A far-reaching ecological "invasion" is about to happen quietly on January 21. On January 13, "Honor of Kings" officially announced that Douyin live broadcast permission will be fully opened from January 21. Among them, January 14th to January 17th is the technical test period. In order to screen all technical problems that may be encountered during the broadcast, King of Glory will invite special guests XYG E-sports Club to test King of Kings live broadcast in the official live broadcast room; January 18th to January 20th is the themed live broadcast period, and game anchor Zhang Daxian will be invited to broadcast for 3 days.
"King of Glory" Weibo official announcement screenshot
Prior to this, many media have reported that the live broadcast copyright of Tencent's "Honor of Kings" will soon be opened to Douyin; going back further, when "The King's First Brother" Zhang Daxian joined Douyin on December 2, 2023, there were voices at that time that this was a signal that "Honor of Kings" would return to Douyin - However, Zhang Daxian did not broadcast any "Honor of Kings" related content in his first Douyin show.Someone ridiculed "The King's First Brother can't play The King on Douyin."
Nowadays, Tencent and Byte are completely demolishing the wall in the gaming field, which is of milestone significance; and the plot of the two shaking hands and making peace is very similar to Shuangwen's routine - it has been almost five years since the court ruled that ByteDance's company banned the live broadcast of "Honor of Kings" from January 31, 2019 to now when the live broadcast permission was released, which coincides with the line of the classic short play:"The five-year period has come and the king has returned. Welcome the king back to Douyin."
"Previously restricted by copyright, "Honor of Kings" has always been a restricted area for Douyin live broadcasts. After the official announcement, many anchor groups exploded. "Honor of Kings" will undoubtedly become a new outlet for a group of anchors - as the most profitable and popular IP in Tencent's hands, they are willing to let go of Douyin. The live broadcast of the video just shows that this will be a signal for Tencent Byte to start large-scale cooperation. Subsequent products such as "League of Legends" will basically follow this direction. The main uncertainty is the difference in time. Both companies are following the trend. "An industry insider commented.
It can be seen that the return of the king to Douyin may become a clear signal for Tencent’s games and animation IP to collectively seize Douyin.Further opening up is becoming Tencent's new business strategy and executive will, and the "Tengteng War" between Tencent and Byte, perhaps just like the "3Q War" between 360 and Tencent, has become a highlight in the history of the mobile Internet.
"Touteng Battle" Barrier
Turning the time back to May 7, 2018, Zhang Yiming and Ma Huateng’s Battle in WeChat Moments brought the “Touteng War” to the stage for the first time.
At that time, Zhang Yiming celebrated in the circle of friends that TikTok (the international version of Douyin) won the first place in free downloads on the App Store in Q1 2018. He wrote: "celebratesmallsuccess"; in addition, he also left a message in the message area: "WeChat's excuse to block, Weishi's plagiarism and transfer cannot stop the pace of TikTok" - Ma Huateng responded directly: "It can be understood as slander."
Before the bosses started fighting each other online, on March 8, 2018, Douyin and Huoshan short video links shared in Moments were visible only to themselves; on March 25, 2018, Douyin shared to QQ space and only visible to themselves; on April 11, 2018 At first, the links shared to WeChat and QQ by Xigua, Douyin, and Huoshan could not be played; on May 15, 2018, the pictures on Douyin’s personal page were blocked by Moments; on May 16, 2018, the Xigua Video website was marked as an unsafe website by Tencent Computer Manager.
It can be said that the dispute between Tencent and ByteDance actually lasted throughout 2018. According to media statistics, the judicial dispute between Tencent and ByteDance that year was as high asFrom 487.
In addition to the fierce battles in the social field, in the narrative of the "Touteng War", the copyright of game live broadcast has always been the focus - the game industry is also the hottest place.
ByteDance began to cast its net in the game field in the second half of 2017, and the march route was from building a self-built intermodal team to small games, agents and then self-research, which can be described as a step-by-step process; until 2019, the former head of the strategic investment department, Yan Shuo, concurrently served as the head of Zhaoxi Guangnian, and began to advance from light games to heavy games. With the blessing of money capabilities, ByteDance’s gaming territory has rapidly expanded to 10+ studios, 4 major publishing platforms and 29 companies.
Among them, the more well-known ones include Wushuang Studio (focusing on large DAU games), 101 Studio (developing classic IP games and MMORPGs), Oasis Studio (focusing on the development of MMORPGs and ARPGs), etc. According to incomplete market statistics, from 2019 to 2022, ByteDance’s performance in the gaming fieldThe investment amount is approximately 30 billion yuan.
"Traffic + capital allows Byte to dare to accumulate manpower and capital to build momentum, so multiple studios are working on projects at the same time." A game practitioner said to Huxiu.
At that time, Tencent was the well-deserved “big brother”:
On the one hand, Tencent's games are booming. Coupled with the potential of social networking (QQ, WeChat) and entertainment, the moat is too wide to be subverted, and the "connect everything" strategy is extending infinitely outward;
On the other hand, the more connections based on business and technology collaboration and complementation, the more efficiently external resources can be grafted into one's own business system, in order to achieve data overtake in the "arms race" of segmented tracks.
Taking the live broadcast pattern in 2019 as an example, in the first half of 2019, in the overall Chinese game live broadcast market, Tencent-based platforms (game live broadcast platforms that include investment and capital relationships) accounted for 88.7% of the broadcast volume; among the top 10 e-sports games with the largest launch volume, Tencent's games accounted for 7, including "Glory of Kings", "League of Legends", "Cross Fire", etc.
However, the "Touteng War" opened up the confrontation between the two sides in all aspects of the gaming field.
According to incomplete market statistics, the "Touteng War" has been going on for three years (2019~2021).Judicial risks associated with Article 948, and ByteDance is mostly the triggering party in media reports. The reason is basically accusing WeChat of banning link sharing of its products, suspected of unfair competition; while Tencent’s defense and counterattack is mostly based on the fact that ByteDance’s products infringe product communication rights and product copyrights.
Compilation of some of Tencent Byte’s lawsuits in 2019
Previously, the "Research on the Antitrust History and Characteristics of China's IT Industry over the past 20 years" written by Fang Xingdong and others from the Internet Laboratory pointed out that "Alibaba and Tencent have gained absolute say through establishing ecosystems and formulating rules, and have obvious control and influence on public opinion. They have also formed factional forces based on their strong service ecology and capital advantages" - Tencent and Byte have also increasingly "simmered" traffic in the pot, and IP content, creators, and investment relationships in major subdivisions have begun to differ.
Since then, blocking external links has almost become an industry consensus. Everyone has drawn up a fortified area and built their own siege. Even though the wheels of the mobile Internet are rolling forward, the island effect among the Internet platform ecology has gradually emerged.——The Internet economy is fragmented, users, data, and infrastructure are fragmented, and innovation mechanisms are also suppressed.
This is not alarmist. Ten years ago, entrepreneurs could still lead their companies to be listed independently and develop independently. Nowadays, the will of the giants behind most star companies is intertwined - just as Didi founder Cheng Wei said in an exclusive interview with Caijing:"You can't do it vertically, you can only do it horizontally. This is a Chinese characteristic."
In this way, the worst sufferers are ordinary users. An Internet person complained to Huxiu that more than ten years ago, the Internet was an open source, shared, and interconnected world. Now it is closed, monopolized, and artificially set up obstacles. "Today, when mobile phones are so powerful, some very simple file sharing, temporary conversations, and mutual content transfers can only be achieved by going through various complicated steps or being induced to install various apps."
Byte Tencent Games “tear down the wall”
In fact, no matter how you disguise the sophisticated calculations at the commercial level, blocking external links is essentially a means of restricting users’ freedom of choice and harming their rights and interests——By influencing the free flow of information, traffic becomes a bargaining chip for the platform’s interests.
This obviously goes against the essence of the spirit of the Internet - commercial interests cannot be based on restricting users' freedom of choice and harming user rights; on the contrary, the real commercial interests are to allow consumers to gain more freedom of choice on the basis of reasonably protecting consumer privacy.
Finally, in April 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation proposed for the first time "strictly prevent system closure and ensure ecological openness and sharing"; according to the requirements of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, all Internet platforms must be unblocked according to standards before September 17, 2021. Therefore, in the second half of 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology required Internet companies to open their business ecosystems; in September of the same year, WeChat opened external links to a low level in accordance with the requirements of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and supported the circulation of external links in the WeChat ecosystem.
In this regard, Li Qiangzhi, director of the Regulatory Research Department of the Institute of Policy and Economics of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, believes that in 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will consider it from the perspective of interconnection, which is a return to the basic spirit of the Internet - that is to say, supervision on the surface solves the problem of ecological openness, but in fact it is anti-traffic monopoly -One of the goals of antitrust is to eliminate the fragmentation between giants and make digital platforms interconnected, thereby creating a fair space for more innovative organizations to develop.
Looking back now, since regulation promotes interconnection, Tencent and Byte have begun to take substantive actions in "tearing down the wall".
First, Tencent Video and Douyin "break the ice": On April 7, 2023, Douyin and Tencent Video officially announced their cooperation. The two parties will explore aspects such as joint promotion of long and short videos and secondary creation of short videos; among them, Tencent Video will release long video copyright authorization to Douyin and clarify the secondary creation methods and release rules.
At that time, the migration of traffic, users, and advertisers to short video platforms was gradually becoming a trend. The exchange of copyright for traffic naturally became the last "trump card" of Youaiteng, and it was also a "deal" that benefited both parties. For Tencent Video, the short video platform represented by Douyin is reshaping the pattern of film and television promotions, and the creation of short videos can greatly stimulate the long-tail effect of classic dramas and old dramas; for Douyin, abundant drama and variety show content licensing can extend the user's active time and broaden monetization channels.
Then, Tencent Games finally "tear down the wall" with Douyin Live: On January 21, 2024, "Honor of Kings" will officially return to Douyin Live.
On the one hand, after the failure of the Huya Douyu merger and the shutdown of Penguin Esports, the original Tencent-based live broadcast platform game anchors are accelerating their migration to Douyin. "Douyu No. 1 Brother" Xuxu Baobao (who mainly broadcasts Tencent's ace game DNF) and "Huya No. 1 Brother" Zhang Daxian (mainly broadcasts Tencent's ace mobile game "Honor of Kings") both chose Douyin after the expiration of their contracts; before that, Douyu's top experts Sky Li Xiaofeng and Leng Yanhua, Huya's "Zaishi 250", Han Jiuri, and Mu Yingying also switched to Douyin.
This is inseparable from Douyin’s growing “game live streaming” ecosystem, but the fundamental reason is the structural change in the market caused by the shift in user attention:
At the 2023 China Game Developers Conference, the person in charge of Douyin game operations announced a set of data: "Douyin games have covered more than 300 million users, and the average monthly game content consumption time per person exceeds 9 hours";
The "2022 China Game Live Broadcasting Industry White Paper" released by TalkingData also pointed out: With the development of Douyin's game live broadcast business, short videos as a comprehensive platform can break through the ceiling of vertical platform traffic. A large number of top anchors have begun to migrate from vertical game platforms to Douyin because of its large platform user base, anchors' rapid fan base and diverse monetization models.
Data source "2022 China Game Live Broadcasting Industry White Paper"
Take Xuxu Baobao and Zhang Daxian as examples: Xuxu Baobao’s Douyin debut exceeded 100,000 people online in one minute, and the three-hour live broadcast that night had 60.11 million viewers and over 600 million likes; Zhang Daxian’s Douyin live broadcast had over 60 million viewers, with the highest number of simultaneous online viewers exceeding 2 million, and 1.2 billion likes.
On the other hand, although games such as "Honor of Kings", "Peace Elite", "Happy Landlords", "QQ Speed" and "Call of Duty" have opened video accounts and started broadcasting,However, Tencent games are no longer “full” in the WeChat ecosystem, and traffic anxiety forces Tencent to continuously stream from platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Bilibili.
Take Tencent Games’ latest hit “Yuanmeng Star” as an example. According to a report released by data tracking company DataEye on December 18, 38% of the ads for “Yuanmeng Star” in the first month of its launch were placed on the “Pangolin Alliance” (an online advertising platform owned by ByteDance), making it the most heavily invested advertising channel for this game by Tencent.
After all, there is abundant traffic in the Douyin ecosystem. The live broadcast of "Honor of Kings" on Douyin can maximize the natural traffic and topic popularity from Douyin. By then, a large number of Douyin anchors will inevitably emerge to work on "Honor of Kings", connecting game manufacturers, anchors, and users, and opening up business links.
Huxiu learned that Douyin’s commercial advertising is handled by the commercialization team, which is divided into bidding advertising, contract advertising, and commercial live broadcast advertising. Internally, the game business is divided into IA and IP (IA is a pure advertising monetization business, and IP is a form of internal purchase that requires a version number and comes with revenue sharing). External customers include Internet manufacturers such as Tencent, Alibaba, and NetEase, while internally it mainly serves Chaoxi Guangnian.
Frankly speaking, Tencent has successively expressed its sincerity in cooperation through Tencent Video copyright cooperation and game live broadcast cooperation. It is a decent way to reconcile with Byte and quietly start the business, and it is also a win-win business choice:
For Tencent, the "Penguin Empire" will grab more traffic and exposure from the time melting pot of Douyin; for ByteDance, the "Douyin system" can use Tencent's copyrighted content to enrich the content ecosystem, and second-generation derivative content will be able to legally use Tencent's most popular materials. It can also increase its revenue from game advertising and game live broadcasting business through Tencent game IP live broadcasts such as "Honor of Kings".
In fact, on the basis of its huge traffic, Douyin is gradually using social networking and search to precipitate the relationship chain generated therein.
Of course, the cooperation between Tencent and Byte is not limited to the live broadcast level. According to "LatePost" report, Byte's game department Chao Xi Guangnian is negotiating with Tencent to sell a number of games, including the already launched star products "Crystal Core" and "Planet Restart", and will provide a significant discount. Zhaoxi Guangnian later responded that the relevant team is negotiating with multiple buyers and has not yet finalized any transaction with Tencent.
"Tencent and Byte's 'breaking down the wall' will form an industrial collaboration form of 'entertainment attributes + social attributes + transaction attributes'. In this process, Tencent can amplify resource efficiency, while Byte can improve business efficiency." An Internet analyst told Huxiu,Once the two old and new giants, Tencent and Byte, break down their barriers, they will inevitably improve their respective production efficiency, resolve internal conflicts in the ecosystem, and create greater value for society.