Disappearing game anchors: plummeting value, repayment of debts, withdrawal from the circle, and difficulty in becoming popular

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Text / Yang Xiaohe

Source: Tech Planet (ID: tech618)

For Penguin E-sports CF anchor “Xiaofeng”, she originally thought that she could live broadcast here.

Starting from a part-time anchor of 800 yuan per month in college, Xiaofeng has been conscientiously broadcasting live in Penguin E-sports for 3 years. “I also know that there is no chance of explosion, but the atmosphere of live broadcast here is not fierce, and the brand of Tencent’s own son is very safe.” In Penguin E-sports, she has the feeling of “a civil servant in the anchor industry” .

The change occurred in December 2021, at that time, “Sister Penguin” and the anchor of the PUBG game Mozi was rumored to not renew her contract. For Penguin, whose overall traffic cannot keep up with Douyu Huya, Mozi alone accounts for four or five of the traffic, and the importance of Mozi is obvious.

For small and medium-sized anchors such as Xiaofeng, the popularity of live broadcasts is not high, and fans will not follow them to new platforms. Penguin live broadcast stopped, and their game live broadcast career came to an end.

Not only small and medium-sized anchors, but for those big anchors with absolute popularity, with the recent announcement that Penguin E-sports will cease operations on June 7, the road ahead will not be smooth. One of the top streamers of League of Legends, Xiaozhi, Yaoshen, etc., have entangled with many platforms, and the next live broadcast has not yet been decided.

Of course, not only the anchors of the Penguin platform are facing a turning point in development, but the entire game anchor market is no longer the same as before.

Huya anchor and LOL professional player UZI also recently suspended the live broadcast. According to industry analysts, it is because the live broadcast, the team and the broker signed three parties, and the game failed to result, so he chose to rest. There are also Brother Snake who jumped between live broadcast platforms for high salaries, and the “Four Little Sky Boxes”, a group of PUBG anchors who live on different platforms, did not withstand the pressure of the platform or fans to tear each other, and eventually disappeared.

The field of live broadcasting has been continuously promoted by capital, and platform ambitions are intertwined with personal desires, which has caused the industry to move forward in turbulence. Now, with the layoffs of Douyu, Huya and Bilibili, and the closure of platforms such as Penguin E-sports, the good days of anchors are gradually becoming a thing of the past. It’s just that who could realize at that time that all the gifts of fate have already been marked with a price.

01 Scattered to find a way out

In March, Penguin is still refuting rumors and will not close, but for Xiaofeng, this is already a sure thing.

Judging from the Cross Fire (CF) area where she is located, the top player in the area is Ma Zhe, a former professional player. Sometimes if Ma Zhe enters her live broadcast room, the flow of people will skyrocket. But without warning, Ma Zhe went to Kuaishou live broadcast. The core traffic of Penguin E-sports’ CF sector is almost gone.

Xiaofeng knew at that time that the platform’s core anchor Mozi, and the division’s core anchor Ma Zhe would not renew their contracts, which had given everyone a clear signal to quickly find a next home. So after 2022, Xiaofeng’s live broadcast also began intermittently, waiting for the final result to be announced. “The announcement made by Penguin in April, when the guild told us that we might all go to Huya in the future.”

But Xiaofeng knows that there is no fan base to go to Huya, and it is meaningless to live broadcast with a meager basic salary all the time. It can’t compare to a big anchor like Mozi. After all, the boss of the company behind Mozi is star Chen He. Moreover, although Mozi signed to live broadcast on Penguin, her traffic is not only here. “In the past year, Mozi, Zhixun, and Duimei’s two women and one man have broadcast live. The live broadcast content of CP speculation is very interesting, and many clips are also very popular on Douyin.” Xiaofeng told Tech Planet that Mozi is currently on Douyin. It has 10.24 million fans on the Internet, which is still under the background that Mozi cannot live on Douyin.

Mozi, a topical anchor, finally signed with Huya in March. “The annual salary is expected to be around 10 million. In the past, it was tens of millions.” Zhang Feng, the former Huya anchor signing manager, told Tech Planet. Compared with UZI, the top LOL anchor, Tech Planet learned in 2021 that he signed a contract with Huya Live at a price of 40 million.

The platform will still compete for the top streamers, but the signing fee is not so high anymore. “The assessment mechanism of the platform is relatively complete now, and the anchors can’t get 100% of the money,” Zhang Feng told Tech Planet.

Moreover, the platform will not recruit anchors regardless of previous suspicions like in previous years. This is the case for Xiaozhi, there are not many options for job-hopping platforms at the moment.

In 2015, he publicly criticized other anchors on the Douyu platform for gaining popularity, and said that no one could break the 600,000 real popularity he created in the Douyu live broadcast room, and the past of bluntly saying that Huya pirated his videos and apologized is still vivid in his mind. It is his “confidence” that the anchor can influence the platform, and even started his own business as a live broadcast platform for the whole people, and had a verbal friction with Wang Sicong, who also started a live broadcast platform.

In the end, the national live broadcast closed down, and Xiao Zhi went to the Penguin live broadcast platform to live broadcast. After the news that Douyu Huya will merge in 2021, he also said: The bonus period for big anchors next year is over, and the industry is basically over.

Unlike Xiao Zhi, who has seen through everything, he has 2.25 million followers on Weibo, and the anchor Yaoshen, who is still certified as “Penguin E-sports Yaoshen”, still remembers the past.

On April 7, when Penguin officially announced that it would be closed in June, Yaoshen posted on Weibo: “5 and a half years of youth, although I was suddenly banned for unknown reasons~ I would still like to thank the platform.” And in the comments, he said that he could Can’t unblock him once, let him come to a farewell performance in May.

Many fans asked Yaoshen where to go live next. For the anchor of Penguin Yongfeng, although there is no clear “criminal”, other families are also afraid to take over. As for Xiaozhi’s whereabouts, some fans broke the news that he had broadcast live on the WeChat video account. The video account has not yet launched the game live broadcast. Although the video account of hundreds of millions of users is a live broadcast of the blue ocean, WeChat does not pay the anchor fee to the anchor. For anchors such as Xiao Zhi, this should not be very acceptable.

Judging from the current situation, Penguin’s anchor “Han Paopao” started broadcasting on Douyu on April 6, League of Legends anchor “Wang Jianjian” went to Huya, and AG Moonlight said that it will be broadcast live on Kuaishou next, everyone. Have scattered to find a way out.

02 Getting rich, contracts and debt repayment

Once upon a time, the game anchor was the most dazzling new profession, and the income was close to that of many stars.

Judging from the worth of the game anchors that circulated in 2016, the highest annual salary of the anchors at that time had reached 40 million. At that time, the competition for anchors was becoming fierce, and Douyu and Huya became more and more powerful. After that, they directly killed Quanmin TV and Zhanqi TV on the list.

Of course, Douyu and Huya are not very accurate in the process of competing for the anchor. For example, Huya signed the e-sports anchor Miss for 3 years and 100 million. After that, Miss moved to several games such as League of Legends, PUBG, and Genting Game, and its popularity plummeted; Yi, who was also reported by netizens to be beaten on behalf of her, was permanently sealed. Later, she became a play host. The asking price was 520 yuan per hour. Netizens commented that the unit price was a money grab.

“The King’s First Brother” has also changed. The earliest honor belonged to the King’s Glory anchor Hi’s. In 2016, Hi’s jumped from Penguin E-sports to Huya. During the year of Huya’s live broadcast, the platform operated him as a guest of Zhejiang Satellite TV’s “High Energy Youth League”, and through this program, Hi’s became popular among the whole people.

The turning point occurred in August 2017, when Hi Shi and another anchor, Chu He, had a few months of mutual scolding. Hi Shi believed that the platform did nothing in this matter. At the same time, Douyu signed Zhang Daxian, another well-known anchor of King Glory, and Hi’s began to test pressure on Huya platform, asking him to give recommendation positions and invest in media publicity resources to support him, so as to keep his identity as “the first brother of the king”.

Perhaps in the connection of the two incidents, Hi’s family felt that the Huya platform was ineffective, so he announced to quit Douyu without any warning, and when he quit, Hi’s mother issued several accusations, all kinds of wrongs of the Huya platform, and transferred the public. Concerns about the fact of its breach of contract. At that time, the operation of Huya also posted chat records, and countered the various accusations of Hi’s on the line.

The Huya platform also believed that the anchor had breached the contract, and United Aipai Video applied to the court for a civil ruling. In February 2018, Huya’s official Weibo released the court’s verdict, requiring “Hi’s” to compensate 49 million liquidated damages. Judging from the judgment at that time, the total revenue created by Hi’s live broadcast on Huya for one year was 11,186,666.24 yuan (live broadcast revenue + 6 million notification fee for “High Energy Youth League”). According to the compensation platform for liquidated damages of 5 times its income, the court finally supported the evidence in the second instance.

Hi’s created a record of penalty for liquidated damages in the live broadcast industry. At that time, it was rumored that Douyu would bear the liquidated damages for it. However, after Hi’s joined Douyu, various negatives caused its live broadcast popularity to plummet. In the competition with Zhang Daxian, it directly at a disadvantage.

In this case, it is difficult for Douyu to fulfill its promise at that time and bear nearly half a billion compensation for it. In order to repay the debt, Hi’s is constantly trying new popular games, and switching to platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou again.

Judging from the recent live broadcasts, he has transformed into a console game anchor in Kuaishou. Although he still has 6 million fans, his popularity is far from the scenery of “the king’s first brother” at that time.

When talking about the default of anchors, Zhang Feng mentioned, “The trend of platforms poaching anchors at high prices stopped in 2019. At that time, they all promised to help solve the problem of liquidated damages. Small anchors dealt with each other between the two platforms, and big anchors weighed it. Whether its live broadcast popularity is worth the cost.”

However, Zhang Feng also mentioned that helping to compensate for the liquidated damages will not be written into the contract, so when there is an accident such as “the liquidated damages determined by the court are too high” or “the popularity of the anchors changing platforms has fallen”, the anchors themselves are responsible for this part of the responsibility. .

If Hi’s is to pay for his youthful impulse, then there are anchors who choose to accept punishment. In 2017, after breaking the contract and jumping to Douyu, Brother Snake was ordered to compensate Huya for 24 million liquidated damages. And because of Douyu’s unpaid wages, Brother Snake went to Penguin E-sports soon after. In February 2018, Brother Snake was sued by Douyu for a claim of 40 million.

Finally realized that the constant default has put him in huge debt. Brother Snake wrote a Weibo account of “Get rich half a billion overnight, and the leaves return to their roots from scratch”. In May 2018, he returned to Huya to work as a “debt repayment”, and has been live broadcasting until now.

03 When the stage falls, where will the game anchor go?

In March 2022, the Xiaohulu Data Research Institute released the “2021 Game Live Streaming Industry Insight Report”. The data shows that in 2021, the market data indicators of China’s game live broadcast industry will shrink significantly, and the number of game anchors will drop from 13.958 million to 11.974 million.

Among these game anchors, there are only dozens of anchors who can reach the head. And they also enjoyed the initial dividends and glory of the industry, and most of them became famous when they were young. Facing the temptation of money, it is difficult not to go astray.

Of course, malicious poaching between platforms is also an important factor. In the 5-year game live broadcast platform war, Douyu raised more than 7 billion yuan before IPO, Huya raised more than 4.5 billion yuan, and Tencent Zhantou, Sequoia and other capital are the main investors behind it.

In the money-burning war supported by capital, a lot of poaching has already been revealed. Douyu, which has been poached more, is also said by the industry that “liquidated damages are the main component of revenue”.

According to statistics, in 2017, there were 9 cases of fined anchors defaulting and quitting jobs, and in 2018, there were 24 cases. In 2019, it did not stop. When the outdoor anchor live broadcast Saiwenqi was live on Douyu, the staff of Huya went to her side to dig directly, and said, “Everything is easy to talk about, and all conditions are easy to talk about.”

Even cross-platform simulcasting is not allowed. The members of “Four Little Sky Boxes” also switched jobs in order to be able to broadcast live on the unified platform, but in the end, because the live broadcast effect was not good, fans were suspicious of each other, and some members were banned for saying wrong things, etc. Because of this, members like Little Gui disappeared from Penguin E-sports.

In the end, when Douyu and Huya were listed separately, and even Wang Sicong’s Panda Live was delisted with a debt of 2 billion yuan, the capital market realized that the capacity of the game market was limited after all. No longer enthusiastic about this field, so from Zhanqi TV to Panda Live, Quanmin TV, Tentacle TV, and now Penguin E-sports, all of them went bankrupt without money.

Judging from the latest financial report, Douyu’s Q4 revenue in 2021 is 2.33 billion yuan, with a net loss of 190 million yuan, and a single-quarter loss for five consecutive quarters. Huya’s revenue in Q4 was 2.809 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6%, with a loss of 310 million yuan. This is the first time that Huya has turned from profit to loss after achieving profitability for 16 consecutive quarters.

The top two players, Douyu and Huya, are generally in a loss situation, which prompted Douyu and Huya B station live broadcast and other teams to start layoffs. In this context, it is unrealistic to give the anchor a staggering signing fee.

Perhaps the livestreaming world is still nostalgic for those glorious days. On the day of PPD Douyu’s debut in 2019, the popularity of his live broadcast room once reached 500 million. In just three or four hours, PDD’s anchor level reached level 100. It took many years for many anchors to achieve the results, and the PDD live broadcast was completed on the first night, behind which fans and their family members swiped more than 23 million yuan in virtual gifts.

Now there is no anchor to replicate such a scene. One month after Mozi joined the new platform, he is still complaining that he has lost hundreds of thousands of yuan. Many activities originally had to be recharged to increase his popularity. For small anchors like Xiaofeng, it is no longer realistic to maintain live game broadcasts. There will be no signing fee for going to Douyu Huya, and after the live broadcast ranks several pages in the division, there will be no audience at all. The anchor level solidified by these platforms is difficult to break.

“Maybe I will find a new job and return to my normal life and work,” Xiaofeng said with emotion.

(Note: Xiaofeng and Zhang Feng are pseudonyms in the text.)

This article is reproduced from: http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-04-27/doc-imcwiwst4304276.shtml
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