What businesses has “Wukong” made fat?
Since the domestic 3A game “Black Myth: Wukong” was launched on August 20, the recent hot spots cannot escape this game.
Two days ago, the gold jewelry brand Chow Tai Fook was on the hot search because of the “full gold version of Ruyi Jingu Bang” in the store. Many netizens said that the “Wukong same style” they wanted most appeared.
The total weight of this golden hoop is 7616.06 grams, the gold weight is about 1755 grams, the total length is 2016.28mm, and the price is 1.7998 million. However, the store staff responded that the product was not recently exhibited, which means that the brand did not take advantage of the popularity of the game.
Before the game “Black Myth: Wukong” was launched, many people in the industry were worried about whether “Wukong”, which cost 400 million to develop, could make a profit. As a result, on the day of the launch, some industry insiders predicted that “it may have made a profit” based on sales.
Now everyone is more curious about how much money it can make. Official data shows that as of 21:00 on August 23, the total sales of the game across all platforms exceeded 10 million copies.
In its research report, investment institution Goldman Sachs Group pointed out that based on the 7-fold conversion ratio (conversion from Steam PCCU to PC sales), the game may sell 20 million copies and generate revenue of more than 5 billion yuan.
In an interview with the media, Guolian Securities analysts said that the long-term commercialization performance of “Black Myth: Wukong” is expected to be comparable to the top 3A games overseas, with sales exceeding 20 million, corresponding to a turnover of 5.6 billion, revenue of 3.7 billion, and profit of 2.8 billion.
In short, Game Science, the production company behind “Black Myth: Wukong”, won.
Not only did the sales of the game itself explode, but it also boosted the business of game hardware, peripheral derivatives, local cultural tourism, and even various pirated black and gray products.
Pirated Wukong game accounts and peripheral products are crowded on second-hand trading platforms; co-branded computers, graphics cards, game controllers and other “Wukong” hardware are quickly sold out once they are released; e-sports hotels, e-sports areas of bath centers, and local cultural and tourism institutions have also launched various “Wukong” packages.
The popularity and income of various “Wukong” games are even as good as the game itself.
1 Low-priced piracy, double peripherals, how profitable is the “Wukong” black and gray industry?
“Game decompression package, full set of tutorials, game modifiers that can open plug-ins,” on a second-hand platform, a merchant discounted the official price of “Black Myth: Wukong” from 268 yuan to 1 yuan, and gave away a lot of game benefits. The platform shows that more than 100 people want the product.
The game “Black Myth: Wukong” is popular, and various pirated versions are emerging in an endless stream. These merchants offer low prices ranging from 1 yuan to dozens of yuan to attract users to place orders.
The pirated version of the game is also divided into two tiers in terms of price. One is the bargain price of 1 cent, 1 yuan, and 9.9 yuan, and the other is slightly higher, ranging from dozens to 100 yuan. The two have different ways of making money.
Out of curiosity, the player Xiaomi spent 1 yuan to buy the compressed package of “Black Myth: Wukong” on a second-hand platform. He was surprised that the game could be successfully installed, but he could not control the characters in the game after entering.
Since the merchant stated in advance that “it is not responsible for after-sales and returns”, Xiaomi felt that he only lost 1 yuan and chose to let it go.
“Dingjiao” also found a merchant who sold it at a low price of one cent. He emphasized that he did not charge buyers to support genuine products. But game practitioner Xiao A reminded that you should be more careful when encountering such free content. It is very likely that the other party has set up hidden viruses in the installation link to steal the buyer’s information.
The general routine of the above merchants is to attract players to place orders with low prices of a few cents or one or two yuan, and avoid supervision by marking “the goods are virtual resources, there is no after-sales service and no refunds or exchanges. If you take the order, you will be deemed to agree to the rules of this store” or “various hidden terms”. Finally, they take advantage of the players’ greed for small profits and troublesome psychology to earn profits or user information.
Another type of merchants that offer prices ranging from tens to hundreds of yuan are mostly renting accounts. It can be understood that the merchants have purchased genuine games, but use the steam account to support family sharing and offline login methods to rent them to others to earn profits. Most of these merchants will mark “personal game account for rent”. At present, there is still controversy in the circle as to whether this method is piracy.
Some players also found that after they bought the activation code on a second-hand platform, they first saw the game in their account, but the game disappeared after clicking on the receipt. Game practitioner Xiao A said that this may be some merchants using loopholes and waiting for activation to falsify.
It is understood that most popular stand-alone games have experienced piracy. Due to the large number of pirated merchants, game production companies have suffered heavy losses.
For example, the founder of the company of Pascal’s Wager, a stand-alone mobile game that Apple said was comparable to console-level games and world-class 3A masterpieces, publicly stated that the losses caused by piracy were more than 10 million yuan. Pasya Technology, the company that produced the simulation business game My Time at Portia, once estimated that the losses from piracy in more than two years reached 180 million yuan.
An industry insider roughly estimated that according to the current popularity of Black Myth: Wukong, “the losses from piracy should not be less than these two games.”
In addition to the game itself, many people have also targeted limited edition peripherals for piracy or fraud.
The collector’s edition gift box of Black Myth: Wukong, which is priced at 1,998 yuan, has doubled on second-hand trading platforms. The co-branded peripherals of Black Myth: Wukong and Luckin Coffee have also been hyped up to 25-100 yuan. Players not only need to pay high prices to buy, but also face the risk of being deceived.
Image source / screenshot of Luckincoffee Luckin Coffee video account
Game enthusiast 61 was cheated of 3,250 yuan to buy a figurine in the official physical collector’s edition gift box.
61 found this merchant on a second-hand platform. The other party said that the figurine could be transferred at the original price, but he needed to buy another model in a package, which was equivalent to spending 2,000 yuan more.
At first, 61 also had doubts about the authenticity of the product, but during the communication, the other party repeatedly emphasized that many people were asking him for the price. 61 finally paid the money, but after waiting for a long time without delivery, he was blocked by the other party. 61 found out through checking the identity information that the other party was a dishonest person, and he felt that it would be difficult to get his money back.
“Wukong Black and Gray Industry” has fattened up many individual merchants.
2 A variety of brand cooperation: some people’s stock prices have risen, and some people’s sales have soared
In addition to black and gray industries, more than a dozen brands in various fields such as hardware, coffee and tea, and travel that are linked to “Black Myth: Wukong” have also made a lot of money. Among them, coffee and tea brand Luckin and hardware equipment manufacturers such as computers, graphics cards, and game consoles all experienced a short-term phenomenon of “supply exceeding demand”.
On August 19, the co-branded peripherals of Luckin and “Black Myth: Wukong” were quickly sold out as soon as they were released. Luckin’s Chief Growth Officer (CGO) Yang Fei expressed his feelings in the circle of friends that “male purchasing power subverts the team’s cognition”. On the same day, Luckin’s stock price rose by 7.14%, and its market value increased by about US$400 million. Some netizens joked that “Black Myth: Wukong” has been busy for more than 6 years, but it is better for Luckin to take a day.
Because the game has high requirements for computer configuration, it has also driven the sales of a batch of co-branded hardware.
Lenovo and the game have co-branded two PC products, namely the Savior Y9000P AI Yuanqi “Black Myth: Wukong” co-branded customized version and the Savior Blade 7000K Super Power Edition “Black Myth: Wukong” co-branded customized version. Both models use the Wukong customized appearance and are priced at more than 10,000. At 10:00 on August 20, the Y9000P was sold out half an hour after the pre-sale started.
Source / Lenovo official Weibo
Many people will choose to configure their own computers, which has brought a hot installation to Shenzhen Huaqiangbei Electronics Market. “Brother installs dozens of computers a day” and “Huaqiangbei PS5 is sold out” and other hot searches continue.
Not only Huaqiangbei, but also computer mall owners in Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Hefei and other places said that their store sales doubled after the launch of “Black Myth: Wukong”, and buyers’ configuration requirements are not low, with prices ranging from 6,000 to 10,000.
A store owner on an e-commerce platform told “Dingjiao” that he is a UP host. Seeing that “Black Myth: Wukong” is very popular, he had the idea of customizing the host for fans. He launched a total of 7 configurations, including CPU, motherboard, graphics card, memory, hard disk, heat dissipation, power supply, chassis, accessories, with prices ranging from 3,500 to 13,000 yuan, and 40 units have been sold in less than a week.
The co-branded graphics cards with “Black Myth: Wukong” were also snapped up by players.
JD.com once publicly revealed that the sales of computer components increased by 120% year-on-year on the day the game was launched, and the graphics card category, which determines the image video quality and game performance, saw a 200% year-on-year increase in transaction amount. Among them, the co-branded graphics cards of the domestic graphics card brand Colorful were sold out.
Because the game has high requirements for PC device configuration, many players choose to use PS5 as a substitute. Some practitioners said that the Chinese version of PS5 (game consoles released for the Chinese mainland market) was not difficult to buy before the game came out, and many stores were replenishing stocks after the game was launched. JD.com International data shows that on the day of the release of “Black Myth: Wukong”, PS5 sales increased by more than 11 times year-on-year.
Recently, Sony announced that it would increase the price of PS5 and peripheral equipment by nearly 1,000 yuan. Although the official explanation was that this move was mainly affected by external factors such as “changes in the global economic situation”, many netizens felt that it had a lot to do with the global popularity of “Black Myth: Wukong”.
Game controllers are also hot sellers. On JD.com, Feizhi Octopus 4 “Black Myth: Wukong” co-branded model had a transaction volume of over 10,000 in 1 minute, and 8Bitdo “Black Myth: Wukong” co-branded model had a transaction volume of over 30,000 on the same day.
Young people who are good at saving money will also go to buy second-hand equipment.
A person related to a second-hand e-commerce platform publicly stated that driven by “Black Myth: Wukong”, the sales of game controllers, headphones, keyboards, mice and other products have also seen a significant increase.
At this moment, many merchants are offering discounts such as buying a computer and giving away the game “Black Myth: Wukong”, hoping to make a fortune while the game is hot.
3 Everything can be “Wukong”, e-sports hotels, bathing centers, and cultural tourism are all here
“Black Myth: Wukong” has become popular, and game halls, e-sports hotels, and even the e-sports areas of bathing centers, and cultural tourism in various places have also taken this opportunity to work hard on marketing.
According to Meituan data, from August 17 to August 20, the search volume related to “Black Myth: Wukong” increased by nearly 50 times month-on-month. Many game halls, Internet cafes, and bath centers immediately launched relevant group purchase packages. Some game hall merchants launched group purchase experience coupons and sold more than 300 orders in one hour. The e-sports area of the bath center was also hard to find.
E-sports rooms near university campuses were even more snapped up. Ctrip data showed that on the day the game was launched, the search popularity of e-sports rooms increased by 40% compared with the previous day. Many hotels also downloaded the game immediately on the same day because there were too many customers calling to inquire about “Black Myth: Wukong”.
A staff member of an e-sports hotel in Hangzhou told “Dingjiao” that their opening this year coincided with the popularity of the game, so they launched a variety of “Black Myth-Wukong Fun Rooms”. In the past two weeks, their best-selling one was the “Black Wukong E-sports Single Room” priced at less than 300 yuan per night.
“Black Myth: Wukong” also helped cultural tourism in various places find the traffic code.
In the past two years, the cultural and tourism industry in various places has been in a state of involution, and they will never miss such a marketing opportunity. The high-quality game screen is an important highlight of “Black Myth: Wukong”. The production team once said that they scanned hundreds of temples and ancient monuments across the country and imported them into the computer to obtain the screen presentation effect.
This also made Shanxi earn a lot of popularity. It is understood that “Black Myth: Wukong” selected 36 scenic spots across the country, of which as many as 27 were filmed in Shanxi Province.
Source / Screenshot of the video account of the Shanxi Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism
During the hot launch of the game, the Shanxi Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism released the “Follow Wukong to Tour Shanxi” theme route and invited the first batch of passers-by to experience it for free. Ctrip data shows that on August 20, the search popularity of Shanxi increased by more than 10% compared with the previous day, and cities such as Datong and Shuozhou increased by 20%. According to Fliggy data, on the day when the “Black Myth: Wukong” game was launched, the popularity of tourism in Shanxi doubled compared with the previous month.
Locals also promoted their hometown through various social platforms. Travel blogger Juzi, who is from Shanxi, said that she designed a two-day route to travel through the highlights of Datong in Black Myth: Wukong. After posting it on social platforms, it was liked by many netizens. This is also her note with the highest number of likes recently.
Other scenic spots have not missed the marketing opportunities of “Wukong”. Huaguoshan Scenic Area in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province announced that from August 22 to December 31, tourists can enter the park free of charge with their ID cards, screenshots of game clearance, and game purchase records. Lingyan Temple Scenic Area in Shandong Province stated that tourists who pass the third chapter of Black Myth: Wukong can visit Lingyan Temple Scenic Area for free for life with the achievement of passing the level.
More and more players are still playing Black Myth: Wukong, and all walks of life are also looking for opportunities to take advantage of the game traffic and make a fortune.
Black Myth: Wukong is far more than just a game.
*At the request of the interviewees, Xiao A, Xiaomi, and Juzi in the article are pseudonyms.
This article comes from the WeChat public account “Dingjiao”, author: Wang Lu, editor: He Shulong, 36kr authorized to publish.
[source] https://36kr.com/p/2926500125760131
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