There is no one before and no one after, cover “king”!
“80 million daily active users, 200 million daily revenue of games, 150 million daily revenue of a skin game, and 200 million users”. The game that can match these data is not the international TRIPLE-A blockbuster, but the MOBA mobile game “King of Glory” launched by Tencent in 2015. After it was launched, it created many records with the momentum of a storm. Ushered in a new era dominated by mobile games.
However, since July 2017, when Tianmei Studio launched a “limited time limit” (anti-addiction system for minors), the active users of Honor of Kings continued to decline. According to the 2018 Q2 Mobile Internet Industry Data Research Report released by Aurora Big Data, as of June 2018, the daily active users of Honor of Kings decreased by 4.57 million. Down nearly 20 percent from March.
According to the game’s official event, Honor of Kings will receive a major update in the near future, mainly with the launch of the star Element Project, which will allow players to freely wear hero skins. As we all know, Honor of Kings’ revenue is mainly based on skins. Considering that honor of Kings’ daily active users continue to decline, we have to wonder if this is a comeback or a struggle.
Both internal and external factors led to the accelerated aging of Honor of Kings
“Ephemera in heaven and earth, a drop in the sea”, Although king of Glory is called the “king” in mobile games, created one miracle after another, but in the vast sea of games like plankton. In the middle age, people’s body functions tend to deteriorate. However, Honor of Kings has entered the palace of middle age. It is facing internal problems and external problems, such as serious user loss, declining revenue and popularity of the game, as well as the market environment with intensified competition.
The three major concerns
The loss of domestic users is serious. In May last year, Honor of Kings had 201 million players worldwide, but in May this year, the total number of players was only 230 million, an increase of 30 million in a year. However, Honor of Kings went overseas last year, and this year, it has 80 million overseas users, with a deficit of 50 million players. It is mainly caused by the serious loss of domestic players of “Honor of Kings”; In terms of daily active users, Aurora Big Data reported that the daily active users of Honor of Kings fell by 4.57 million in June, confirming the popular online joke that “King” was losing a million users a month, which is a far cry from the daily growth of 6 million users at its peak.
Gaming revenue has fallen sharply. According to Gamma data, the annual revenue of Honor of Kings is expected to reach 23 billion yuan in 2017. However, the game industry reported that honor of Kings only reached 400,000 yuan in the first quarter of 2018, with no hope of reaching 2 million yuan in the whole year.
Game heat decreased significantly. On the APP Store, Honor of Kings has not topped the ISO bestseller list in all months except February and March of 2018. Compared with the monthly ranking in the first half of 2017, its popularity has decreased significantly. In addition, In the top ten hot words list of Baidu Encyclopedia, “Honor of Kings” has also dropped from the top three hot words at its peak to no one on the list, all signs show that the popularity of “Honor of Kings” has dropped sharply.
A foreign
The competition in the game market is fierce, and the living environment of Honor of Kings is further deteriorating. Glory in the second half of 2017 the king “of active users started to fall at the same time,” chicken “grew rapidly became hot baidu search words first, and the wilderness act a month time users will exceed 30 million, 2018 users continues to grow, the chicken only” battlefield: desperately to stimulate “users up to 91.8 million, and the king of glory gap narrowed.
It is worth noting that in addition to the “Kill chicken” game, “Kill Chicken” game and traditional MMORPGs are also not to be taken seriously. Fantasy Westward Journey earned $1.4 billion in 2017, ranking second only to Honor of Kings in the global mobile game revenue ranking. Casual games such as Happy Games are second only to Honor of Kings in terms of daily active users. The current mobile game market can be described as a red sea, extremely fierce competition, let Honor of Kings living space further compressed.
Four dark clouds block the king’s return to glory
Beijing — the king of glory as a great river north and south “phenomenon” of the game, to appear the problem such as user loss, the living environment is not without reason, but the game experience go from bad to worse, other games on the king of glory the user tap, prepaid phone system and the change of historical figures, launch anti-addiction system limit some players four big reasons for this.
The first is that the game experience is getting worse. The main factors that affect the player’s game experience are balance, matching mechanics, and the game environment (hang-up, power-up, actors, trolls). First, “the king of glory balance problems, bad game balance reflects the inscriptions on the system, known as the king of glory the propaganda is a 5 v5 fair competitive mobile game, can carry the game inscriptions system can bring extra bonuses for game characters, which can better players in the early part of the inscriptions is more easy to obtain advantages, effects on the final outcome of the game as a result, Thus, the player’s game experience is reduced.
The principle of the matching mechanism is “normal distribution”, the core idea of which is to ensure that the majority of players win at around 50%, and it is this mechanism that often leads to losing streaking, which reduces the experience of the game and causes some players to abandon the pit.
The player’s game environment is bad, affecting the user experience. Last year, 8 percent of players hung up and 4 percent were verbally abusive, according to the game’s official statistics, which shows that the environment for ordinary players is still worrisome. In addition, the situation of actors and promoters is even worse. According to news reports, the famous douyu anchor “Certain Bai” has the behavior of seeking promoters. The anchors are still so, let alone ordinary players, and the bad game environment leads to the sharp decline in players’ game experience and the loss of players.
Second, the diversion of “King” users from other games has caused honor of Kings to lose users and lose popularity. As mentioned above, the competition in the mobile game market is more fierce, and there are not only similar competition, but also different competition, which diverts Honor of Kings from two aspects. The following will analyze other influences on Honor of Kings from horizontal and vertical dimensions.
Horizontal contrast; The king of glory (AOV, legendary duel, “vanity”, “endless duel” three MOBA games is not difficult to find, in the number of players and game revenues tough both on the king of glory to crush other two game, but on the segment will find coming “king glory” play the game of word of mouth in the king of glory is to lose a mess, It has a rating of 4.8 out of 10 on TapTap, and vanity is the best rated game with 9.1 points, followed by Infinity Duel with 6.7 points. The high rating has attracted some players to join, thus completing the diversion of King of Glory players.
Longitudinal comparison; MOBA, FPS and MMORPG are three types of mobile games. It can be analyzed that MOBA does not occupy an absolute dominant position in the mobile game market, or even at a disadvantage.
In terms of market share and game revenue, games like MMORPGs have the advantage, accounting for 48% of the mobile game market. According to App Annie’s 2015 Global Mobile App Market Review report, MMORPGs accounted for 50% of mobile game revenue in 2015. That share has declined over the past two years but still accounts for more than a third of mobile game revenue.
In terms of the number of game players, there is no obvious difference between MOBA, MMORPG and FPS mobile games. However, the emergence of popular titles such as PUBG, Crossfire, Fantasy Westward Journey and Chu Liuxiang has played a role in diverting MOBA, which has only one game supported by King of Glory for a long time.
While the international version of Honor of Kings increased by 80 million users, the total number of users only increased by 30 million in a year, with a deficit of 50 million. According to foreign media reports, Tencent announced in August that the number of users of PUBG Mobile had exceeded 100 million (including users in China). With 0 to 100 million users in six months, and crossFire and other traditional mobile games still having 250 million users, FPS users are still higher than MOBAS in general.
MMORPG games do not underestimate the hot style of the user, for example on May 20, vice President of netease game Lin Yunfeng officially announced, “fantasy westward journey” mobile game new registered users already broke through the one hundred million mark, although the number of single game less than other two games, but the number of mmorpgs occupy 48% of the mobile game, the whole number of players are also not a small number.
The number of mobile game users in China grew to 554 million in 2017, slowing growth. While the players of PubG, Crossfire and Fantasy Westward Journey have all grown rapidly, reaching hundreds of millions. The only way to increase such a large number of users in a limited audience is to diversify other games, and Honor of Kings has more than 200 million users, which is also a natural target of diversion.
Third, top-up system and magic change historical figures caused outside resistance. It has been repeatedly reported in the news that some underage players conduct unreasonable top-up behaviors in the game due to King of Glory, which not only brings financial burden to the family, but also is not conducive to minors to establish correct values, leading to unanimous condemnation from parents, teachers and mainstream media. Another point is that Honor of Kings uses a large number of historical figures for reference, but there are fictional stories of historical figures and other behaviors, which also caused opposition from a group of experts, scholars and teachers, thus triggering the outside world’s resistance to Honor of Kings.
summary
To sum up, honor of Kings may be under siege, but a review of the game’s mixed history and the reasons for its predicament shows that it is still alive and well, and that the disease is not terminal.
In 2015, it was a fire that ignited the mobile game market and helped the mobile game industry grow. In the next two years it was like a bottle of “pesticide”, while bringing players happiness, while absorbing players’ time and money, making itself a legendary game, but also attracting criticism from the public; Now that Honor of Kings is no longer in its glory, the fire that ignited the mobile gaming industry is more like a lone flame in the wind waiting for its chance. While its struggles seem weak at the moment, the flame is still there, and it could start aflame again at the first opportunity.
Article/Liu Kuang public number, ID: Liukuang110, this article first kuang Venture capital network