Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

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Sun Longxing was at his wit's end.

They stopped talking about data and started playing the emotional card.

"President Chen, ceding five cities today and ten more tomorrow, only to have a night's rest, is not a long-term solution."

"President Chen! Don't forget your original aspirations!"

Upon hearing Sun Longxing's words, several senior executives standing nearby were displeased.

What does this mean?

The Six Kingdoms Theory has arrived, so what? We're cutting your New Year's Festival budget, is Bilibili about to perish?

"Brother Sun, you're getting a bit too far ahead. Besides, it's not that we're not competing with Xinghuo. Aren't we competing with Xinghuo for the title of 'Most Beautiful Night'?"

"Doesn't BW also have to compete with Spark Carnival?"

"We're just putting the budget..."

Wang Tao hadn't finished speaking yet.

Chen Rui slammed his hand on the table.

"Sun Longxing! Since you've put it that way, let's have another match this year!"

Surprisingly, Chen Rui, who initially suggested avoiding direct confrontation, actually turned around and supported fighting.

This left everyone at the meeting speechless.

If you had said you wanted to fight earlier, all our jumping around would have been a waste of energy.

Wang Tao, in particular, was now in an awkward position, looking like a clown.

However, these executives were unaware that Chen Rui was also experiencing a great deal of inner turmoil.

He was also deeply affected by the saying, "Today we'll cede five cities, tomorrow we'll cede ten more."

If Bilibili doesn't fight for it at this time.

That's equivalent to giving up the New Year's greetings ceremony; that's true.

This year the budget has been reduced; next year it may be shut down altogether.

Why did Bilibili abandon the New Year's Festival?

Instead of sparks?

Can't compete with Spark in the game, and can't beat them in events either?

Bilibili's previous New Year's Festival was only because he himself didn't take it very seriously. This year, from now until February, there are still two whole months to go.

If he pulls himself together, he might be able to accomplish something.

The final outcome is still unknown.

Chapter 139 The Real Bloodsucking

Bilibili isn't the only one determined to challenge Xinghuo during this period.

The end of the year is a magical time.

Different apps will send you notifications about what happened on those apps throughout the year.

Various websites will also tell you what you did on the website last year.

And then I arrived at the company.

From top to bottom, a summary will also begin.

This applies to both domestic and foreign companies.

For example, at this moment, right now.

STEAM Office.

Aldridge was reporting to his boss.

The atmosphere at STEAM remains as relaxed as ever.

Sofa, coffee table, two cups of coffee.

Relaxing background music.

If it weren't for the documents Aldrich was handing over, this scene wouldn't look like a work report at all.

Gabe Newell (G胖) took the document, glanced at it twice, and then asked a question.

Are you sure you want to do this at this time?

In response to Gabe Newell's question, Aldridge nodded very seriously.

“This is competition, Boss. Before, no one competed with us, so we could be slow, but now it’s different.”

If you had to describe STEAM in 2018 in one word...

That word must be "stagnation".

Starting in the second half of 2018, or more precisely, from October, STEAM's various data essentially stagnated.

A closer look at the data reveals that the reason for this stagnation is simple and direct.

The most important reason is that Chinese players are leaving Steam.

In particular, the churn rate of Huaxia accounts registered in the first half of 2018 was as high as 31%.

In other words, one-third of Chinese players who registered on Steam in the first half of 2018 did not log in in the second half of the year.

Meanwhile, in the second half of 2018, the number of Chinese players registering on Steam dropped by 70% compared to the previous year.

This is a terrifying thing.

It's important to know that since 16, or even earlier, Steam has been benefiting from the popularity of Chinese players.

The purchasing power of Chinese players has played a very important role in driving the expansion of Steam.

This is not just about driving STEAM's market in China.

Rather, it promotes the influence of STEAM worldwide.

The reason is very simple.

For a gaming platform, what is its core competitive advantage?

It's basically about the size of the player base.

Just like a shopping mall, foot traffic is the key to whether the mall can survive.

Only when players make purchases will more merchants join the platform.

As long as the merchant can sell the goods, who cares what country you are from?

In its previous life, the continuous influx of Chinese players actually helped STEAM gain a voice on a global scale.

God's Balance 85%, Crouching Dragon 73%, Two-Player Team 56%, Sekiro 52%, PUBG 51%, Atomic Heart 37%.

Monster Hunter World 37%, Red Dead Redemption 36%, 2077 26%, The Witcher 3 22%, The Ring 21%.

These percentages represent the proportion of Chinese reviews to total reviews on Steam. As is well known, Steam game sales and the number of reviews are positively correlated, and player distribution can be roughly observed from the number of game reviews.

Over time, Chinese gamers have actually been spending more on single-player games.

However, no domestic manufacturer can meet the needs of this segment of players.

So they went to STEAM.

Because many game purchases originate from China, some developers even specialize in researching how to create games specifically for the Chinese market and which games Chinese players prefer to buy.

Why is Steam so strong?

Ultimately, in short, your game can only sell well on my platform.

At the heart of this statement is that Steam has the largest number of PC users in the world.

This includes a large number of Chinese users.

This is the core reason why STEAM can make money effortlessly.

Just like Apple, which takes 4 to 5 billion RMB from the Chinese app market every year just by taking a cut.

To put this into perspective, NetEase earns only about this much money in a year, and sometimes not even that much.

Of course, Apple's commission isn't limited to games; it includes other items as well, but the bulk of the revenue definitely comes from games.

Like Apple, Steam also receives a significant share of revenue from game purchases by Chinese players each year.

Originally, STEAM thought it could continue to benefit from this for a few more years.

However, the year was 2018.

Aldrich, however, discovered that the core of Steam, namely its player base, was actually decreasing instead of increasing.

Even though STEAM still has a terrifyingly large user base.

But this trend is enough to send chills down one's spine.

The market is moving forward, but you're stuck in the same place.

what does this mean?

Moreover, Aldridge has done more than just this year.

Starting with a series of events launched at E3.

By establishing a STEAM game developer alliance and signing a contract, developers can receive STEAM promotional support.

These measures have indeed stabilized the developers.

However, this failed to retain the players.

Especially in November, Spark released news about Heroes of Might and Magic III Remake DEMO, Red Alert multiplayer version, and Mario Remake.

In addition, a series of large-scale projects and many classic games have been launched on Spark.

That month, Steam experienced its first-ever decline in monthly active users, a truly alarming situation.

Even if the decline is not significant, a decline is still a decline.

In addition, a few days ago, EPIC started announcing that they would give away games.

Although Fallout 76 was a disastrous failure for Epic Games, Bethesda suffered the brunt of the negative reviews. Epic Games was somewhat collaterally affected, but the main reason for the damage was the bet between Erik Nathan and Lin Li.

The EPIC platform itself didn't have much traffic, but after this explosion, it actually gained some black traffic.

What made Aldridge even more nervous was what would happen after November.

The number of new games joining Steam in December also declined, and even the Christmas sales this year did not show a significant increase compared to 2017.

A series of data points to a terrifying yet real fact.

STEAM seems to have reached a bottleneck.

A month passed in this tense atmosphere.

While EPIC and Starfire were locked in a fierce battle outside.

Aldridge had discussed with his subordinates on several occasions that something had to be done to change the status quo.

However, they have not yet reached a conclusion.

Xinghuo, on the other hand, used "The Scroll of Taiwu" to achieve a million sales in two days.

To outsiders.

Everyone thinks that The Scroll of Taiwu is a disgrace to EPIC.

But only STEAM knew that with the million sales of "The Scroll of Taiwu" in two days, an even greater crisis had just begun.

Chapter 140 Steam's Dilemma

What gave Aldridge a deeper understanding of this was after New Year's Day.

When Steam sent out registration forms for the 19 launch to various developers in batches.

Compared to 18, the number of completed forms and responses has decreased by 15%.