In addition to 1.7 million in rewards in one night, which Internet platform made the most money behind "Black Myth"?

The domestic game "Black Myth: Wukong" was launched with great success, not only with amazing sales, but also set off a frenzy in the game live broadcast industry. Anchors on platforms such as Douyin and Bilibili competed to broadcast live, and stories of getting rich overnight emerged frequently, and game live broadcast ushered in a new outlet. However, traditional game live broadcast platforms such as Douyu and Huya faced traffic challenges, and new platforms emerged, and the game live broadcast industry entered a period of transformation.

On August 20, the domestic game "Black Myth: Wukong" was officially opened to players. People who play games and those who don't are excited, and everyone is shouting "Ape God, start!"

The feeling of family and country, IP blessing, early preheating, the pioneer of domestic 3A games... After four years of waiting, the first domestic 3A masterpiece "Black Myth: Wukong" has a huge amount of traffic. Those game anchors who only go online in the evening on weekdays have already been ready, waiting at 10 am on weekdays to go on the journey to the west with Monkey King again.

As of 8:00 pm on August 22, Beijing time, the sales of Black Myth: Wukong on Steam have exceeded 8.4 million copies, with total revenue exceeding US$400 million (about RMB 2.85 billion). When the volume of voices surges like a tide, the traffic first rushes to the game live broadcast platform. So, has the second spring of the game live broadcast platform, which has encountered a bottleneck in growth, come?

1. Game anchors "welcome the Spring Festival Gala"

In addition to directly affecting the sales of the game product itself, the traffic brought by "Black Myth: Wukong" has also stimulated industry enthusiasm in many fields such as game live streaming, e-commerce sales, brand collaboration, and hardware sales. The money-making effect of the Wukong IP has once again amazed the market.

Data shows that from August 20 to 22, at least 6 gaming anchors gained over 150,000 followers on Douyin by live-streaming "Black Myth: Wukong".

According to statistics, the anchor with the fastest increase in fans is "Yang Qijia", who gained 510,000 fans in two days. As of now, the number of fans has reached 655,000. Before the live broadcast of "Black Myth: Wukong", the number of fans was only 6,000.

Yang Qijia started the live broadcast at 10 a.m. on August 20 and ended at 4:35 a.m. on August 22. The single live broadcast had 37.18 million viewers, with a maximum of 275,000 people online at the same time and 497,000 new fans in a single broadcast.

Another screenshot circulated online revealed the income of "Yang Qijia": "This blogger started live streaming at 10 am yesterday (20th), and has not rested for 27 hours until now (21st evening). His fans have increased from 6,000 to 430,000, and his income from music waves is 17 million, equivalent to 1.7 million RMB. The platform takes half of it, and he earns 850,000 yuan. He really became rich overnight."

On the TikTok platform, not only small anchors, but also big anchors who already have a fan base have made early arrangements to warm up for the live broadcast.

According to FeiGua data, on the Douyin fan increase list on August 20, three of the top five were game anchors, and all of them live-streamed "Black Myth: Wukong". Among them, "Nüliu 66" gained 330,000 fans on the same day. "Zhang Daxian", a well-known game blogger who won the title of "Black Myth: Wukong's No. 1 Vomit", gained 263,000 fans on the same day. From August 20 to 22, "Zhang Daxian" had a total of 4 live broadcasts, with a total of 106 million viewers.

In addition to earning enough traffic from Douyin live broadcasts, Bilibili, which is home to a group of hardcore game enthusiasts, is also brewing a group of game UP hosts who "face their destiny".

As of the afternoon of August 20, the number of people online simultaneously watching the live broadcast of "Black Myth: Wukong" on Bilibili exceeded 2 million.

According to data from Niko Partners, Black Myth: Wukong became the most popular game on Huya, Douyu and Bilibili on its first day of release (August 20). The number of viewers on these three platforms reached 29 million that day, of which Bilibili accounted for about 74%.

The famous Go player Zhan Ying, known as the "abstract anchor", also joined the live broadcast camp on the day of the release. By live-streaming "Black Myth: Wukong", "Chess Player Zhan Ying" earned enough traffic on Bilibili. On August 22, a total of 167,000 people watched the live broadcast of "Chess Player Zhan Ying", which received 124,000 likes, ranking fifth on Bilibili's popularity list.

Three game UP hosts, “Purple Rain Carol”, “Phoenix Director” and “Arrogant Little Meat Bun”, also gained more than 150,000 followers in two days by live-streaming “Black Myth: Wukong”. At the same time, the official B-station account of “Black Myth: Wukong” also gained 160,000 followers in these two days.

The popularity of Black Myth: Wukong has also stimulated the re-creation craze of UP masters on Bilibili. On August 20, the top five newly-viewed videos on Bilibili were all related to Black Myth: Wukong, and the number of re-creation submissions reached 80,000.

Mainstream media chose to live broadcast "Black Myth: Wukong" on WeChat Video Account and Weibo Video Account. For example, @看度新闻 and @四川观察 both live broadcast on Weibo Video Account. The former attracted 20.07 million viewers, while the latter performed a live broadcast of decompression, personally performing the joke of "The first of the 81 difficulties: decompression", which also won a hot search on Weibo.

Many official media, such as Jiangxi News, Yunnan Daily, Shaanxi Metropolitan Express, Sichuan Observer, Guizhou Tianyan News, etc., have launched game live broadcasts on WeChat Video Accounts with the theme of "Reporters take you to experience domestic 3A games." According to statistics, the number of views of most media news live broadcasts has exceeded one million.

It is not difficult to see from the above data that Douyu and Huya once occupied the absolute traffic high ground in the field of game live streaming, but Video Account, Weibo and Douyin, which have a large active user base, are constantly rewriting the public's understanding of "live streaming" and eroding the traffic of traditional game live streaming platforms.

Game live streaming users are rushing to comprehensive entertainment platforms, and the leading short video platforms are becoming gathering places for game live streaming audiences. From 2014 to 2024, China's game live streaming has gone through a full ten years. With the entry of super top anchors into Douyin, another live streaming era has begun.

2. Douyin took advantage of the traffic dividend to rise rapidly

Since the emergence of game live streaming, it has become an indispensable and important link in the game distribution chain, with games, platforms and anchors complementing each other.

On the one hand, compared with traditional advertising, game live streaming has shortened the distance between game developers, anchors and players. Players can also provide real-time feedback on games and live streaming content, which makes users more loyal to games. On the other hand, game users have relatively strong paying ability, and during the game live streaming process, they can strengthen their paying habits and ultimately increase platform revenue.

Almost every industry has to go through a phase of start-up, extensive rise, and return to rationality. The era of "lying down and making money" in game live broadcasting has long ended.

The game live streaming industry has been making money without doing anything since 2014, when Amazon acquired the US online game live streaming platform Twitch for $970 million in August of that year. At the end of the year, the A-share market was swept by an e-sports trend, with platforms such as Huya, Douyu, Panda, Zhanqi, Longzhu, and Penguin E-sports emerging, and the "Thousands of Live Streaming Wars" were about to begin.

Capital has always been profit-seeking, and Tencent, Ping An of China, 5Y Capital, etc. have all entered the market. Take Huya as an example. According to Qichacha, in 2017, it received a $75 million Series A financing from 5Y Capital, Yilian Capital, Ping An Overseas, Gaorong Capital, Huya founder Li Xueling and Huya Live former CEO Dong Rongjie, and in 2018 it received a $460 million Series B financing from Tencent.

With the support of capital, Huya began to spend money to poach anchors and grab copyrights, and finally succeeded in staying at the table. In November 2017 alone, 11 big anchors from Douyu jumped to Huya.

According to Gamma Data, the number of Chinese game users increased from 517 million to 626 million from 2014 to 2018. According to iResearch data, the number of game live streaming platform users increased from 20 million to 260 million during the same period. That was the hottest era for the game live streaming industry. In the fourth quarter of 2018, Huya had 116.6 million monthly active users, ranking first in the industry.

However, as the user bonus peaked, game licenses were restricted, and the probability of blockbuster games decreased, the game live broadcast industry also entered a "cold winter period". According to Gamma Data, although the scale of Chinese game users continued to expand from 2018 to 2023, the growth rate has shown a gradual slowdown, from 7.28% in 2018 to 0.61% in 2023.

The user dividend period of China's gaming industry has ended, and the industry has entered an era of competition for existing resources.

A live broadcast industry practitioner summarized that game live broadcasting has gone through three stages. The first stage is that the anchors and platforms make money from investors, the second stage is that the anchors make money from the platforms, and the third stage is that the anchors make money from game manufacturers. It can also be simply summarized as creating an ecosystem, expanding the ecosystem, and consolidating the ecosystem.

For games, the UGC (user-generated content) ecosystem is a major boost to the entire industry. Conversely, with the influence of IP, it is also one of the important sources of income for anchors, bloggers, etc.

Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, etc., with their stable traffic pools, began to attract big anchors from vertical live streaming platforms such as Huya and Douyu to join. Zhang Daxian and Mu Yingying both joined Douyin. A fan once said, "In Zhang Daxian's Douyin live broadcast room, millions of people scrambled for a lucky bag, which is more than 10 times that of Huya." The Douyin debut was watched by more than 60 million people, with a peak of more than 2 million online. During the period, fans kept giving gifts such as "Carnival", and more than 4,000 people opened exclusive memberships for 98 yuan. Based on this estimate, Zhang Daxian's turnover that night exceeded 400,000 yuan.

For creators, the platform's traffic support can bring them new opportunities, which is why Douyin game live streaming can rise rapidly in a short period of time.

For users, the data is more intuitive.
According to the report of Data, the user scale of vertical game live broadcast platforms has continued to decline since March 2019. In contrast, pan-video platforms have risen rapidly. Users hope to obtain the online entertainment content they need through an entertainment platform in one stop. Nearly half of the lost users of vertical game live broadcast platforms have migrated to short video platforms, of which 62.9% have gone to Douyin.

For a single game live broadcast platform, the user scale of game live broadcast is approaching the ceiling, which has made its development market space smaller and smaller. For traditional game live broadcast industries such as Huya and Douyu, due to their high reliance on the reward model and too single revenue model, the industry growth has encountered bottlenecks.

After the live streaming industry passed its bonus period, Huya and Douyu have failed to open up a new growth curve in a timely manner, which eventually led to stagnation in the growth of paying users.

3. Game vertical live streaming platforms are still facing a "cold winter"

Huya was born out of the early YY Live, and quickly became a leader in the live streaming industry, while also inheriting its mature business model of live streaming rewards.

Previously, Huya’s former CEO Dong Rongjie said in a public speech that although live streaming seems to have a variety of categories, there are actually only two categories of live streaming products that can be expanded and tested by the market: games and shows. Therefore, Huya Live did not choose other projects and only took into account games and shows.

The latest financial report data shows that Huya's main revenue source is still live streaming. In the second quarter of 2024, live streaming contributed 1.233 billion yuan in revenue to Huya, accounting for nearly 80% of the total revenue, while the turnover in the same period last year was 1.716 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 28.1%.

Although Huya upgraded its products in early 2024 and held a series of innovative e-sports events and operational activities, users' willingness to pay and activity are not high.

As of the end of 2020, Huya Live's mobile MAU was 76 million, 80.9 million in 2021, 84.3 million in 2022, and 84.1 million in 2023. The growth rate of the number of users has reached saturation.

Financial report data shows that in the second quarter of 2024, Huya Live's average mobile monthly active users (MAU) reached 83.5 million, which was not much different from 82.9 million in the same period of 2023. In the first quarter of 2024, Huya had 4.4 million paying users, a decrease of 800,000 from the same period of the previous year.

Although Huya has made adjustments in its corporate strategy and internal operations, it is still stuck in the dilemma of a single profit model and saturated active users due to the departure of major anchors and technological competition from peers.

In 2023, Douyu's live broadcast revenue, advertising and other revenue accounted for 86.8% and 13.2% respectively. This means that Douyu almost completely relies on the anchor's content to obtain traffic and accumulate users, and then relies on users to reward the anchor to achieve revenue, and the revenue model is single.

In the first quarter of 2024, Douyu's revenue was 1.04 billion yuan, compared with 1.483 billion yuan in the same period last year. Among them, live broadcast revenue dropped from 1.369 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2023 to 801 million yuan now.

As revenue continued to decline, Huya and Douyu both embarked on a "road to self-rescue."

Since formulating the "Three-Year Plan" in August last year, Huya has continued to focus on commercial transformation and deepened cooperation with game companies to achieve growth in revenue from props sales, game advertising and distribution services.

Douyu established a new content ecology department in January this year, which is responsible for anchor content output, manufacturer cooperation, and event ecosystem building. It has three second-level departments, namely the anchor operation department, manufacturer project department and event content department, aiming to commercialize Douyu game-related services.

As to whether Huya and Douyu can stop the loss of users and whether their revenue can return to growth in the future, it will take time to verify.

4. Game live streaming has entered the next stage

What is the significance of game live streaming to games?

Some people believe that the next stage of game live streaming is to prove its ability to "sell goods" and allow live streaming to truly take on the role of a channel for game distribution and marketing.

Live streaming used to be the icing on the cake for games, complementing and achieving each other. For example, the popularity of the game "Chicken Eating" is inseparable from live streaming. Nowadays, the purpose of live streaming for games is more for advertising effects, to attract players and users for the games, such as the marketing and popularity of "Egg Party" and "Dream Star" on Douyin.

At the beginning of 2024, "Honor of Kings" officially announced that the Honor of Kings Douyin live broadcast room will be fully open from January 21. This move means that Tencent and Douyin have officially "broken the ice", and it also means that game live streaming has entered a new stage of development - marketing and distribution are becoming the new battlefield for the future of game live streaming.

Compared with Huya and Douyu, Douyin, which has over 600 million daily active users, has long been targeting game purchases and has become one of the important promotion and purchase channels for major game manufacturers. In 2023, the head of Douyin game operations revealed that Douyin games have covered over 300 million users, with an average monthly game content consumption time of more than 9 hours per person.

Jin Yuchen, head of NetEase Games distribution, said that Douyin has obvious advantages in KOL marketing, gathering a large number of high-quality content producers in the gaming field, and can help advertisers achieve a marketing effect that combines product and effect.

With the soaring price of traffic, high-value potential users are becoming increasingly scarce, resulting in a lower and lower proportion of effective users obtained through buying traffic, a continuous decline in conversion rates, and a continuous decline in the input-output ratio. Against the backdrop of an extremely fierce battle for game traffic, game marketing needs to use effective channels, a new business perspective, and efficient marketing tools to carry out new game marketing practices.

Industry insiders believe that the typical feature of the new era of game marketing is to target potential target groups to create new demands, and to achieve effective expansion of the target game user scale and stable and sustainable growth of the business through "integration of content and products to create new momentum for game marketing, integration of content and touchpoints to create new grip for game marketing, and integration of content and channels to create new business", and ultimately establish a new development path for the game life cycle.

For Huya and Douyu, strong user resources and upstream and downstream operations are their advantages. Perhaps how to use the existing advantageous resources to expand into the fields of game development, distribution and marketing in the future will become an important consideration for them to overcome the cold winter period.