Why Chinese Game Companies Publish Three Nearly Identical Games at Once
If you’ve been following mobile gaming trends lately, you may have noticed something strange. NetEase, China’s second largest game publisher, launched Knives Out, Rules of Survival, and Survivor Royale—three nearly-identical PUGB style games launched in a very short window. 37 Games, another large Chinese publisher pulled a similar move in the Match 3 genre, launching Puzzles & Conquest, Puzzles & Survival, and another Match 3 game with a different skin.
What’s the point of this strategy? Is this just another way larger companies pit teams against each other to see who makes a market-validated title?
It’s not that simple. This is a fairly calculated strategy that leverages Chinese gaming companies unique strengths. Read on below to learn why this type of publishing strategy makes sense for them.
Mud to the Wall
You know the saying: Throw a lot of mud at the wall and see what sticks. Instead of betting a large development and marketing budget on a single title, NetEase and 37 Games are developing a core gameplay loop with layers of meta and dressing them up with different skins and slightly different opening progression.
This strategy may sound more risky at first, but these Chinese developers are publishing titles in proven, existing genres that have already demonstrated tons of demand. PUBG validated the battle royale concept, and Empires and Puzzles validated a new kind of match 3 with city building and gacha elements. So to companies like NetEase and 37 Games, the question isn’t do players want to play these games, it is more of a question of which spinoff on these proven genres would win over a playerbase.
Why Launch Three Instead of One?
Why? Why not pour resources into one title and make it into a flagship game?
Mobile gaming is quite different from console or PC gaming. You can’t easily predict what game will be a hit and what game will flop. Small differences in pacing, telemetry, UI, and device optimization can make or break a mobile game’s success in ways that aren’t easy to predict before an actual launch. You could view this tactic as market research at scale, with real players and in real time.
From here, the publisher can then observe which title was gaining traction and then concentrate their ad spend on that particular game. The other, less successful titles may not even be shut down; they might find receptive players in different regions or across other demographics. If there’s a standout version, it is the one that will then get a majority of the future investment.
Low Marginal Costs
Once NetEase or 37 Games has built the core gameplay mechanics, asset pipeline, netcode, and monetization framework for one of these games, building a second or third variant doesn’t cost nearly as much as the first. They swap skins, change the UI a bit, change the tutorial and onboarding. The marginal cost to make the second and third games is a fraction of the original investment.
Chinese publishers also enjoy lower labor costs while operating at significant scale, so employing this publishing strategy makes more sense compared to publishers who find themselves facing much higher costs in North America or Europe.
Cross-Promotion and Portfolio Power
If you own three games in the same exact genre, you can cross-promote Game A directly to players in Game B. These players have already shown interest in PUBG style shooters or Match 3 + Gacha games, so player churn takes on a completely different look in this scenario. Players from the less popular titles can still be retained by incentivizing them to join the more successful title instead.
So this “mud to the wall” strategy might look like chaos and disorganization from the outside. This strategy, however, seems to be a rational response to conditions inside the gaming market: proven genre demand, low marginal development costs, unpredictable player behavior, and a highly competitive environment inside both the App Store and Google Play.
Whether this is “good” for the gaming industry in general or players in particular is a completely separate question. But as a publishing strategy, this is anything but random chaos.
