. Then, on the first day of launch, the game topped the iOS free list, and then topped the list for three consecutive days.
It is reported that this game was established in 2018, when "Love and Producer" was the biggest otome game explosion on the market. In this way, it is not surprising that Huaqing Feiyang laid out the otome mobile game market at that time.
In February this year, "Too Busy" officially issued an announcement that the game will stop downloading, registering, and closing the recharge function at 11:00 on February 10, and officially stop operating at 11:00 on May 8, after the server is closed, the community will stop operating, customer service will stop serving, and all data will be emptied. As soon as the news came out, it quickly caused heated discussions among the player community.
Players then collectively protested their rights, and three days later, "Too Busy" issued an announcement to suspend the shutdown process. On February 10, "Too Busy" announced the cancellation of the shutdown plan, retained server and game data, and sent questionnaires to collect player suggestions and expectations, but at the same time, the game content will stop being updated, and the exclusive customer service will also stop.
Many players said on Weibo: "Recently, there have been more and more game bugs, many crashes, and the experience is very poor. "It's getting harder and harder to log in lately, and the game is stuck."
More than a month has passed, and the official "Too Busy" still can't give an answer, and players are struggling to get by in a game with more and more bugs, while also busy going to Weibo to urge the official update of the latest news.
At present, the game "Too Busy" can no longer be found in major app stores. Zhang Shule, an analyst in the game industry, believes that there is no banquet in the world, and any game, even if it is a high-quality hit, will gradually fall behind and eventually close the server in the iteration of the game industry.
According to media reports, within a month before the game was announced to be suspended, "Too Busy in Charge" frequently opened "krypton gold" activities, which also made many players dissatisfied.
Zhang Shule said that as for the promotion a few days before the announcement of the closure, it is excessive, but this is essentially an "unspoken rule" in the game industry. Over the years, such pre-service promotions have occurred in the past of many small and medium-sized game manufacturers, and there is indeed a suspicion of cutting a leek at the end, which is also a disregard for consumer rights and interests by game manufacturers.
Why is Huaqing Feiyang like this?
"The Head is Too Busy" is produced by Beijing Huaqing Feiyang Network Co., Ltd. Founded in 2007, Huaqing Feiyang is a high-tech enterprise that takes the Internet game community as the starting point for its development, and has now become a comprehensive digital interactive entertainment high-tech enterprise that integrates mobile games, web games and community social games.
Huaqing Feiyang received 10 million yuan investment from Tencent in 2012, and since then web games such as "QQ Supermarket" and "Red Alert Tank Storm" have mainly operated on the Tencent platform.
As a veteran military game developer, it has "Battleship Empire", "Ship Pointing to the Pacific", "National Tank Alliance" and "Modern Naval Warfare" several military-themed games, according to Huaqing Feiyang's prospectus, "Battleship Empire" provided 65% of the company's revenue in 2015, and gradually declined after reaching its peak in 2016.
Huaqing Feiyang previously received investment from Tencent, which indirectly holds 17.7%. It can be said that Huaqingfeiyang's transformation is inextricably linked with Tencent. Huaqing Feiyang set its sights on two-dimensional games and women's games, and these two markets happened to be missing for Tencent, at that time, Huaqing Feiyang launched "Too Busy in Charge" and "All Souls Enlightenment" respectively.
At the time of the launch of "Too Busy", a lot of effort was put into both marketing and co-branding. "Too Busy in Charge" began to solicit fan creations early on, and used this to expand secondary dissemination. The game's fandom coverage is also relatively wide, including fanfiction, fanart and cos. In addition, they also exhibited offline, bringing the game's fan culture to exhibitions such as CP26.
In July 2020, "Too Busy in Charge" cooperated with Tencent Music Group TME to launch the theme song "He Qing" sung by Zhou Shen. On the first day of release, the song climbed to the first place in the popularity list of music platforms such as QQ Music, Kugou Music, and Kuwo Music.
But for now, the game is not performing well and is even on the verge of "disappearing".
Zhang Shule believes that since 2022, there are "Fantasy Book Apocalypse", "Labyrinth of the Moon God", "Dream Walking" and "LoveLive! A number of similar games such as "School Idol Festival" announced the discontinuation. It is not for nothing that this phenomenon is concentrated in such genres that are distinctive in terms of two-dimensional and romantic style.
Games that focus on aesthetic two-dimensional style, themselves in the vertical category, the number of users is not outstanding, must be similar to Mihayou's "Genshin" out of the circle, in order to be able to fight for a long time.
In addition, small and medium-sized game manufacturers often choose to announce the closure at the last minute based on various considerations, which indeed makes it difficult for many players to defend their rights. In the previous few successful rights protections, most of them canceled the server and stopped the update, allowing the player to slowly exit in a dead virtual world.
How are game assets protected?
The shutdown of "Too Busy" has once again put the issue of how to protect game assets in front of the public.
On February 20, 2022, due to the expiration of the agency agreement with Tencent, the mobile game announced that it would close the game operation, official website and server on April 28 of the same year. Users who have paid in the game can choose one of the three options in "Miracle Warmth", "Bright Starpath" or "Yanxi Raiders: Phoenix in Flight" to redeem it for a value-added package.
After the news of the outage was announced, many gamers expressed dissatisfaction, did not accept the compensation given by the official game, and hoped to retain the game data. With the protests of players, the China Consumers Association issued an article saying, "I will be concerned about the problem of the 'Yunchang Yue' game reflected in the consumer's comments." Subsequently, the mobile game "Yunchang Yue" was the same as "Too Busy in Charge", announcing the suspension of the service.
Subsequently, the mobile game "Yunchang Yuyi" was unmanned, bugs were frequent, and eventually players would be lost. It is foreseeable that "Too Busy" will follow the old path of "Cloud Clothes Jacket" if no new measures appear.
In January this year, the China Consumer Association released the "Top Ten Consumer Rights Protection Public Opinion Hot Spots in 2022", which mentioned that "the suspension and deletion of online games caused virtual property infringement disputes", and named the mobile game "Yunchang Yue" and NetEase Blizzard to stop cooperating with "World of Warcraft" and "Hearthstone" and other games were suspended.
In related cases, the focus of public opinion controversy is mainly that most games will delete game-related data archives after the server is suspended, which is suspected of infringing on the rights and interests of gamers. Moreover, most of the compensation measures proposed by some game operators are gift packages or benefits that lead to other games of the company, which in turn leads consumers to question that the so-called compensation plan is a different way for game operators to "cut leeks".
Li Hongjiang, managing partner and director of the Intellectual Property Practice Committee of Beijing Guantao Zhongmao Law Firm, said that no matter what kind of dispute exists over the nature of virtual property in online games, the civil rights and interests enjoyed by game users in a series of virtual property generated by their account activities in the game have been recognized in theoretical circles and judicial practice circles. Players enjoy civil rights and interests in the virtual property enjoyed by their registered account in the game activities, and the game operator's unauthorized deletion of the data enjoying civil rights and interests after the suspension of the server is an infringement of the virtual property rights and interests enjoyed by the player.
For game companies, lawyer Li Hongjiang believes that game companies should also enhance their risk awareness, formulate a future outage exit mechanism and compensation plan at the beginning of online game operation, and inform players in advance to increase the predictability of players about server suspension, guide players to plan reasonably, and arrange game investment according to the expected operation cycle of the game.