Does WeChat care too much about its feathers?

From the user's point of view, nothing.

Minigames are ruining group chats. WeChat has already been heavily governed, but if WeChat takes special care of its own feathers, it won't even give mini-games the chance to destroy group chats.

Liu Chiping, president of Tencent, said in an analyst conference call on May 16 after the release of the financial report for the first quarter of 2018: Currently, we are not considering the commercialization of applets much, but are paying more attention to the improvement of the WeChat ecosystem.

Exactly what is a reasonable WeChat ecosystem, there will be different opinions from different positions; however, the degree of commercialization can be quantified; it depends on how much revenue WeChat's public account, circle of friends, and applets can contribute to Tencent. The mini game was opened to third-party developers at the end of March, and the number of advertisements in the circle of friends increased from one per day to two per day at the end of March. The progress of this round of WeChat commercialization is still not reflected in the financial report for the 2018 Q1. We have to look at the next quarter's earnings.

What can be judged is that the overall number of online game users in China has peaked. As Tencent's game revenue growth, especially PC game revenue, slows down or even stagnates, the pressure to commercialize the WeChat business will continue to increase.

Today's WeChat is no longer the refreshing WeChat that can only send messages, voice, and brush up the circle of friends. It already has too many functions: take a look, search, nine grid, and applets. One by one, these “WeChat powers” have been flagged by commentators as information flow, search, physical e-commerce, store-to-home services, and even the mobile Internet as a whole.

In the comments section of some articles about WeChat, there is often this kind of argument, “WeChat is becoming more and more like QQ, let's use XX.” Over the past few years, WeChat and QQ in this phrase have never changed, until XX, which is viewed as a replacement, or because of the product, or because of users, or because of the wall, has been iterated quite a bit.

This certainly shows that WeChat still has extremely strong and sustainable vitality, but it also represents a common user sentiment: WeChat is too bloated. Like a black hole, WeChat keeps absorbing the phone's battery consumption, storage space, and our work and life.

What kind of developers does WeChat want?

For developers who are attached to the WeChat ecosystem, evaluating whether WeChat cares too much about feathers is not the same as that of ordinary users.

Beginning last week, there was a wave of wailing among some small game developers as the WeChat game's “sharing” policy became more and more tightened.

“WeChat pills, if you don't advance, you'll quit.”

“WeChat cares a bit too much about feathers, and FB (no restrictions on sharing) hasn't misplayed itself.”

On the one hand, there are regular WeChat users, who have been bullied over the past month by group chat killers and game sharing like dog skin paste; on the other side, developers who want to make a popular mini-game, become rich, famous, and start a company, hoping to achieve their dreams on the Tencent platform, and the WeChat social networking link behind sharing and sharing will at least quench their thirst.

Even developers are divided into several categories. Some really want to make a boutique game with ideas. This is a work of art they use to express themselves, while others simply want to make a profit in the minigame craze — so you don't care if I copy or destroy group chat, the WeChat ecosystem is irrelevant.

Can minigames actually use sharing to cause social fission? WeChat's choice is critical. As far as the scope of influence is concerned, it is no less than an adjustment in the tax rate.

WeChat has decided to take the side of regular users this time.

On May 9, WeChat issued an announcement stating that the game rejects “sharing abuse” and imposes capacity restrictions on minigames with acts such as coercive sharing or inducing sharing. If the circumstances are serious, they will be removed from the shelves. Among the negative cases brought up by WeChat, there are unmistakably popular mini-games such as “Cute Dog Becomes Mutant”.

A game media practitioner believes that the current homogenization of small games is serious. After inducing sharing to be banned, newly launched mini-games have lost their biggest chance of being revealed. The next major moment should be when iOS starts paying and major mini-games will be launched.

After Tencent's earnings report was released on May 16, WeChat launched a new special “Make a Mini Game”. The first push added several types of “sharing abuse” irregularities. The opposite cases were “Here Comes the Pirate” and “The Cuckie Dog Has Changed,” which still occupy the top of the rankings of games of all sizes.

On May 17, WeChat simply announced that after two months, it would completely ban sharing and feedback, and completely eliminate coercion and inducement sharing in terms of product rules. This time, not only applets and mini-games, but also pond fish were affected. Web and app sharing callbacks were also banned by WeChat. Nothing within your own system can be misused, shared, and harassed users, let alone outsiders.

Disabling sharing callbacks means that users no longer give feedback on whether or not they have shared a small game. What does that mean? Users can still share mini-games with any friends or groups out of love, but this kind of sharing cannot be exchanged for rewards such as coins or revival opportunities. Only if users really like this game can they actively share it with their friends without being greedy for game rewards.

The WeChat Mini Games team also responded to 36krypton: We believe that users' spontaneous sharing behavior is the healthiest form of sharing. We also believe that good products can promote sharing, dissemination and user accumulation. We hope that developers will put more effort into the game's creativity, gameplay, and user experience, and make good use of social networking links on the basis of complying with platform rules to promote the spontaneous spread of small games among users.

Actually, it's not that developers don't know what WeChat is about. “The product must reach the user's G point before it can be actively shared. This is too demanding; only a few popular models can do it.” An individual developer of a small game that has just launched on WeChat told 36Krypton, “Everyone is following WeChat's social networking links. Most of the early hits were also driven by inducement.”

Well, in other words, since WeChat “cares too much about feathers,” those who are really creative and original developers may have a better chance.

Are mini-games following the old path of “development first, governance later”?

There is such a possibility.

Last month, the WeChat Mini Game team announced that third-party developers have exploded through the social capabilities of minigames, and that the share of new social sharing has basically remained at 60% to 90%. In other words, before sharing abuse was restricted, the vast majority of growth in third-party mini-games came from social sharing. Although it is impossible to further analyze the proportion of induced sharing, forced sharing, and active sharing by users, judging from public opinion at the end of April and the beginning of May, “small games are ruining WeChat group chats,” and the proportion of people who rely on inducement and forced sharing is certainly not small.

However, the WeChat Mini Game official also reminds game developers to “balance user experience and benefits,” and believes that “while everyone is sharing, it is also a kind of trust and endorsement of themselves, so they will be more happy to share mini-games that everyone likes.” Of course, the wishes are good, and the reality is bad. Some small games take advantage of the fact that sharing is not restricted, how to grow faster, and how to come about. “Sharing can revive”, “sharing a gift package for newbies”, and “sharing is 40 times more profitable.”

This is the goal of the vigorous crackdown on WeChat in this round of the New Deal.

This is very much like the development path of the WeChat account. In the early days, public accounts could post three tweets a day, then WeChat thought that too many tweets on the public account would bother users, so it changed to only posting one post per day. Of course, due to force majeure, some agency numbers were later granted “privileges.” In the early days, applets (mini-games) relied on sharing, but now due to restrictions on sharing abuse, some developers worry about whether some applets will receive “privileges” similar to public accounts from other channels in the future.

So after banning the sharing of promised benefits, what should users do if they want to get additional rewards? Currently, there are two ways. One is to buy in and exchange RMB for virtual coins and props, and the other is to watch advertisements. You want to be sold to advertisers as traffic yourself. On the same day that WeChat announced that it refused to share misuse, all minigame incentivized video ads were also fully open.

Limit the ways you can grow your users, but release the shackles of your monetization, and give them a stick and a drop of sugar. There is nothing like the old rule of art.

Earlier, some media said that in the near future, mini-games may open up direct redirection in off-site purchases, just like page games and mobile games. Once opened, the buy-volume mini-game can not only buy advertising slots in WeChat's circle of friends, public accounts, etc., but also be placed on other traffic platforms. WeChat's traffic value will receive further fair evaluation. On the evening of May 18, the app directly opens the applet function and goes live. Since then, a seamless transition between apps and WeChat mini-games has finally been realized.

This news should be viewed in line with sharing restrictions: WeChat also knows that many mini-games are being copied in exchange for skin, so you can go to other platforms to buy volume and not force users to share in group chats and destroy my ecology.

So is WeChat following the old path of “development first, governance later”? A more accurate statement might be that in the world of Internet products, the path of “governance first, development later” may not exist at all.

After all, the prerequisite for caring for feathers is that you have to find a way to make them plump first. No feathers have grown, so once you talk about love, there's no way to talk about it.