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Game-Time report / Last week, Gamelook just wrote that more and more new long-term games have begun to “ignore the best-seller list.” This certainly does not mean that all products are like this. Every team hopes to improve the performance of their products and hope to reach the top of the best-seller list. However, due to the launch of the PC version and the diversion of official website recharges, it has actually had a visible impact on the performance of new games on the list.
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How many companies are doing official website recharge? The actual results may be more surprising than many people think. Tencent, NetEase, MiHoYo and other leading manufacturers have launched official website recharge for their overseas products, which is likely to become the standard for overseas games.
So, to what extent can official website recharge be a reference goal? Recently, Berkley Egenes, chief marketing and growth officer of overseas payment company Xsolla, said,“Many of our partners derive up to 25% of their business from official website recharges, and their DAU and MAU user numbers are also growing.“.In addition to the 25% revenue ratio standard, there are even overseas mobile game companies like Nexters, which have already made the PC version of their games account for 43% of revenue during 2023Q4.
Today, Game-Time will take another look at the official website recharge.
Tengwangmi has entered the market, with huge official website recharge rewards and discounts
Regarding third-party payment, people’s first reaction after hearing about it may be: Is this done because small and medium-sized companies have to find ways to avoid the high commissions of app stores in order to control profit margins? If you think this way, it is obviously a misunderstanding about official website recharge. In fact, it is just the opposite. Companies that do official website recharge are not only teams that are short of money, but the larger the company, the greater the intensity.
Gamelook noticed that domestic media rarely mentioned the official website recharge status of top companies such as Tencent, NetEase, and MiHoYo. Today we will show you how these big guys do it:
Tencent
Tencent has a very large overseas business volume, and the proportion of overseas revenue is increasing year by year. It not only invests in and acquires a large number of overseas game studios, but also launches the publishing brand Level Infinite and releases many hit products, some of which even PC versions have been launched, such as “Victory Goddess: Nikki” which generated over 4 billion yuan in revenue in 11 months.
In addition to the PC version, Tencent has also launched official website recharge for overseas products, and integrated a large number of game products through the dedicated website Midasbuy.com. For example, the website currently has “PUBG MOBILE”, “Honor of Kings” )”, “Victory: Nikki” (Traditional Chinese + English version), “Brawl Stars”, “Hay Day”, “Clash Royale”, “Dark Zone Breakout” 11 games including Arena Breakout, Alchemy Stars and Command & Conquer: Legions.
Judging from the official recharge website, Midasbuy has launched a large number of activities to allow more players to recharge.Take “PUBG MOBILE” as an example. The first deposit through the official website will give you more than 100% as a bonus, and the maximum bonus will reach 118%. In addition to the first recharge, players can also get a 10% discount on daily recharges through the website.
Judging from Midasbuy’s recharge incentives, Tencent obviously hopes to build it into a recharge platform. For example, you can get additional rewards by registering with an LI account. Following Midasbuy’s social media account will also give you game props, game coupons, etc. kind of gifts.
NetEase
NetEase has launched the official NetEase payment website (pay.neteasegames.com) specifically for its overseas games, covering most of the company’s overseas products, such as “Eggy Party”, “Blood Strike”, “Wild” “Knives Out”, “Identity V”, “Infinite Borders”, “Onmyoji” and more than 20 games.
Taking “Knives Out” as an example, players can receive up to 17% extra coupons and consumption points for their first purchase. By recharging coupons, they can also get 600% consumption points, which can be used to redeem luxury game items. In addition, after the first purchase, players can still recharge through the official website to get a discount of up to 12%, and subscribing to a game account can get a one-time 10% superimposed discount.
miHoYo
MiHoYo also has its own corresponding recharge channel, Hoyoverse. Players can also get a discount of about 10% by recharging through the official website.
other companies
Lilith
Last time we mentioned that Lilith’s newly released “AFK Journey” is expected to have a global sales of more than 4 million yuan on iOS and Google Play on March 29, and it also provides a 5% discount for recharging on the official website.
Now, this game has gradually begun to show its true strength. On April According to this pace, the game has a chance to challenge 200 million yuan in monthly sales in the App Store and Google Play alone, and this is on the premise that the Japanese, Korean, Chinese and traditional Chinese versions are not online.
Considering that “AFK Journey” also has a PC version and official website recharge, what is its actual turnover? We don’t know quite what proportion of Lilith’s official website recharge and PC revenue are, but according to the standards given by Xsolla, perhaps 25% of the revenue has not been counted by the third-party data.
IGG
The official website recharge of IGG, a leading overseas manufacturer, is also doing very well. Comparing its financial reports and third-party data forecasts, nearly 40% of the revenue of “Doomsday” published by IGG does not come from iOS and Google Play. Here, It is obviously impossible for the PC version, Samsung and Huawei app stores to occupy all of them, and Gamelook speculates that the proportion of official website recharges will not be low.
If we look at the SLG market, we can also find some clues. Industry data shows that the SLG category market (iOS + Google Play) has actually fallen by 40% compared with the peak period in 2021.However, Game-Time noticed that the revenue of some products even dropped by 60%. However, looking at some of the leading SLG mobile game products, it was found that the monthly download volume of most games did not suffer a major decline.
This means that despite the increase in purchasing costs and the decline in revenue, many SLG manufacturers are still maintaining considerable purchasing power. In other words, judging from the appearance, SLG manufacturers are still buying crazy amounts regardless of profits even when their revenue has shrunk severely! This is obviously unscientific.
Well, this can only be attributed to two reasons: first, the purchase volume of the popular side game in recent years has improved the purchase efficiency by covering a wide range of users, resulting in an improvement in the game’s ability to obtain volume; second, SLG manufacturers will apply The store is used as a platform to acquire users, but part of the recharge is transferred to the PC version and official website recharge.
Therefore, the decline in the size of the SLG mobile game market is due to the shift of consumption platforms and the decline in users’ spending power. Although the income transfer will affect the ranking of the game’s best-selling list, in order to maintain profits and enhance the purchase capacity, official website recharge is necessary.
Is the recharge on the official website really just a water transfer?
If a game company’s opening of official website recharge is simply understood as transferring the running income of its own games, this is obviously a misunderstanding of official website recharge.
Logically speaking, transferring some user consumption from the app store with a fixed commission of 30% or higher to the official recharge website can indeed effectively increase the manufacturer’s profit margin. But in the specific details, this understanding is not entirely correct.Josephine Friday, sales director of Xsolla’s US team, said that when mobile game developers release games in emerging markets, they often see high DAU and MAU data, but low payment rates.
“I often hear people say, ‘I’m not going to put a lot of user acquisition in these places because they won’t pay,’ but these players are active in their games. What we found is that the problem is the last step, the players want to pay, But the game requires a credit card or PayPal account to pay.”
In fact, in addition to credit cards and payments on the two major platforms, there are a large number of payment methods around the world. Almost every country has more than one mainstream payment method, such as Line Pay in Japan, Kakao Pay in South Korea, etc. Xsolla even supports more than 700 payment methods, more than 130 different currencies, and covering more than 200 countries around the world.
Although App Store and Google Play payment does cover more than 200 countries and regions around the world, it is real that game manufacturers cannot receive user consumption due to payment methods, because outside of the T1 market, many players in emerging markets No credit card or PayPal account.
According to Gamelook, in the early years, a well-known overseas game forced a third-party recharge because it could not receive money in the Latin American and Southeast Asian markets.Games released in the Indian and Southeast Asian markets will also encounter similar problems. In order to help the games receive money, a domestic chess and card company even launched offline point card sales in Southeast Asia.
For overseas manufacturers, in addition to official website recharge, the best way to increase game payment rates and revenue is to support popular local payment methods. For example, NetEase’s new game “Blood Strike” recharge official website supports up to 8 payment methods.
It can be clearly seen that official website recharge has become a commonly used operating method for overseas companies, and has even become a must-do. This trend has also brought about changes in the capital market. For example, not long ago, Sensor Tower acquired the largest mobile game data analysis competitor data.ai. The big reason is that “full data coverage, facing official recharge, third-party application stores and Full data coverage challenges posed by the impact of cross-platform trends”.
In order to more accurately grasp the revenue structure of mobile games, even game service companies have begun to step out of the mobile game circle.
Tom Cui, Chief Operating Officer of Sensor Tower said, “Starting next year at the earliest, more than half of the Top 100 games will monetize players outside of the App Store and Google Play.Frankly, we’re going to have to follow them, and that’s one of the themes of this merger, both companies have traditionally been very focused on iOS and Android, but now have to have more resources to go beyond those two big stores. “
