In mid-February, GameLook reported that the "Tribal Conflict (COC)" national service and international service data were cut, and the national service officially ran completely independently. After the news broke, players were talking about whether Supercell's other global product, Clash Royale, would also be data-cut.
On March 16, with a super-long maintenance that lasted more than 17 hours, the players' debate finally settled. "Clash Royale" followed the pace of COC and completed the separation of national and international services, which also represents that Supercell of Tencent Holdings has officially completed the compliance adjustment of its products in the Chinese market.
Content data has been comprehensively adjusted to fill in compliance loopholes
With the precedent of the previous "Clash of Clans" ultra-long maintenance for sub-service, after the "Clash Royale" national service issued a maintenance announcement, players have been keenly aware of the signal of sub-service. Judging from the final maintenance results, this cut is consistent with Clash of Clans, and the national service players and international service players have been completely cut in various contactable game links such as battle matching, friend list, and alliance relationship.
Some netizens said that if a national service player joins a tribe that is full of international service players, in the perspective of the international service player, the information of the national service player will be deleted, and in the perspective of the national service player, he will become the only member of a new tribe. Due to the suddenness of the incident, many national service players have not been able to say goodbye to the international service players in the tribe, which has become a small regret in their hearts.
In April 2020, local competent departments successively held game supervision meetings and deployed follow-up regulatory key work, including strengthening game version numbers, game advertising delivery, and correcting errors in game content values. One of them is: "Some games promote functions such as 'global service' and 'multinational player online chat' in the promotion, so that players can access unapproved versions of the game abroad." The global service function cannot be launched, and the relevant functions should be deleted in time. ”
Due to the negative public opinion caused by the UGC function in the game of individual overseas games, the game has caused great controversy in the domestic market, and the above requirements of the competent authorities are also introduced in this context.
Therefore, whether it is "Clash of Clans" or "Clash Royale", the data cutting of national and international services is a compliance move that actively responds to policies.
It is worth noting that the compliance operation of the two games is not limited to sub-service. After the previous sub-service maintenance of "Clash of Clans", some netizens found that it also made certain adjustments in the game content. This includes changing the "Poison Spell" to "Damage Spell"; changing the color of the Skull Potion from red to green; all Pirate Series skins renamed the "Sea" series skins; "X Repeater" renamed "Cross Repeater"; all flags, weathervanes, and flag types removed from the shelves; adding cloth to some class costumes; and adjusting the name of festival obstacles to "Friendly Flowers", "No Man's Tomb", and so on.
These content adjustments, like the vertical drawing and copywriting adjustments of many previous head two-dimensional mobile game products, are actively cooperating with the latest regulatory measures of the competent authorities to ensure the compliance operation of the game.
Revenue does not fall but increases, and the service is not terrible
After the news of the "Clash of Clans" sub-service came out, many players believed that this move would lead some national service players to switch to international services or directly abandon the pit and retreat, and there was no shortage of similar voices in the player community such as forums and Tieba. Even Ke Jie, a famous Go player and veteran of "Clash Royale", also posted that he wanted to uninstall the game.
But GameLook noticed that after the sub-service was completed, both Clash of Clans and Clash Royale had topped the App Store free list. This is of course due to the need to re-download and install the new version of the game after the service maintenance, but this also reflects the fact that the existing players have not had a large-scale abandonment of the pit retreat.
In terms of revenue, the revenue of "Clash of Clans" iOS China in March this year increased by nearly 20% compared with March 2021 after the completion of the service, and compared with January before the service, the daily revenue performance was basically the same, and there was no decline. It is particularly noteworthy that on March 2, Clash Royale ushered in its annual anniversary, and the game also listed a cost-effective anniversary package. This led to a single-day revenue peak in March, and a revenue increase of more than 20% compared with last year's anniversary.
As the two most successful products in the global market after the farm simulation game "Hay Day", "Clash of Clans" released in 2012 and "Clash Royale" released in 2016 are both old products that have been in operation for more than 6 years, so the player structure is basically based on existing players. Therefore, whether in terms of download volume or revenue, the two products are already in a relatively stable stage, which is the main reason why their performance has not been affected by this sub-service.
On the other hand, GameLook also believes that the stability of the data level proves that the existing players have a great user stickiness for the two products. Aside from the slightly longer matching time involving recreating or joining a clan and PvP battles, sub-service does not fundamentally damage the national costume player's gaming experience. Therefore, they show a relatively inclusive attitude towards sub-service.
In addition, due to the need for players to re-download the game due to this version update, coupled with the significant effect of the hot discussion caused by the service incident, many old players have taken this opportunity to return, which has also invisibly boosted the performance of the two games to maintain a relatively stable performance. Overall, the sub-service has not had a significant impact on the two games as speculated by the outside world, and this sub-service has become another small footnote on the road to compliance in the domestic game industry.
epilogue
Also in February, the Indian authorities removed 54 Chinese apps on trumped-up "security threats", and Singapore's SEA Group's "Free Fire" and "Free Fire MAX" also innocently lay guns, which is the fifth time India has banned Chinese apps.
At the same time, the European Union is also stepping up legislation to require overseas Internet companies, including Meta, to store the data of EU users in servers in the EU, and Meta once said that it may stop providing services to EU users.
Because of the requirement that the server must be set up in Vietnam, many game manufacturers have stopped serving in Vietnam because they could not meet the relevant requirements.
The above examples have shown that data security, information security, and public opinion security have become the focus of global regulators, and in this context, compliance operations have become an important issue that all game companies cannot ignore. Therefore, while rationally viewing the "Clash of Clans" and "Clash Royale" service incidents, game companies should also pay attention to, understand and actively respond to different regulatory policies in different market environments around the world.
The case of Supercell also shows that compliance operations do not represent a decline in performance. On the contrary, only by always operating in compliance can we continue to generate revenue and be invincible in the ever-changing market environment.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
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