In the past 2023, "going overseas" has become a key word for the development of more and more game companies.
As the competition in the domestic game market becomes increasingly fierce, more and more game companies are willing to go abroad and push their games to a broader overseas market in order to find new growth opportunities. However, according to gamma statistics, in 2023, the actual sales revenue of China's self-developed games in overseas markets will be 16.366 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 5.6%, and this data has declined for two consecutive years.
So how can game companies stand out in the increasingly crowded overseas track? Many excellent overseas teams have given the same answer in the process of communication with teahouses - "strong localization" is the core competitiveness of game companies to successfully go overseas. Whether it is in mature game markets such as the United States and Japan, or in high-potential regions with rapid development in game markets such as Southeast Asia and Latin America, the localization ability of game teams is the key to determining player experience and product payment conversion.
It is worth noting that "localization" here not only refers to the localization of game content development and promotion acquisition strategies, but also includes "infrastructure" such as customer service and payment systems. However, Teahouse found that most game companies now know that game content and promotion methods should be adapted to local conditions, and many game teams have set up professional customer service, community operation and data analysis teams to escort games to "follow local customs". However, some of the supporting functions that also have a direct impact on gaming revenue and business interests have not received the attention and attention they deserve, such as payment optimization.
The payment channel is the main channel for players to complete payment conversion and game companies to obtain revenue growth. In the process of entering multiple markets and multiple distribution channels, only by laying a good foundation for the localization of payment operations, understanding the payment characteristics of different regions and the payment needs of different players, can the game experience of players be improved through the optimization and adjustment of payment methods, the user retention and payment conversion data of the product can be improved, and even channel costs can be reasonably avoided, and finally the effect of reducing costs and increasing efficiency can be achieved.
The CTO of a leading Chinese game company once said that the payment optimization of game companies is the link with the highest ROI return in the existing slowdown of market growth. This is why more and more leading game companies are now paying attention to the investment and exploration of payment optimization.
So what is the current payment situation in different parts of the world, what are the challenges faced by overseas game teams in terms of payment optimization, and how can these challenges be solved? Recently, Adyen and Gamma Data released the "China Game Overseas Payment Research Report" to analyze and answer these questions in detail.
01
The current situation and challenges of overseas payment for games
In general, the global payment system has significant regional diversification and fragmentation: not only are the mainstream payment methods different in different regions, but there are more than five relatively common payment forms in almost every region.
For example, in Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea, bank cards are the mainstream way of transaction payment, in Southeast Asia, the penetration rate of bank cards is low, prepaid cards and mobile phone operator payment used to be the most common payment channels, in recent years, with more and more new e-wallets in the local promotion, such as Vietnam's MoMo, Thailand's PromptPay and other local e-wallets are becoming one of the most commonly used payment methods for local users.
A list of commonly used payment methods in various places
Therefore, in order to meet the payment Xi and needs of players in different regions, most game companies will access more mainstream credit cards, e-wallets, recharge cards and other payment methods in their products when they go overseas.
Many game manufacturers believe that compared with China, the payment ecology in overseas markets is more complex and diverse, so the factors that manufacturers consider when choosing payment methods, in addition to the payment success rate that everyone is most concerned about, are also the key factors that manufacturers consider.
According to Gamma Data Research, due to the complexity of overseas payment business and the changing business needs of enterprises at different stages of overseas development, 100% of the surveyed enterprises chose to cooperate with two or more payment service providers in order to meet the payment layout needs of enterprises going overseas.
At the same time, third-party payment channels have now become the primary choice for game companies to cope with the complex overseas environment, mainly due to the fact that third-party payment pays more attention to providing customized services for game companies and has high-quality service response capabilities. According to the results of this survey, 60% of the current payment shares of game companies account for more than 30% of the third-party payment channels.
However, judging from the past experience of major game companies, payment is still a major pain point that enterprises need to solve in the process of going overseas. Specifically, most overseas games may encounter poor user recharge/payment experience in the payment process, and problems such as payment security, platform official payment channel restrictions, payment costs, and payment compliance are also common in the global market. Once the above problems occur, they will bring immeasurable losses to the reputation and revenue of game companies, so it is very important for game companies to find a more balanced and comprehensive payment solution.
Therefore, in order to meet the needs of games going overseas in terms of payment success rate, payment cost, payment convenience, payment security and coverage groups, a large number of game teams choose to cooperate with professional third-party payment platforms.
However, it should be noted that not all third-party payment platforms are very reliable, and some game companies have reported that some third-party platforms have problems and deficiencies in qualification and management, customer service quality, one-stop solutions, and other aspects. Therefore, it is particularly important for game companies to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the platform's capabilities through a reasonable screening mechanism before selecting a payment partner.
02
A guide to evaluating payment solutions
So how should a game team evaluate a payment service provider?
At the level of bank card payment, most enterprises will encounter the problem of lack of understanding of local users and poor player recharge experience, so a reliable third-party payment platform should be able to deepen the local operation of payment, optimize the payment experience of players, and empower user operations and services while improving the success rate of payment. At the same time, as mentioned above, bank cards are the mainstream payment method in popular regions such as Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea, so whether the platform has acquiring qualifications in the local market is also the focus of game companies when evaluating payment partners.
Source: Adyen Global Payments
At the same time, the convenience and security of payment are self-evidently important for gaming companies, so the third-party payment platform simplifies the payment process, reduces risk costs, and improves immediate efficiency. Specifically, can the platform realize the integration of payment gateway, risk control and transaction processing, simplify the payment process and improve payment security? Can the platform provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution? Enterprises need to evaluate the platform capabilities from the aspects of technical strength, data analysis, team service, etc., so that they can go hand in hand with a reliable platform, balance the relationship between risk and transaction authorization, and escort the game's overseas journey.
As the main reason why more than 60% of enterprises explore third-party payment, the payment success rate should naturally be one of the main criteria for game companies to evaluate third-party payment platforms. In the actual operation process, game companies can judge whether the platform is directly connected to the upstream acquirer, allowing the enterprise to view the overall data and the reasons for order failure in the background, whether it can continuously promote optimization through technical iteration, and whether it can help enterprises improve the efficiency of the entire payment life cycle.
At the level of local payment, more than sixty percent of enterprises hope to realize the aggregation of complex payment methods through third-party platforms, and the platform that can aggregate a variety of payment channels and help enterprises improve their resource integration capabilities is obviously more advantageous. Therefore, before reaching a cooperation, it is necessary for enterprises to understand whether the platform supports multiple local payment methods around the world in addition to bank card payment, and whether it can aggregate more payment methods through a single platform without cooperating with multiple payment service providers.
In terms of overall payment costs, about half of the enterprises hope to optimize the overseas payment and settlement rules, and hope that the platform can provide foreign exchange services. Game companies can evaluate in detail the effect of the platform on improving payment transparency and controllability by whether the platform provides a more reasonable billing model and provides transaction reports, so that enterprises can optimize payment costs, whether it can provide a rich enough transaction and settlement currency, and whether it provides a multi-currency settlement scheme in the original currency, so that enterprises can choose freely.
Research data of "Research Report on China's Game Overseas Payment".
03
Payment Optimization Helps Game Companies "Leverage Big with Small"
In addition, it is foreseeable that in addition to relying on payment solutions provided by professional service providers, in the future, as the pace of domestic games going overseas continues to accelerate, driven by the urgent demand of game companies to reduce costs and increase efficiency, more and more game manufacturers will choose to build their own official recharge channels to meet the diversified payment needs of players in different regions, different channels and different ports around the world.
In addition, the increasing influence of domestic game companies and products in overseas markets has also laid a good foundation for mainland game companies to build their own official recharge channels.
For game companies, payment is not only a window to improve player experience and game reputation, but also a key channel to fully explore the commercial value of games and efficiently grasp the first-hand data of products. Therefore, it is very important for overseas game companies to strengthen their own control over payment channels through self-built official recharge channels.
On the one hand, as an infrastructure link that is easily ignored by enterprises, payment actually has a huge potential of "leveraging big with small means", and game companies only need to bring very considerable revenue growth to enterprises through lower cost investment. On the other hand, the data in the payment process, such as the payment amount, the source of the paying user, the payment link, etc., can help game companies understand the conversion and churn of users in more detail, and standing on the "shoulder" of data, the game team can more easily optimize and adjust the game recharge link, and ultimately promote the game to maximize its commercial value in the process of going global.
To sum up, on the increasingly competitive overseas track, every link in the game operation process cannot be ignored. Details determine success or failure – I hope that in the future, more game companies will see the importance of payment, and provide better gaming experiences for players around the world through refined payment operation strategies tailored to local conditions, so that game reputation and revenue performance can further jump.
Finally, teams looking for ideas to optimize payments for games can click on the link below to access the original report for more details.