Byte Tencent "Compound": "Glory of Kings" returned to Douyin live broadcast, and the short video of "Flowers" earned tens of billions of traffic

图片来源：Pixabay

After nearly 5 years, "Glory of Kings" was broadcast on Douyin again.

On January 13, "Glory of Kings" announced through its official Weibo that from January 21, the Douyin live broadcast of "Honor of Kings" will be fully opened.

At the same time, in order to screen all the technical problems that may be encountered during the broadcast, January 14th to January 17th is the technical test period, "Honor of Kings" will invite special guests XYG E-sports Club to test the live broadcast, January 18 to January 20 as the theme of the live broadcast period, game anchor Zhang Daxian broadcast for 3 consecutive days.

Countless gamers and fans rushed to tell and cheer for it, and many Internet practitioners also regarded it as a historic moment. Internet industry analyst Ding Daoshi pointed out to Times Finance and Economics that although this move seems to be just a small cooperation, the signal behind it lies in Tencent (00700. HK) and ByteDance have further eased.

At one time, the two Internet giants regarded each other as their biggest competitors. In many fields such as social networking, music, online articles, short videos, and corporate services, you have been going back and forth for many years. And the game is the area where the battle between the two sides is most intense.

Since 2016, Tencent has sued Byte several times, accusing its platform of infringing copyright by broadcasting Tencent's games in order to keep the huge traffic of this national game in Tencent's system. In January 2019, the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court issued the first act preservation injunction in the game industry at the request of Tencent, ruling that Xigua Video should stop live streaming the game content of "Honor of Kings".

Almost at the same time, Byte also blew the horn of the charge game internally.

According to incomplete statistics from Times Finance, from 2019 to 2022, ByteDance has invested more than 22 times in the game field, with an amount of about 30 billion yuan. Byte hopes to make up for its own disadvantages in the production of high-quality content, change the existing pattern of China's game industry, and get a share of this 300 billion market.

The cracks are getting bigger and bigger, the relationship is getting farther and farther apart, and Tencent Byte has been "isolated" for many years. However, with the changes in the macro environment and market structure, the ice between the two sides has begun to melt, and Tencent and Byte are not cases, and "big manufacturers" are embracing "big factories".

Is there a harbinger of the easing of relations between the two giants?

The launch of "Glory of Kings" on Douyin had been foreshadowed before.

As early as November 2023, when Byte announced that it would gradually close its main game brand Chaoxi Lightyear and fully withdraw from the self-developed game business, there was news that "Honor of Kings" is expected to be broadcast on Douyin.

At that time, the well-known "Glory of Kings" anchor Zhang Daxian announced on Weibo that he would start his Douyin live broadcast debut on December 2, 2023, 104 days after Huya stopped broadcasting. The news was even officially forwarded by "Honor of Kings", with the caption: "I miss you, old friend Xianxian." ”

This move has caused a lot of speculation in the market, and many voices believe that Byte may withdraw from its game self-development and publishing business in exchange for Tencent's investment in the whole ecology of Douyin.

An internal employee of Dawn Lightyear once told Times Finance Analysis that bytes, which are good at distribution, do not have the genes to make games. "Instead of investing heavily in games, it is better to change the way of thinking, take retreat as advance, give up the game business, remove the biggest obstacle to in-depth cooperation with Tencent, and force e-commerce traffic and game traffic to raise prices with each other at the bidding level, and reap the benefits. ”

Judging from the results, Zhang Daxian's Douyin live broadcast debut became "Yuan Dream Star" instead of "Glory of Kings", and kicked off the prelude to the crazy buying of Tencent's most important flagship product at the end of 2023 on Douyin.

According to a report released by DataEye, a data tracking agency, from November 17 to December 16, 2023, 38% of the advertisements of "Yuanmeng Star" were placed on Byte's advertising platform "Pangolin Alliance", becoming Tencent's most invested advertising channel for this game, while only 12% were placed on Tencent's own advertising platform "Youlianghui" in the same period.

At the beginning of 2024, the cooperation between the two sides at the game level has been further deepened.

According to a report on January 8, Chaoxi Lightyear is negotiating with Tencent to sell a number of games, involving project teams scattered in Shanghai, Shenzhen and other places, and the price has been greatly discounted. Chaoxi Lightyear responded that the deal with Tencent has not yet been finalized, and the team is still negotiating with multiple buyers about the sale of the project.

Now, these changes can be regarded as the easing of the relationship between the two giants, and even gradually heating up, paving the way for the resumption of "Honor of Kings" on Douyin.

According to Zhang Shu, an analyst in the game industry, Tencent is also in urgent need of expanding its publicity channels, and the current state of Huya Douyu can no longer support the publicity and distribution of Tencent Games, and it continues to insist that copyright barriers do not match its development strategy.

"With Douyin no longer attacking the game industry, it is natural that the two sides can complement each other without fighting each other, and the value of cooperation is greater than that of competition. Zhang Shule pointed out to Times Finance that the Internet industry has entered the era of vertical deep cultivation, rather than the previous era of blind expansion, where the popularity of the volume is the previous era, the importance of revenue growth has been higher than user growth, so cooperation has become possible.

When the big factory began to embrace the big factory

In fact, in the past year, it has become a norm for major Internet companies to break down inherent barriers and barriers.

As early as April 2023, Douyin announced that it had reached a cooperation with Tencent Video, and the two sides would cooperate on the linkage promotion of long and short videos and the derivative creation of short videos. This laid the foundation for Tencent's drama works such as "Sauvignon Blanc", "The Long Season" and "Flowers" to land on Douyin for publicity and release.

According to Douyin, "Sauvignon Blanc" continued to release a total of 390 pieces of content within 2 months through the first plot, exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, artist small theater, famous scenes, and second creation videos, etc., with a daily frequency of 10, attracting the attention of 2 million fans, and the official Douyin likes nearly 100 million times. According to Xindou data, as of January 15, topics related to "Flowers" have received a total of 12.174 billion views on the Douyin platform. The popularity of the content of the series has risen with the popularity of Douyin, and the two sides have achieved a win-win situation.

And outside of Tencent Douyin. In September 2023, at the "Alimama UD×Tencent Advertising In-depth Cooperation and Exchange Conference", Alimama and Tencent Advertising also announced that they had reached a cooperation to jointly launch the "Double 11 Super Detonation Plan" to achieve a comprehensive and direct connection of WeChat and Taobao advertising traffic.

Two months later, in November 2023, Alibaba's new retail format Hema Xiansheng also announced that it would settle in rival JD.com and participate in JD.com's official activities on Double 11, including full reductions and tens of billions of subsidies. This is also considered an icebreaker journey, and even a signal of reconciliation between Ali and JD Century.

"These collaborations have attracted a lot of attention in the industry, and they not only mark the easing of relations between the giants, but also reveal a major shift in corporate strategy in the current market environment. Ding Daoshi said. In his opinion, in the past, Byte, Tencent, Alibaba (BABA.NYSE), JD.com (JD. NASDAQ) and other Internet giants have launched fierce competition in many fields, forming a relatively closed ecosystem.

It was not until April 2021 that the State Administration for Market Regulation proposed for the first time to "strictly prevent the closure of the system and ensure the openness and sharing of the ecosystem", and according to the requirements of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, before September 17 of that year, all Internet platforms must be unblocked according to the standards. Since then, more and more "icebreakers" have begun to advance, and the boundaries between platforms have begun to loosen.

"With the continuous change of the market environment, especially the strengthening of regulation, these giants are beginning to realize that they can't do everything themselves, and they should give others more opportunities. For example, the open live broadcast of "Honor of Kings" on Douyin can attract more users, and the entry of Hema into JD.com will expand its online sales channels. This cooperation will help to enhance the market competitiveness of both parties in order to jointly respond to market pressures and bring tangible growth. Ding Daoshi pointed out.