Upward competition encounters pressure from giants, and downward development faces traffic dilemmas. Going overseas is becoming an unavoidable hard battle for domestic game companies to compete in strength and resources.
As a chinajoy strategic financial cooperation media, the 21st Century Business Herald reporter noted that a hot topic of this conference is "game to the sea".
According to the "Report on China's Game Industry from January to June 2021" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by the Game Working Committee (gpc) of the China Music and Digital Association and the China Game Industry Research Institute, Chinese game companies actively expanded and laid out overseas markets in the first half of 2021, and the actual sales revenue of independently developed games in overseas markets was 8.468 billion US dollars, an increase of 11.58% year-on-year.
However, when going to sea is gradually becoming a general trend, Chinese game companies still need to overcome many compliance difficulties after overseas. Zhang Yijun, first vice chairman of the China Audio-Visual and Digital Publishing Association and chairman of the Game Working Committee of the China Audio-Visual and Digital Publishing Association, pointed out that the main variable in the current globalization of domestic games is that the cost of buying in overseas markets is increasing, the risk of infringement and compliance has risen, and the barriers to international trade are also strengthening.
Going overseas is becoming the main way for Chinese game companies to implement the global distribution strategy, realize the strategic deployment of competing in the international market, and explore diversified development paths. The "Report" shows that the United States, Japan and South Korea are the main target markets for Chinese game companies to go overseas. From January to June 2021, the actual sales revenue of China's self-developed games in overseas markets accounted for 30.58% of the regional distribution, the US market accounted for 30.58%, the Japanese market accounted for 20.14%, the South Korean market accounted for 8.69%, and the total revenue of the three countries accounted for 59.51% of the total overseas market revenue. Strategy games are the main game types of self-developed mobile games going to sea, accounting for 41.47%.
In early July, the june ranking of Chinese mobile game publishers in the global appstore and google play released by mobile application analysis platform sensor showed that, on the whole, 36 Chinese mobile game publishers had a combined revenue of $2.24 billion in June, accounting for 38% of the revenue of the world's top 100 mobile game publishers.
Some A-share listed game companies also achieved good results in the overseas business in June, among which Gigabit's Thunder Games, 37 Interactive Entertainment, Youzu Network and Perfect World ranked 6th, 8th, 22nd and 24th in the revenue list of Chinese mobile game publishers.
It is worth noting that Thunder Games is the first time to rank among the revenue list of Chinese mobile game publishers, and ranks 23rd in the global mobile game publisher revenue list, becoming another Chinese mobile game manufacturer that has entered the global head queue. This is mainly due to the popularity of the "Moore Manor" mobile game launch in June, and the steady performance of "One Thought Runaway" launched at the beginning of the year, and the revenue of Thunder Games surged by 143% month-on-month in June, reaching 12 times that of the same period last year.
In addition, thanks to the launch of the japanese service version of the self-developed moba game "Endless Showdown", the revenue of Mu Hitomi Technology in this issue increased by 15% month-on-month, hitting a record high. The overseas business of the upstart b station ushered in significant progress, and the division's "Heavy Suit Battle Ji" successfully entered the 7th place in the Korean mobile game revenue list in June.
With new development opportunities, the security threats lurking in the process of Chinese games going to sea are also in the shadows.
He Xiaoyu, head of legal affairs of tap tap, said in an interview with 21 reporters that the current overseas game market has become an important battlefield for plug-in confrontation, compared with large manufacturers with strong technical capabilities, small and medium-sized enterprises going overseas are facing more severe challenges, and they also need the industry to provide more professional technical support.
The proliferation of plug-ins in games has always been a "heart disease" for game manufacturers. Plug-ins tamper with the original normal settings and rules of the game, and malicious programs that use cheating to seek benefits in the game not only infringe on the intellectual property rights of the game developer and affect the normal operation of the game, but also have great security risks, which are easy to cause user information leakage and even property losses.
According to He Xiaoyu's observation, the legal risks borne by the black industry of overseas game plug-ins are relatively low, and under the temptation of high returns, in addition to the traditional network security risks such as DDos, the black production and sales teams such as plug-in production and sales are constantly "muting".
For example, when released overseas, game manufacturers are more likely to encounter offline hanging, and some of their well-designed specific programs can use a considerable number of computer hosts to simulate the normal game client to send and receive packets to the game server, which is more hidden and more difficult to obtain evidence.
Due to geographical restrictions and differences in judicial procedures, the crackdown on cross-border plug-in studios is more difficult and will consume more time, money and energy.
So technology first may be a feasible solution. 21 Reporters noted at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in early July that artificial intelligence is being applied to the game's anti-plug-in mechanism. The staff of NetEase Fuxi Studio introduced the specific application of "Voldemort AI anti-plug-in technology" to 21 reporters, whether it is the script, studio or perspective plug-in that exists in the game, it can be monitored by the technology.
"First of all, we will set up some recording points in the game to provide real-time detection, offline detection, single body detection, group detection and other solutions." According to the staff, the technology will also analyze some parameters generated by the player's operation in the game to determine whether the player has used the plug-in, thus forming a complete "plug-in evidence chain". Through this chain of evidence, the anti-plug-in mechanism can follow the vine to find and block the user who uses the plug-in.
Tencent Cloud staff also introduced that functions such as face core, text recognition, speech recognition and emotion recognition have not only been used in the game anti-addiction mechanism, but also cracked down on game black and gray production such as plug-ins. Among them, emotion recognition can analyze, process, induct and reason subjective texts with emotional overtones, identify the user's emotional tendencies, whether positive or negative, and can be used to combat scripts and studios in games.
The growth rate of the game has expanded, and Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea are still the main battlefield.
At the China Game Industry Copyright Protection and Legal Compliance Summit Forum on July 29, Lai Qiqi, vice president of 37 Interactive Entertainment, pointed out the importance of privacy protection in the compliance of games in the European and American markets, and suggested that major overseas game companies set up the position of chief privacy officer.
In addition to privacy protection, game rating is also one of the key points of game overseas compliance in the European and American markets. He likens the ESRB (entertainment software rating board) rating system in the United States to an umbrella, continental law to heavy rain, and game companies to umbrella people. While it's not necessarily illegal to sell a game without a rating in the U.S., if a game is esrb rated, it almost guarantees that the game hasn't violated any state law and can therefore be legally sold in any U.S. state.
According to Lai, unlike the United States, the European market uses the game belief system pepegi (pan europe game information) to rate the game, while Germany adopts the national usk (unterhaltungs software selbstkontrolle) game rating system.
He reminded that the game rating systems of the above countries have certain differences in the definition of compliance standards and whether they are mandatory to classify, for example, in Europe, games with discriminatory content are still illegal publications in many European countries even if they are graded. In Germany, any video game must be rated by USK before it can be sold on the territory.
In addition to the European and American markets, Southeast Asia is also growing into a new battlefield for Chinese game companies to go to sea. According to gamma statistics, the scale of the mobile game market in Southeast Asia will exceed 14 billion yuan in 2020, and the market size will continue to expand. From January to June 2021, nearly 50% of the mobile game market in Southeast Asia will come from self-developed products of Chinese game companies.
At the same forum, Wang Xiaoran, legal director of overseas issuing company efun, sorted out the current status of data protection legislation in Southeast Asian countries, pointing out that the Southeast Asian market as a whole is constantly strengthening the supervision of data compliance.
For example, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand have carried out special legislation around data protection, and in the past two years, the laws related to personal data protection have been continuously revised. Among them, the amendment to Singapore's Personal Data Protection Law (PDPA) came into effect in February 2021, increasing the penalties for personal information infringement, with fines of up to 1 million sgd (about 4.75 million yuan).
In February 2020, Vietnam's draft personal data protection law was formed, which is expected to come into force at the end of 2021. The draft imposes restrictions on the transmission of data abroad, including the need to obtain the consent of the user for the transmission of data abroad, the need for the user's original data to be stored in Vietnam, and the personal data protection of the place where the data is received must not be lower than that of Vietnam, and the written consent of the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) is required for the transmission of data abroad.
She predicts that if the draft takes effect as scheduled at the end of this year, companies will only be able to transfer data abroad in the future if they have the relevant written authorization documents.
At the roundtable forum on the compliance of the game overseas, Yang Jie, a senior partner at Guangyue Law Firm, pointed out that in order to ensure data security, in addition to complying with the provisions of China's laws on data protection, it is also necessary to comply with the relevant provisions on data privacy protection in the local area.
Lai Qiqi further put forward two specific suggestions, one is that for games published overseas, data should be stored on local server manufacturers as much as possible. Second, game manufacturers plan operations based on the player's data in the game rather than personal information, so overseas companies should try to avoid collecting sensitive information from local users.
Ao Ran, executive vice president and secretary general of the China Audiovisual and Digital Publishing Association, mentioned in his speech at the International Game Business Conference on July 28 that one of the ways to achieve higher quality games to go to sea is to accurately grasp the rules of the international market. Firmly establish a sense of compliance, strictly abide by the mandatory laws and regulations of the local country, and respect the local religious, historical, diplomatic and cultural traditions. Pay attention to the protection of copyrights, copyrights, trademarks and other intellectual property rights of digital content, and control the occurrence of infringement from the research and development process. It is necessary to earnestly promote the work of privacy protection and governance, and ensure the security of overseas users' personal information.
He also pointed out that when Chinese games go to sea, they must deeply cultivate local characteristics and achieve differentiated competition. In the content, theme and scene of the game independently developed by the enterprise, it is necessary to seek a deep combination with the Chinese style in terms of plot, art and music.
"It is necessary to accurately judge the compliance environment of the target party, including non-traditional risk factors such as society, humanities and ideology, so as to calmly integrate into the international game market on the basis of mutual respect and mutual benefit, and obtain a brighter development prospect." Ao Ran said.
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