A game giant's dark war, the potential power of China's hegemony competition

According to South Korean media reports, the game Studio 4:33 Creative Lab recently obtained Tencent and line of 110 million U.S. dollars investment. Tencent and line joint investment, will get 4:33 Creative Lab 25% of the shares, become the main shareholder. Ostensibly this is a simple investment, but secretly symbolizes the Chinese game industry ushered in the golden period of development.

With the integration of the global gaming industry, Chinese gaming companies began a massive sea trip. Southeast Asia because of cultural proximity, become the main export of Chinese games, and Korea, whether from the game market openness, or the high quality of the game player angle, have become the first choice of Chinese game companies.

A dark war, the potential power of China's hegemony to compete

Patigames, the South Korean game maker who signed the "Dodo Three Kingdoms" game with Alibaba in China, decided to terminate cooperation with Alibaba. "I believe the news, which was reported recently, is not unfamiliar to many people, but it is not as simple as it seems."

As early as April this year, Patigames announced to join hands with Alibaba to enter the Chinese market, but in September this year Tencent bought Ptigames 20% shares, after a short period of one months announced the cessation of cooperation with Alibaba. This is just a microcosm of Tencent's potential influence.

In the Chinese game market, all game companies have to face serious challenges from all aspects of Tencent. Of course, this is no exception for Korean gaming companies eager to enter the Chinese market.

CF, DNF success, so many Korean game companies clearly understand that as long as the cooperation with Tencent, to a certain extent, is tantamount to success. But trying to work with Tencent is far from easy to imagine. Many times through the share investment in exchange for the right to operate the agency, it became a lot of Korean game companies helpless. This has allowed Tencent to spend a very small price on the Korean gaming world with its enormous influence.

As early as 2007 into the game industry, Tencent set up a branch in South Korea, in recent years, through the Korean venture capital company Capstone Korean game developers to do a lot of procurement, many times to invest in Korea's game industry overseas strategic layout.

Not counting the investment in 4:33 Creative Lab, Tencent has long been the second largest shareholder in South Korea's biggest instant messaging application platform Kakao, and has spent 500 million of billions of dollars on 28% of South Korea's third-largest gaming company Cjgames, and 120 million per cent for South Korean game makers Patigames. In addition, Tencent has also invested in 7 Korean gaming companies such as Reloadedstudios, Nextplay, Redduck, Eyedentity (the Dragon Valley Developer).

Tencent clearly played a vital role in the process of stopping the cooperation. As the first big domestic game, Tencent certainly does not want to see another giant that can compete with it.

Alibaba after the total acquisition of UC, with PP assistant and UC Nine two major distribution channels, coupled with micro-bo, MO and other small partners, combined with the convenience of Alipay, to some extent, Ali has become Tencent in the game's biggest potential opponents.

Earlier Ali hand Tour platform Conference, Alibaba Group spokesman Shuai has expressed to Tencent game a single big market pattern of strong dissatisfaction.

"We have a monopoly of the game market, the status of the cottage to express regret, the Tencent game of a single big, the destruction of the game ecology is very dissatisfied." If the gaming industry continues to maintain a 1:9 percentage point (the platform operator takes 90% of the revenue and the game carrier is only 10%), then the deformity of the game industry will not change. We believe that this outcome will also occur in the micro-letter. We must strive for a healthy ecological environment for the game. ”

Mobile gaming is the fastest growing and most cash-flow market in the mobile internet, and Alibaba, with its huge flow, cannot be less important. Coupled with Tencent in the field of electricity to the Alibaba challenge, Ali is bound to the formation of Tencent must be a sniper, and the game is undoubtedly Tencent's core business. But behind this dark war, we found a very important phenomenon: the influence of Chinese internet giants has been radiated overseas.

From sea to investment, the layout of Chinese game enterprises

Zhangshan, head of China, the Google Business Customer Solutions Department, said South Korea's smartphone penetration rate is as high as 73%, with 70% of smartphone users installing game apps. The highly mature pay market brings the great advantage of the Korean gaming market's ability to absorb gold.

But as early as 2013, the Korean government vigorously promoted the Game Poisoning Act, and has been committed to playing games, alcoholism, drugs and gambling are defined as "four toxic" to manage. With a variety of local policies from the South Korean control, more and more excellent Korean games began to not be online in time. And worse is the bad game environment, bringing the investment game team's capital market is slowly disappearing, South Korea's domestic game industry development is now very difficult.

This situation has undoubtedly created a lot of new opportunities for Chinese game companies, out of the thirst for talent, at home to make huge profits Chinese gaming companies have begun to use capital to invest heavily in the acquisition of South Korean game team, but also is China's entry into the Korean market more and more game companies. South Korea attracted a total of $5.718 billion trillion of Chinese capital by the end of June 2013, while the number of Chinese companies entering South Korea reached 2002, according to the latest figures released by Kotra.

As Chinese companies are investing madly in the Korean gaming market, the South Korean industry has even begun to create a "Korean gaming industry's technology and human resources will be monopolized by the Chinese market" pessimism, but there is no denying that the Chinese game power is rising.

Export, the final battlefield is still domestic

On the one hand is China's huge game market behind the localization dilemma, on the other hand, Chinese gaming companies in the Korean game industry is becoming more and more important. Although South Korea is a highly developed market, but the overall market plate compared to domestic still slightly inadequate, and the country has undoubtedly become a good place to dump Korean games.

In a recent report by the South Korean Cultural Revitalization Institute, the 2012 South Korean gaming industry's water is 2.64 billion U.S. dollars, of which China's output accounted for 1.02 billion U.S. dollars, nearly 50% of the income from China. The Chinese market occupies a growing share of the Korean gaming industry's turnover in overseas exports.

In 2008, China became the first country to export its games to Korea by 26.7%, while Japan, the first largest exporter, accounted for only 20.8%. And this number is increasing every year, 2009 to 34.9%, 2010 37.1%, 2011 38.2%, 2012 38.6%, 2013 can be said to be more than 40%, Korea's game industry, nearly half of the overall flow from the Chinese market.

The Chinese giants that are gradually seizing the Korean game market began through its own localization of the channel advantage, a large number of South Korean games, which, although to some extent caused the concern of the Korean industry, but the integration of the global game market has become a trend, China tyrants will undoubtedly be in the Korean game in the dominant position, And the country will still be the main battlefield.