Liu Mou, the betta anchor who stepped on the stroke, and the barbaric era of money everywhere|Titanium Media Depth

Liu Mou (second from right), who participated in the listing of Betta, the source of the picture is Liu Mou's official blog

Between different groups, the image conveyed by Douyu game anchor Liu Mou (screen name: PDD) to the outside world seems to be very different.

For those who like Liu Mou, Liu Mou is their "pig" and an anonymous friend who can help them get rid of their study and work fatigue. He is not only an excellent professional esports player, but also a well-known streamer who can be entertained by a wide audience.

For those who don't like Liu Mou, Liu Mou is a nouveau riche with a lot of luck. After accurately stepping on the two waves of professional e-sports and game live broadcasting, Liu Mou has transformed from an Internet addict teenager who has achieved nothing to an industry symbol with a net worth of more than 100 million.

Liu Mou is straightforward and mysterious. He can not only face the camera and tell all kinds of past events of domestic violence by his father in his childhood, but also can withdraw and leave many times before the outbreak of negative events that can affect his career.

Regarding Liu Mou's "hiding in case of trouble", some people say that Liu Mou is playing a role similar to Tony Leung in "Goldfinger", and some people say that Liu Mou has a sense of crisis formed due to his childhood experience.

All in all, after the arrest of Douyu CEO Chen Shaojie, Liu Mou, who had been off the air for many months, recently became the focus of public opinion again because he was photographed appearing in Japan. Those who hated him thought he had absconded from the country, and those who supported him believed that he was resting normally after the expiration of his live broadcast contract.

In Liu Mou, poverty, wealth, submission, power, crime, and justice shine in a variety of colors. Exactly which is true and which is false, I'm afraid only time will tell.

In the dark, hang light bulbs all over your body

Since November last year, Chen Shaojie, CEO of the game e-sports live broadcast platform Douyu, was arrested by the Chengdu Public Security on suspicion of opening a casino, and a new round of reshuffle has begun in the domestic live broadcast circle.

After the Chen Shaojie incident was exposed, many former and current Douyu head anchors, including Han Jinlong (screen name: Wuhu Da Sima), Kim Tae-sang (screen name: Doinb), Ren Yixu (screen name: Xu Xu Baobao) and many other former and current Douyu head anchors stopped broadcasting one after another. At that time, there were rumors in the market that Chen Shaojie's crime of opening a casino may be related to the Douyu platform.

A week later, the Jinzhou police announced that they had cracked a case of using a live streaming platform to open a casino. According to the Jinzhou Public Security Announcement, the suspect is Zhou, the anchor of the "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" section of a platform, and the amount involved exceeds 17 million yuan. Later, it was rumored in the industry that the anchor involved in the case was the well-known anchor of Douyu "Whispering, 619".

Since then, "gambling" has become the sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the head anchor of Betta. Their arbitrary movements are also very likely to be pointed to gambling.

At the end of last month, Liu Mou topped the hot search list on Weibo, and he has been off the air since mid-November last year, and has recently been photographed many times in Japan's ski resorts and convenience stores. As a result, the market rumored that Liu Mou had absconded to Japan.

Then, a live broadcast speech by Ren Yixu, who had been off the air for more than 40 days since the Chen Shaojie incident was exposed, added fuel to the fire of the so-called "Liu Mou's absconding".

According to Ren Yixu's live broadcast slice, in a live broadcast in early March, Ren Yixu revealed, "Everyone's situation is different, some people actively cooperate, some people abscond back to China, and some people abscond out of the country." ”

The voice of the person who is also at the center of the whirlpool of public opinion seems to have further confirmed the remarks of "Liu Mou absconded out of the country". In this regard, Liu Mou and his team did not respond much, and in the face of questions from netizens, Liu Mou's agent just replied: "Liu Mou's live broadcast contract has expired and is currently resting." As of March 22, Liu Mou's accounts on major social platforms can still be browsed normally and have not been banned.

As a popular anchor in the game live broadcast industry, this is not the first time that Liu has quietly left the crowded live broadcast room.

In the autumn of 2017, with the rapid explosion of the tactical competitive game "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" in the live broadcast industry, a "review turmoil" for major head anchors gradually became the focus of the industry at that time. In the face of the doubts of a large number of viewers, Liu Mou did not confront him head-on like his live broadcast nobleman Lu Benwei, but suspended the live broadcast without warning.

In the more than a year since Liu Mou stopped broadcasting, the game live broadcast industry has undergone earth-shaking changes. Not only was Lu Benwei banned from broadcasting on the whole network for instigating fans to curse in public, but his owner Panda TV also ushered in a closed ending after tight cash flow.

During that time, Liu Mou appeared in the audience of the game and e-sports industry in various capacities. The esports club he founded, YM, is thriving in the League of Legends First Division Pro League, and his live streaming agency has also successfully signed a new popular streamer, Han Jinlong. Although his own body was found to have a liver tumor, the fortunate thing was that the tumor was benign.

When the industry's leading game anchor and the live broadcast platform ecology experienced a round of changes, Liu Mou, who returned to his live broadcast room, made his comeback debut in Douyu. Along with it, there is also the news that the Hope Primary School he donated to build in Inner Mongolia has been completed and put into use.

There are mixed reviews on the Internet about Liu Mou's donation to build Hope Primary School, some people think he is putting on a show, and some people feel that this act really provides local children with educational resources that they have never had before.

Liu Mou interacts with students from Hope Primary School, and the picture is taken from a special news clip in Duolun County, Inner Mongolia

Liu Mou's controversies made him enjoy the fanatical worship of true love fans, but also almost bear the same amount of suspicion and contempt. His YM has qualified for the League of Legends' top Pro League qualifiers seven times, but lost all of them. Industry rumors say that this is a deliberate match-fixing by YM in order to make money from esports betting.

Under the thick information barrier of the game and e-sports industry, everything Liu Mou does is like hanging a light bulb as bright as day on himself in the dark night when he can't see his fingers. This will not only attract the prying eyes of his peers, but also illuminate his past and future path for the outside world.

Lucky internet addicted teenager

In "Flying Life 2", Shen Teng once said: "I have tried countless times, but I know that opportunities will only appear once or twice in them." ”

From the perspective of hard work and opportunity, Liu Mou is lucky.

In 2010, 19-year-old Liu Mou received an invitation to play for a Shanghai e-sports team. For him, this invitation seemed to give him a second life. Before that, he was just an internet addict teenager who was addicted to video games. And the affirmation from the team boss made him see the hope of making a living through his own preferences.

After joining the team, Liu Mou became one of the first professional e-sports players in China to be League of Legends. Since then, in the decade of rapid development of the e-sports industry, the hope he has obtained is also what many Internet addicts with a certain talent for e-sports dream of.

However, with the increasing specialization of e-sports training, the difficulty of obtaining this hope is also increasing year by year. Liu Mou himself once said in a live broadcast in 2020, "With the development of the industry, it is difficult for Internet addicted teenagers to have another chance." ”

After entering the professional e-sports circle, Liu Mou began to show his competitive ability to the fullest. In the first two years of competition, there were hardly any players who could beat Liu Mou in the matchup. Unfortunately, the prominence of ability does not earn Liu Mou more money, and everyone who joins it must accept the uncertainty of income generation in this primitive industry.

However, in the third year of Liu Mou becoming a professional e-sports player, with the emergence of a person, Liu Mou no longer has to endure this helplessness. That person is called Wang Sicong, and he is also Liu Mou's first nobleman.

With the entry of the rich second generation led by Wang Sicong into e-sports, the industry has had more traffic and money since then, and the treatment of players has also risen. In April 2012, Liu Mou joined Wang Sicong's team Invictus Gaming (hereinafter referred to as iG), and his monthly salary soared from the original 1,500 yuan to 7,000 yuan.

Source: iG E-sports Club official blog

When Liu Mou got his first salary at iG, he realized for the first time that the money could be so thick. And, if it is said that the team boss who gave the invitation before was to let Liu Mou find hope for a living. Then, Wang Sicong let Liu Mou find the motivation to make money.

"Once, during the Chinese New Year, our team went to the Internet café together, and there was only one private room with an online seat, but there was a girl sitting in the private room, and she refused to change it no matter what we said. Later, Wang Sicong went in and chatted with her, and she left immediately, still holding a stack of money in her hand, about a few hundred yuan. Liu Mou said in a live broadcast in 2021.

After having the motivation, as time went by, the direction of making money gradually came to Liu Mou. The rapid rise of the game live streaming industry has allowed professional e-sports players to find the answer to retirement and reemployment.

In 2016, Liu Mou teamed up with Wang Sicong again two years after retiring from the military and entered Panda TV created by the latter as an anchor. According to the relevant content of the China Judgment Network, even if the revenue share of the live broadcast reward is removed, Liu Mou's live broadcast brokerage company Nimitz Mutual Entertainment can receive a basic income of 30 million yuan a year.

From 1,000 yuan to 10 million yuan, Liu Mou's income has achieved an order of magnitude jump, which is inseparable from the objective factors of the dividends of the times and the help of nobles, and the reason why Liu Mou was able to grasp this opportunity largely depends on his second nobleman, Lu Benwei. Without the help of this close friend during his time as a player, Liu Mou's game live streaming journey might have gone in a completely different direction.

In the days when Liu Mou first started live broadcasting, Lu Benwei, who was already the head anchor of Douyu at that time, drained his friends through the double-row live broadcast of the game with Liu Mou every day, "At that time, he called me every day to wake up and asked me to broadcast the double-row live broadcast with him, I am very grateful to him." Liu Mou said in the live broadcast.

"First Order" and "Chicken Head Anchor"

A high level of competition does not mean that there will be many people watching the live broadcast, which is the first lesson Liu Mou learned in this new job.

When he was a player, although Liu Mou was the first batch of professional e-sports players in China for "League of Legends", his results on the field were always a little embarrassing.

Back in 2012, Liu Mou had outstanding personal ability at that time, and he was also the No. 1 domestic top laner in the hearts of many "League of Legends" professional e-sports players, but his iG team won less and lost more when facing his old rival WE team.

Liu Mou (third from left) and his teammates, photo source: iG E-sports Club official blog

In the competitive world, no one remembers the second place. To a certain extent, due to the backwardness of the team's performance, Liu Mou's popularity is slightly inferior to WE star players Yu Jingxi and Gao Xuecheng.

This affected his subsequent live broadcast career to a certain extent. For example, although Liu Mou is the oldest group of players, and Douyu is also the first live broadcast platform to rise in the "Thousand Broadcast War" that year, the cooperation between the two sides did not arrive until 2019.

Before the birth of Douyu and other related live broadcast platforms, most of the professional e-sports players at that time were broadcast live on the official YY channel of their respective clubs. At that time, live broadcast was far less popular than it is now, and most of the players in the live broadcast room were between thousands and tens of thousands, and the difference in treatment between players in live broadcast was not large. But later, with the advent of Betta, the game live streaming ecology began to change rapidly.

In that era when information transparency is far less than today's, Douyu's promotion chose to start with high-level players in League of Legends. At that time, according to market rumors, players who reached the strongest king in the game rank could get 10,000 yuan as long as they used the word "betta" as the prefix in the game ID, and the player who ranked first in the national server could get 200,000 yuan if he changed his name.

These player IDs with the word Betta were later continuously revealed in the players' live broadcasts and commentary videos, and Betta also established user perception at the player level. Viewers who like to watch live broadcasts have gradually discovered that the betta fish that can enter the name of the anchor in the search bar on the home page to enter the live broadcast room is much easier to operate than YY.

With the advantage of early entry time, easy-to-operate product design and large-scale market publicity, Douyu began to lead the domestic game live broadcast industry in early 2014, and a large number of professional players began to switch from YY to Douyu, at that time, Douyu's top anchors were the newly retired Yu Jingxi and the 2013 League of Legends World Championship runner-up team members Jian Hao and Lu Benwei.

With the rise of the game live broadcast industry, Liu Mou's disadvantage in popularity began to be gradually magnified.

In July 2014, Liu Mou, who had just retired for a month, announced that he would join Battle Flag TV. This is a live broadcast platform that entered nearly half a year later than Douyu, and after missing out on a number of top professional e-sports players and popular game video authors, most of the contracted anchors at that time could only be amateurs.

At that time, Liu Mou relied on the label of a well-known professional e-sports player, although he could occupy a place in Zhanqi TV, but in the entire game live broadcast industry, his status was not even a "chicken head".

When he first started as a game streamer, Liu Mou hadn't let go of his former burden of being a top professional esports player, and he didn't know how to interact with the audience or how to increase his popularity. And after Lu Benwei's generous help, Liu Mou's live broadcast popularity began to improve.

With the help of Lu Benwei, Liu Mou not only gained popularity, but also began to learn to transform into an entertainment anchor. The increase in the popularity of live broadcast content, and the exposure given by the platform through self-made programs, made Liu Mou quickly become the first brother of the battle flag.

From being adored to being entertained

Of course, Liu Mou's gains in game live broadcast are also inseparable from his personal efforts. It can even be said that in order to be able to do a good job in live broadcasting, Liu Mou sacrificed the dignity and pride given to him by professional e-sports players to a certain extent. And the identity (of the player) once represented Liu Mou's existence value among the few in this world.

Liu Mou's father was a businessman with a limited level of education, and he believed in filial piety under the stick, and beat Liu Mou from childhood to adulthood. However, this inappropriate educational concept will obviously only push Liu Mou further and further in the opposite direction of his goal. After being beaten all the way from elementary school to junior high school, Liu Mou began to feel numb to the violence his father resorted to on him.

In a public conversation in 2020, Liu Mou once revealed to the public, "Once when I was surfing the Internet in an Internet café, I first sat in my seat and slapped my father, and then was dragged outside the Internet café and beaten. It may sound like a hurt to my self-esteem, but at the time I already felt that it was normal to be beaten by my father. ”

In this environment full of negative feedback, Liu Mou, who was extremely insecure, could be said to have achieved nothing. It wasn't until he met e-sports that Liu Mou saw the possibility of becoming the protagonist in his own life. For Liu Mou, working hard to improve his competitive level is not only to realize his self-worth, but also to prove to his father that his choice is correct.

With such a goal, Liu Mou became the No. 1 domestic list step by step. But in a sense, the aura given to Liu Mou by professional e-sports players has also become a burden to game anchor Liu Mou.

"After I retire, I do live broadcasts, which is equivalent to changing from a person who is admired by everyone to a person who is entertained by everyone. Liu Mou said in that conversation.

Photo source: Liu Mou's official blog

For a period of time after retiring, Liu Mou did not let go of his image as a star player. Later, in a live broadcast in 2022, Liu Mou even ridiculed his friend Qi Xiaodian, "When Xiao Dian first started to do "The Anchor Really Can Play", I considered suing him because he has been cutting my funny clips, and I think it will damage my image as a professional player." ”

The friend mentioned by Liu Mou is a game video writer. The two sides met in 2015, and Liu Mou, who was already well-known on Zhanqi TV at that time, accepted the invitation to start a small program. At that time, although Xiaodian was not yet well-known in the industry, Liu Mou did not perfunctory him because of this.

After the filming of the show ended, Liu Mou kept a snack and had a meal at home, and the two felt that they were very close to each other, and this also laid the groundwork for the two parties to achieve each other in the future.

Later, through Liu Mou's connection, Qi Xiaodian signed a contract with Zhanqi TV, and the arrival of the signing fee successfully saved his video production team that was on the verge of disbanding at that time. For Liu Mou's charcoal in the snow, I have a deep memory, "He tried his best to help me, a video author with no background and no money, really enough buddy."

Qi Xiaodian traveled with Liu Mou and his girlfriend Shen Lingmin, the picture source is Liu Mou's official blog

Liu Mou's righteous act brought him a splash of wealth in his future live broadcasts. With the rapid popularity of the "Anchor Really Can Play" series, Qi Xiaodian became the head video author in the game e-sports circle in one fell swoop, and then he also "reciprocated" in a series of game videos produced by himself.

In May 2016, when Liu Mou's contract with Zhanqi TV was about to expire, the ghost animal video "I Am the Most Sassy Pig in the League of Legends" produced by Qi Xiaodian and starring Liu Mou became popular all over the Internet.

The high-intensity continuous live broadcast, coupled with the continuous promotion of game videos, Liu Mou, who was behind at the beginning, successfully recovered the gap with his efforts in the second half. By 2017, Liu Mou, who became the "first brother of pandas", was already at the top of the industry in terms of live broadcast influence. He was once carried by Lu Benwei, and later he could also be on an equal footing with the other party. At that time, he seemed to have completed the transformation from "chicken head" to "crested head".

Of course, from an objective point of view, Liu Mou's popularity is also inseparable from the relaxation of live broadcast supervision at that time. If judged according to today's live broadcast supervision, then Liu Mou's live broadcast room, which was once full of swearing, may be blocked in less than 5 minutes. But at that time, the vulgar words and deeds of the anchor were often mistaken by many viewers for their true temperament.

The "remnants of the old party"

This so-called true temperament, or charisma, in a sense, was a special phenomenon in the game live broadcast industry at that time.

In the era of savage growth in the game live broadcast industry, the resources in the industry have been in an incremental state for many years. At that time, the industry influence of the head anchor was far from being comparable to today.

At that time, it was not the platform that represented the traffic, but the head anchor. In order to meet the performance requirements of the investors behind them, the live broadcast platform will give the head anchor a considerable right to speak within the scope of the budget. According to Liu Mou in a live broadcast in 2022, he made a phone call to the boss of Zhanqi TV that year, and the signing of Xiaodian directly doubled.

Later, Liu Mou also began to direct his traffic to potential employees around him. For example, Ma Yanyi, the popular anchor of Douyin's "Golden Shovel Battle", was originally an excellent gamer who came to try out at YM, an e-sports club founded by Liu Mou. After beating his game ranking to the first place in the national server, Ma Yanyi was cultivated by Liu Mou. According to Liu Mou in a live broadcast in 2020, the signing fee offered by the live broadcast platform for signing Ma Yanyi at that time was 5 million yuan per year. 

Liu Mou (third from left) and Ma Yanyi (second from left) and other live broadcast partners, photo source: Liu Mou's official blog

In addition, in business activities, Liu Mou is also a little "not very good". Industry insiders who have conducted business docking with Liu Mou revealed to the Titanium Media APP, "Liu Mou is more casual when performing business activities, sometimes he is late, and occasionally he will say one or two lines less when shooting." ”

However, these situations have been tacitly approved by the live broadcast platform and cooperative customers to a certain extent, the person told Titanium Media APP, "The live broadcast platform relies on the head anchor to make money, and the customer only needs the anchor to cooperate with the publicity, and the details of the implementation can be basically ignored." ”

In addition, Liu Mou also invested his influence in the field of industrial investment. In 2019, Liu Mou led the A+ round of financing of Xiaoxiang Mutual Entertainment, a leading game live streaming brokerage company in the industry, and Tencent followed the investment.

In that era when the live broadcast boom has not subsided, the head live broadcast brokerage companies will roughly carry out one or two rounds of financing every year, and companies like Little Elephant Mutual Entertainment are basically the key targets of the head investment institutions and large factories. Therefore, Liu Mou's ability to participate in this round of investment as an individual investor may be related to his personal relationship with Dou Yuxiao, the founder of Little Elephant Interactive Entertainment.

Liu Mou and Dou Yuxiao met during their entry into Panda TV, and at that time, Dou Yuxiao was the executive vice president of Panda Interactive Entertainment. In terms of style, Dou Yuxiao is somewhat similar to Liu Mou. As the helmsman of the industry's leading live broadcast brokerage company, Dou Yuxiao not only often appears in Liu Mou's live broadcast room, the two will not only play and play during the live broadcast, but also ride together in the live broadcast.

In March 2020, Little Elephant Interactive Entertainment announced a merger with another leading company in the industry, Big Goose Culture, and then the three founders of Big Goose Culture, Wang Yuyang, Wang Zhikai and He Huihui, announced their departure, so Dou Yuxiao basically became the top person in charge after the merger of the two companies.

After "eating" the goose culture, Little Elephant Interactive Entertainment is one step closer to going public. For Dou Yuxiao, the days immediately after the merger of the two companies were almost the most proud moment of his life. Sometimes, he will bring Liu Mou to the Big Goose Culture to inspect the work, according to the former Big Goose Culture employee revealed to the Titanium Media APP, "The posture that Dou Yuxiao brought Liu Mou over looks like showing off the baby elephant." ”

However, with the tightening of industry supervision, this kind of charlatan is gradually no longer tolerated by the industry. According to a number of senior practitioners in the game live broadcast industry revealed to the Titanium Media APP, Dou Yuxiao was arrested in 2021 for financial problems.

According to people close to Baby Elephant Entertainment, behind Dou Yuxiao's arrest, there is also a rather dramatic anecdote.

It is rumored that at the annual gala dinner of a live broadcast platform in 2020, Xie Fan, the person in charge of the live broadcast brokerage company Logging Lei, who is also the head, wanted to negotiate with Dou Yuxiao on the issue of liquidated damages for its artists, but Dou Yuxiao, who was drunk at the dinner table, rose up and asked Xie Fan to kneel down and beg for mercy.

And interestingly, after Chen Shaojie's arrest was exposed, Xie Fan, who had basically been able to do Weibo daily updates, began to stop speaking out. According to his personal Weibo, his latest Weibo was on November 10 last year. According to industry rumors, Xie Fan may be investigated by the police because his betta anchor Kim Tae-sang is suspected of being involved in gambling. According to an insider of its parent company, Hero Sports, told Titanium Media APP, "Recently, Xie Fan has not appeared in the company. ”

Regarding the recent frequently searched betta anchor gambling incident, Titanium Media APP once asked a lawyer who is good at economic cases about the matter, and the other party revealed, "From a legal point of view, before the procuratorate formally approves the arrest or prosecution, the relevant personnel involved in the investigation of the case are theoretically innocent." Whether the remarks that the anchor absconded abroad on the Internet are still up for debate. ”

From 2010 to 2024, Liu Mou has transformed from a dream-chasing boy who went to Shanghai with 500 yuan in his pocket to a key figure in the industry with a net worth of more than 100 million. But with the changes of the times, the "sao pig" who has stepped on the stroke many times may also become the dust of the old era.

(This article was first published on the Titanium Media APP, author|Wu Yixiao, editor|Ma Jinnan)