China’s online game industry has finally seen its moment of glory in the mobile game era. Since 2015, China has surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest game market. But as the flow dividend disappears and capital markets tighten, the good old days of “earning money lying on your back” are over. At the same time, the network black ash production also targeted the scale of the market as high as 300 billion yuan, plug-in, black card, small, batch registration, false seal and other problems are increasingly serious. On the one hand, the competition intensifies within the market, on the other hand, the network is black and gray production of the tiger, which is the external bright Chinese online game industry, now the most real situation.
First, China’s online games black ash production
Although the development of China’s online game industry is later than that of Europe, Japan and South Korea, it does not affect the global influence of China’s online game industry. From the UO private service in 1999, to the 2020 eat chicken hanging “sea” Southeast Asia, “best-selling” Europe and the United States, China’s online games black ash production already “reputation out”. According to the data of Jiazi Lightyear’s active industry, the game industry has become one of the most active industries in the current black industry with a proportion of up to 41%. Online game industry has become a terrible force in China’s game industry, seriously threatening the healthy development of China’s online game industry.
Online games black ash production, only a plug on the annual sales of more than 2 billion
Two, the typical case of online game black ash production
2.1 The legendary private server that subverts the timing mode of online games
In 2000, online games gradually replaced stand-alone computers in China’s game market, and the traditional “offline distribution” market of piracy was gradually replaced by online resources. The problem of “pirated game discs”, which made game manufacturers impossible to guard against at that time, finally became history. On the other side, online game fees brought huge profits to the game manufacturers, that is the game manufacturers lying to make money in the era.
Time came 2001, royal get “legend Ⅱ” the exclusive agency right of home, by right of acting contract, tide, Dell offers two months server to royal try out; China Telecom is offering Shanda a free bandwidth trial for a two-month test period, and distributor Ubisoft Shanghai is selling Shanda game point cards.
In July 2002, the number of online users of “Legend Ⅱ” exceeded 500,000, becoming the largest online game in the world at that time. And pass selling point card, royal created the myth of 300 million revenue / 100 million net profit. With the success of Legends Ⅱ, there is a group of players who smell a business opportunity:
As a representative of the kimchi game, players need to invest a lot of time in the later stage, and for some people, in addition to the network expenses, the point card has become a large expenditure;
Very low explosion rate of equipment, low drop rate of rare equipment, virtual value earned gradually cannot meet player expectations;
Legend Ⅱ penetrated from the first and second tier cities to the third, fourth and fifth tier cities, and the sinking market was not paid attention by game manufacturers at that time.
Then came the legendary private server, with no more than 10 servers in the country. Then, due to the omission of the South Korean side at that time, in less than two months, “legend Ⅱ” server-side program dramatically encountered three leaks. Among them, the most famous is the source code leakage of the server side installation program of the early Italian “Legend” English version, and the network black ash production is to use various channels to obtain the source code, set up a game server on the network, and the Legend private server door is opened.
Picture source: some legend private server release station
In the winter of 2003, legend private server has begun to take shape in our country, at that time, the national private server reached thousands! It is also from this year began, the legend of private service began to become a grand huge competitor! In the last two years, the legend of private server is to develop at an amazing speed, open up to 600 areas every day.
In November 2005, royal announced the net that research and development independently swims “legendary world” will be free permanently on December 2. On the one hand, face with cheap collect fees (some are free even), the private service that efficient practice class speed is famous is hit, royal hope passes comprehensive free, recapture the player that is intercepted by private service; On the other hand, online game market competition is increasingly intensified, “legend” revenue began to decline, grand hope through free strategy, extend the life of the game.
In September 2006, grand open the high amount of 8 million yuan bounty, hope to pass free + the combination of high amount of bounty, fight legend private service. But to little effect, Legendary private server is still growing at an average rate of nearly 50% per year. And, under the free strategy, royal began to sell props through fees, and this model with private service to sell equipment, sell members, sell the level of the way is very similar, so that the threat of private service to royal revenue becomes more direct.
According to insiders, from the beginning of the introduction of China, to the present 20 years of time, private server has developed into an indelible industry. Just take the legendary private server as an example, there are more than 100,000 people engaged in development and construction in China, and close to 500,000 people (GM) engaged in private server management. The work done by employees includes: server (commonly referred to as version), client, Legend private server login, Legend private server plug-in, website, server and so on. The market scale of Legend private server game, such as terminal game/page game /H5, has exceeded 10 billion yuan.
2.2 Plug-in provoked the most serious account ban event in the history of online games
As for game plugins, we once conducted a survey on the industry chain of external plugins in the article “Uncovering the industry chain of plugins: assembly-line production, anchors forming teams to buy plugins”. As a “parasitic” group in the game industry, the game plug-in has formed a complete industrial chain, involving a number of black industries, with a fine division of labor. And in the history of Chinese online games, game manufacturers and plugins the most tragic confrontation, when the online game “spirit” 100, 000 title event.
June 15, 2002, netease agent “Spirit” in China began public beta. At that time, when the 2D game “Legend” was extremely popular, “Spirit” with a new look of 3D online games in front of the players, a time of players swarmed, crowded. Just as netease is stepping up to add a new server, while proudly selling cards, the plug-in came.
At that time, a large number of semi-finished products of “kimchi online games” were exported to South Korea, and “Spirit” was considered a work of conscience. But, the South Korean net swims did not do well to prevent to hang a measure generally, “spirit” be appraise by the personage inside course of study to prevent to hang a measure more the worst game that does, very quickly “spirit” fall.
Players can use plug-ins to modify experience, level, equipment… Change what you want. To add to the hype, the biggest BUG in Spirit at the time was the ability to use “Golden Ranger” locally to modify client resources and easily switch equipment to full level. That is to say, the player does not even need to hang to be able to modify the key indicators of the game, and “Jinshan Ranger” is just a stand-alone modifier……
August 4, 2004, netease issued an explosive notice: because of the plug-in problem, “spirit” will stop service for 3 days, specialized plug-in renovation. In October of that year, the Spirit team suspended or downgraded 100,000 player accounts without notifying users beforehand. Due to the influence is too large, at that time many plane media also reported this event.
On April 1, 2005, netease Wizard official website announced that the Chinese server of “Wizard” was permanently closed.
At the last moment, Elves players say goodbye to each other
2.3 Refunds for hot style and black cards spawn in mobile game era
In December 2011, British game designer Will Luton tweeted that a Chinese game called Three Kingdoms of Hulai had risen to number three in the UK App Store charts. Curiously, the game has not been localised for the UK market, and the introduction is entirely in Chinese, with one user commenting: “I just found out that I’ve been charged $69.99 for this game and I’ve never played it and I’ve never heard of it.”
More than two months later, UK mobile gaming site PocketGamer.biz reported that the game had also soared to number three on the App Store charts across the pond in the US. In addition, two other games from China — The Three Kingdoms in the Palm and Happy Chess — shot up to 11th and 59th place respectively. Among the user reviews for all three games, a number of people complained that they had been docked money for no apparent reason, having never downloaded the game or made an in-app purchase.
And behind this, is the mobile game brush and black card problem concentrated performance:
Mobile game “Brush” is similar to “Brush” on Taobao. In order to gain the attention of the market and capital at a relatively low cost, some mobile game developers who are eager for quick success and instant profit use the operation of “Brush” studio to brush ranking, traffic, five stars and high praise, or brush one star and bad review for competitors. In order to achieve in a short time to obtain a high ranking and exposure, and open the gap between competitors cheating means. These acts without integrity not only disrupted the market order, but also caused a bad impact on the ecological environment of the entire mobile game industry.
“Black cards” are credit cards of unknown origin, often behind the hack or theft of other people’s credit card information. Until the App Store in China uses RMB for payment, users must use a dual-currency credit card to purchase games or in-game items. Due to the inconvenience of payment and the psychology of being greedy for cheap, some users will choose to buy the iTunes account bound with “black card” at a low price to make consumption. On the other hand, the game itself is designed to stimulate user consumption over gameplay, which is also one of the reasons why a large number of “black cards” still exist after the opening of RMB payment.
App Store is hit by “black card” fraud user reviews
In 2011, there were reports that a popular mobile game product had a bad loan rate of 80%, meaning that for every 100 yuan of sales, the developer would end up with only 8 yuan. The number of stolen credit cards has left mobile game developers in a state of tears. After Apple receives complaints from card owners and verives them, the money will be refunded to users. However, although the transaction has taken place, the developers do not receive a share of the money from the App Store. The “black card” causes foreign developers to give up the Chinese market completely, and Chinese developers die because they can’t get the income they deserve. However, the “black card” issue has attracted the attention of many foreign media. The New York Times and other mainstream media have reported that China’s national image has also been greatly damaged.
2.4 Game account security theft account washing
Game theft is a lot of players have experienced the tragic experience, spent a lot of money in the game account is easy to be stolen, and impossible to guard against. From “letter” to “letter washing” and selling accounts, the black industry of game account theft has now gradually formed a complete interest chain and technical chain, and each link has a special person responsible for it. According to industry insiders, a black production practitioners often master more than 780 million account information.
“Out of the letter” (stealing game account information), in the jargon of the industry, means to steal game player account information. The so-called “letter” refers to the game player account password and other information. This area also involves bump, drag, fishing, stallion (wooden horse), and so on.
On the online black market, 1000 game account information can usually be sold for 300-500 yuan, the specific price will fluctuate according to the different types of games and accounts, the more popular the game account is more valuable. Among them, the industry said, “inside this, QQ account password information (envelope number) belongs to the inside of the most valuable, because now many people a QQ number can board a lot of games.”
“Trust washing” (transfer of virtual property in the account). After the game account is stolen, the information will be changed layer by layer, and the virtual property such as game currency and equipment inside will be transferred out and sold off quickly. This is what is called “letter washing” in the industry, and it is also a relatively lucrative link in the industry chain of stolen numbers.
In January 2017, police in Nanjing arrested a suspect surnamed You who specializes in “washing equipment” after stealing numbers, Yangtse Evening News reported. According to the police investigation, You earned high profits by buying and selling equipment in the stolen game account. A month of trading volume at least more than 100 thousand yuan, more than the time can reach more than 200 thousand yuan, after the case you for suspected theft by criminal detention.
In addition to game users, the biggest victims are game manufacturers. Tencent, grand, netease, giant these game giant can catch many people every year, but because the scandal does not go out, general game business will not be open. But this is the case, or can not contain the black production of one after another.
Have a period of time, steal number studio directly put in a station steal number advertisement, the most common means is, we go up a website, right lower corner a window that looks to be QQ, a beauty chats with you, you want to see her information or photos, ask you to enter QQ account number and password, have very familiar?
It is such a simple thing, once in many big websites have been hung, every day is tens of thousands of numbers stolen, was looted. Theft industrialization, in addition to ransacking game equipment, and cheat friends remittances, corporate fraud, etc. In addition to these means, there are plug – in number theft, in addition to hit the library attack.
Three, online game black ash production of the response
Since 2000, when online games started in China, the battle between game manufacturers and online game manufacturers has never stopped in the past two decades.
In view of the Legend private server problem, Shengqu Game (formerly known as Shanda) through the authorization of third-party companies in the form of rights, touch and standardize the private server market. Shengqu through this form, to private server operators to collect copyright money and participate in the sharing;
In view of the problem of plug-in, netease absorbed the experience of “elf”, embarked on the road of independent research. On the one hand, it is independently developed and based on the logic of the game, it strengthens the ability of confrontation. On the other hand, the “plug-in” element into the game, gradually squeeze the plug-in living space;
In view of the brush problem, the most effective way is multi-platform monitoring + deployment CAPTCHA + limited quantity + regional restrictions and other multi-dimensional countermeasures. As for the black card problem, game developers hope that Apple will review credit card information more strictly. Analysing users’ commonly used devices and users’ daily gaming records can also play a role.
And wash number problem in the light of pilfal number, the struggle that game manufacturer and network black produce also is escalating ceaselessly. From the remote monitoring system to secret card, from the dynamic password to double verification, in the network of the increasingly rampant production of theft of the moment, game manufacturers are also constantly upgraded defense.
As long as the interest exists, the attack of online game black ash production will be promoted and strengthened all the time, and the game will continue.
conclusion
The 20 years of online games in China is also the 20 years of the struggle between game manufacturers and the black and gray production of online games. We are pleased to see that more and more game manufacturers begin to pay attention to the player’s experience and asset safety, similar to the “anti-network black ash production alliance” such organizations are emerging more and more, the safety and experience of online games, undoubtedly become the core of game manufacturers to maintain the competitiveness of the industry.
As a security manufacturer deep in the field of interactive security, extreme test in the field of games for account attacks, channel brush, false seal and group control and raise number problems, has a wealth of experience in defense and governance. Since 2016, we have been working together with the game industry for 5 years. We have successfully served a number of excellent domestic game companies, including Mihayou, Bilibili, Xishanju, Lilith, Eagle Horn, etc., bringing safer and more convenient game experience to players around the world. We will be in the next article: the game industry solutions | escort the world millions of gamers safety experience, to share with you for the past five years, inspection work in the field of play and precipitation, stay tuned.