Marketing | Jan Chmielowski | How to Succeed in China: The World's Largest Gaming Market | DD 2026

Hello everyone and welcome. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the this lecture about China as the world's largest gaming market. Um this is a commitment guys. It's the last day of the conference. Probably we're all partying last night. So I really appreciate you coming at 11:00 a.m. to my speech. So, uh, probably you've come here because you've heard that China is the world's most, I would say, maybe challenging markets. Probably you're doing some activities, but maybe you're not satisfied with the results. Or maybe you're fresh to the industry and you want to know how China works. So, without further ado, let's begin. But where are my manners? My name is Yanowski. This is my brief introduction. I specify in Chinese marketing. I've been doing that for around six years already. I also work as a Chinese language translator and Chinese language teacher. If you want to, you know, get more information about my work

experience about any details, I'll be glad to do that maybe in the Q&A session or afterwards in the corridors. So, in terms of the here are some past cooperations, but in terms of the most important thing to keep in mind, China is growing in numbers. Uh you all see that uh China is growing both internally in terms of the consumption. more and more titles get more and more recognition from the Chinese community. But China is also growing in terms of numbers externally. Meaning Chinese companies are also getting more and more productive and even maybe aggressive so to say uh in terms of the titles that they want to push forward that they want to uh market outwards ex except except of China. So here you can see the statistics for the PC market size. You can see that right now China actually China's market is worth around 50 million dollars US dollars and here is a chart representing PC games strictly. Um most of I guess maybe most of you guys

do PC games and I'll be talking mostly about PC games in my presentation but you have to keep in mind that in terms of China that is a heavy heavy mobile market. 70% of the market are mobile games, around 20% PC games and 10% different consoles, VR and the rest. So here is also in terms of the numbers uh the export revenue in billions of US dollars. You can see in this infographic that it's still expanding and I would say that there is an important date to keep in mind August 2024. What happened then? August 2024. Anyone in terms of Chinese markets, have you heard about an indie game called Blackmmith Wukong? I'm sure you did. Yeah, sure you've heard about that game. This is a game that actually changed the scene drastically. I would say that the launch of Blackm Wukong has

actually remodeled how also the Chinese government is thinking about the industry. Before video games were treated like cyber opium. That's the narrative that they were using. Basically, you had lots of restrictions, lots of bans, especially for consoles like PlayStation or Xbox. From 2000 to 2015, it was illegal to purchase these consoles. So, what happened after Wukong's launch? The government saw actually that h our games could be a soft power. We can also produce domestic AAA titles that people around the world will be willing to play. And since this is our soft power, people praise our Blackmth Wukong and other games. So maybe we can make use of that. So actually I would say that right now being a video game developer in China is not really a reason to be ashamed of and it wasn't the case before. So I would say that you know the market will be growing. More and more studios will be willing to create video games and that

actually creates an opportunity for all of us non-Chinese developers and publishers. So uh here you can see that you know more and more titles are being launched more and more people are actually starting to play PC games because of Blackmth Wukong. Initially you can see a huge search starting from 2024 when Chinese Simplified has surpassed English as the most commonly used language on Steam. And one important thing to keep in mind guys, I'm actually so surprised that a lot of people still have this misconception in mind that Steam Global is not available in China. Please, you can forget about everything I say at this lecture. But please keep in mind one thing. Steam China, Steam Global is available in China. Although there are two different Steams, Steam Global and Steam local. Steam China. So the steam global is available although sometimes it's very

unstable sometimes it gets banned blocked for example that happened uh in March this year when there was the governing of the parliament so you can see that sometimes steam won't be available for the players still they can access that they can buy video games via steam but they also use other platforms and I'll tell you about them in a second so here you can also see in this chart uh what I mentioned before that predominantly this market is all about mobile games. If you are a mobile games developer then actually it will be more challenging for you to publish your games in China because you will need ISBN license for that. As for a PC games you do not need ISBN ISBN license as long as you're publishing that as long as you're launching that on Steam because players will be able to buy your games. But in terms of marketing that's another thing. If for example your game contains hardcore content like gore,

violence, blood, rock and roll, yes, you will be having problems while marketing these games because the influencers will be unwilling to show these sensitive content because they might get banned. But in terms of sales, you're still able to sell that. So um I would like to take you on a journey with uh this lecture. So, imagine you are a 16-year-old Chinese player. Your name is Wang Lelay. You are a high school student. You live in a tier 2 city. You basically are focused all on studying because your parents tell you you have to study. Don't play video games. This is the city where you live. You probably don't have any siblings because of the one child policy that prevailed until 2015. Your parents, Tong, Tongai, that's what they are called in Chinese. They work in factories maybe thousands of kilometers

away from the h from your hometown. You see them only once a year during the Chinese New Year because they're also working very hard in the 996 model from 9:00 a.m. to 900 p.m. 6 days a week. They're very busy. They are earning lots of money for your education. So Wanglay, you have one job. You just have to study for your finals. And you being this left alone child, Leosho Artong, you cannot really move with your parents around the country because you don't have a hook, which is like an internal passport for traveling. And imagine there is one task that you hear all the way until you're around 18. You just need to pass gala finals. Chinese most important exam there exists. So video games actually is sometimes the only form of not only entertainment for you but a medium of socialization. Sometimes you will be interacting with your peers only by playing video games and that's also one

of the reasons why whenever you launch a game they will always ask you are you going to add multiplayer to that anything right? Tetris multiplayer. So there is around 100 million children like you like Wanglay and these young people I'm talking right now maybe of people around 18 to 30 they feel neglected by us they feel that we do not give them enough attention enough love that actually we don't think that they exist this is one of the most common comments that I see recently ly on steam that the western so-called western developers publishers they do not include anything especially towards Chinese community although this is the largest community on steam as you saw before you don't know how to reach them right you don't know how to communicate with them they cannot enter our discord platform because they would need a VPN

and even [clears throat] if they had a VPN that would be inconvenient for them to use because they prefer to communicate via other platforms like WeChat You can download WeChat, not a problem. But in order to register on WeChat, somebody needs to authorize you. Somebody needs to verify your registration QR code. So you can enter some Chinese platforms while sometimes uh it will be challenging for you to register. Yes, you can download them, maybe scroll them, but in order to register an account like WeChat, somebody needs to get you verified. other platforms like Heybox, biddy bey similar case or doin yes you need you can download them you don't need any special tools any special VPNs but in order to publish content interact with the influencers or do any other activities sometimes you might need a Chinese phone number is also so commonly used that for example it's not only a communication tool it's also your wallet it's so crazy that even let's say baggggers they

actually are begging for money using QR codes on WeChat because nobody uses cash or card. Everybody uses WeChat in China. Basically, imagine the level of digitalization. This is such a digitalized society, especially in these tier one cities, the biggest cities that is sometimes uncomprehensible for us. So yeah, WeChat is a sometimes jokingly called by marketers one up to rule them all because if you have a you know good network on WeChat, yes, you will be very successful. If you're interested on WeChat and you speak Polish, you can also look for this lecture. This is my lecture from Moska Conferencia. You can find that on YouTube. But that's for those of you who speak Polish. There is like around one hour lecture just on WeChat, just on the WeChat itself. So, I'm skipping that for this moment. But please keep in mind that WeChat should be your go-to tool, go-to medium to reach influencers, to create groups with your community,

with your KOC, Koss. WeChat should be your main tool to register for other accounts. And of course, like we're talking about a community of around 700 million people. 700 million people play video games regularly. I'm talking both about mobile, PC and other other platforms. And usually these games that you see, the Chinese games that the Chinese community likes are usually some copycats of some very famous titles like say for example the most popular game right now in China. That's Honor of Kings Wong Yao and that's just a copycat of Dota and League of Legends. And yeah, it's all about this huge rivalry like the games that have a element of rivalry of some kind of a challenge of a place for grinding. These games are so welcomed by the community because of this high pressure, [snorts] high estimations from these young leo arong of these left

left children, right? So whenever you have an element of rivalry, it actually creates a perfect environment for these people because this is what they brought in. And in terms of you know new trends that you will be seeing perhaps some trends that will be also coming to us to our world you can see that because of this rise of popularity of PC games you can even see that a new business model arises like more and more places they create these so-called gaming hotels. The first studio, this is a maybe a task for you guys. A first studio that will get a direct partnership with a gaming hotel in China will be very successful. Like try to, you know, um sell your games to some companies that have these gaming hotels. I'm talking about, you know, a chain of hotels that specifies only for video gaming. You can play your games, sleep there, eat there, and if

you manage, let's say, sell your games there, do your promotion, that'll be a huge success. Of course, as I mentioned, Wukong changed the dynamics. And right now, more and more people play video games. They're more interested in video games. And actually, video games are also more visible in the public sphere. Starting from the Wukong's launch, you can see that a lot of places uh across China, they were launching different campaigns. For example, here you can see that even there is some street art where KFC launched a specific set of, you know, chicken nuggets with a Wukong theme. So, you will see more and more titles like that being accepted publicly. You can also see in Shijin Ping's speech of speech of the new year where he is actually mentioning that he is so proud of our entertainment industry because Wukong was such a global hit and nea sold so many u million tickets worldwide. So before that that was called cyber opium. Now

it's our soft power. That's a huge change of I would say even mentality. So coming back to you as a Wanglay yes you're living in your place in Shuadang and what games can you actually play? Can you let's say play all of our video games? You already know that you can buy our games via global steam. But actually there is always this question. So if there are two steams in China Yan should I consider entering the second steam steam China? My short answer is no. Don't think about it. It's a waste of time. Why? Because Steam China that works as a totally different platform. It's totally separate from Steam Global only accepts these titles that are approved by NPPA, National Present Publication Administration. In order to receive this ISBN license, and I'm talking about ISBN license not only for video games, but generally for any kind

of content like movies or books, you need that license, but getting that is super challenging. Here is the statistics for the last year 2025. The graph that you see here is actually older. It's uh from 2019 up to 2020, but I just want to show you the dynamics. So sometimes um you will see more titles being approved, sometimes less. It's actually issued monthly. So you can see which titles were approved by month. And in 2025, you can see that across all of these titles, domestic titles, I'm talking about specifically Chinese video games, only 1,676 got approved. As you can see, we are competing with Chinese companies as well. They also need to receive the ISBN license in order to be published in order to sell their games on Steam China. So if you have a person in this NPPA who can't give the license either to a Chinese company or to a western company, guess what? Surprise surprise,

most of the Icebin license will go to the domestic titles from China. So it's very hard to compete with these mainland companies with Chinese companies, right? Um what what kind of games were approved of out of these 95? Most of them cozy games, familyfriendly content like cooking simulators, fishing simulators, these kind of video games, super safe. Um some of them have, let's say, some educational value. Let's say maybe like a puzzle game, something that is very very not sensitive so to say. So here you can see that waiting, let's say applying for this ISBN might be a waste of time because it's really hard to get it. It costs a lot of time, cost a lot of money and you need a Chinese partner to do that. So if you ever had a question like should you invest your time in applying for the ISBN, my short answer is no. Just don't do that. Sell that on Steam. Think about how to sell

uh your game on Steam effectively. So here's also the uh national present publication administration if you want to check it out. Uh you can see it's issued it's updated every month. You can see which titles maybe some of your friends will be lucky and will be here on the list. So here in terms of the young people that will be playing and are playing our video games. You can also sometimes hear some myths about the environment. For example, you can see a lot of myths that Chinese players can only play two or three hours per week. Well, it's China, so it's always like a, you know, a coin that has two sides. So, one thing, yes, officially there are regulations that say how many hours a player can play, but in reality, everybody bypasses that. There is even a beautiful Chinese saying, I'm sure you know it. It means that the authorities, they have

their policies, but the common folk, they'll always find a solution. So, it's basically like always a game with the government. For example, the government bans multiplayer online video games. You need to show your ID and if you're over 18, you'll be able to play as much as you want. So, what do the people do? They just take an ID of an older brother, of an aunt, uncle, mother, father, and so on. But the of the legislature also sees that this phenomenon is happening. So what they're going to do, they're probably going to require you to have your camera turned on to verify in real time whether the person in front of the computer is actually the person that shoved the ID and uh is really the person playing. But I'm sure they will find a solution. Probably they will be printing 3D faces and they'll be putting the faces of their uncles and aunts on their faces just, you know, play these video games and be accepted. be verified. So yeah, it's a constant way of, you know, pushing the line between, you know, between the government and the players.

Um, so yeah, they can't play our games although there are regulations officially how long can they play and there's of course a lot of regulations about the content in video games that might be shown especially to the uh to the youngsters. So you can see that there are special laws, registrations that actually define what kind of content can be put into the video games. But tell me what is glory of the nation like the damage to the glory of the nation disturbing the social order. What do you mean by social order? What do you mean by glory of the nation? For example, is your cowboy game um a damage to the glory of the nation? Is your game about zombies disturbing the social order? It could be. So that's the reason why you need to stay alert because these laws, these regulations are so flexible that you never know the moment when your content might actually

be damaging to the glory of the nation. And as you can see in terms of the content that you can publish, let's say that can launch on Steam and then show in Chinese social media, you need to watch out for certain areas. And now I'm going to tell you about 10 areas that you need to be particularly aware of. So, one thing to consider, one thing to keep in mind, yes, you are publishing your games on Steam, but don't be surprised that most of the traffic will be generated by Haybox or Songfo or any other platforms. Raise your hand if you have heard about Heybox. Raise your hand. Some of you have heard, some of you haven't. So, Heybox basically works like a proxy. It works like a proxy like an app that is binded with Steam account and sucks the keys of Steam. So basically Valve has a direct cooperation with Heybox. Literally in Chinese it's

called Little Blackbox. So basically the traffic that you see from China will be generated by these users. Right now it's even more than 70 million players. It's an app designed specifically for a video game industry for a video game for a video game market. You're going to find only players on this app. The content, the news feed that you see there, it's only video games. So why is it so popular? Because of the UXUI. This is a Chinese app developed by the Chinese. And actually the Chinese, they don't have access to forums on Steam. So basically their way of interacting is usually done on Steam. You can create your account, you can comment, you can add your friends, see your statistics. And you guys as developers and publishers, you can also register on Heybox. Not a problem. You can register even without Chinese phone number. You can create content about your video games. You can keep in touch with influencers, with active community um members. But one

thing um I would say that things are changing right now. And I see that right now if you register your account on Heybox or Billybe or any other social medium I would say two or three years ago they would be positively surprised. I'm talking about the Chinese community. If you did that let's say maybe if it had done let's say five or six years ago they would be overjoyed. But right now in the year 2026 it might be something like oh better late than never. Good to see you. Finally, you're starting to thinking about us. Yeah. So, you can see actually as a benchmark, you can see for example from biggest Polish video game companies like CD Project Red, Techland, 11 bit studios, they all have accounts on Hbox. You can actually see them. It's public. You can see whatever they are doing there. Get some inspiration. So, Heybox is actually the best tool to be closer with the community. And for example, some of the comments that you see on

Steam by the Chinese community, they are officially let's say primarily published on Heybox and then because there is a synchronization there like synchronized and then uploaded to steam. So sometimes you can see that someone has left a comment on heybox and that's you know let's say the same comment that you that appears on steam. So yeah that's the interface how it looks like. You can see that you can see game profiles, your achievements, right? Here is also some other statistics. It's predominantly male. Um 9:1 ratio. Most of the users are under 30 years old. And a good thing is that it's mainly PC and console games. So this is like a imagine a social medium designed specifically for gamers, specifically for PC and console players. And uh you can actually that might be also counterintuitive because maybe some of you are googling that right now. Yeah, if you Google that you probably will see heybox.hk.

That's the other heybox. That's not the one. I'm talking specifically about an app and it's also very counterintuitive because this is a mobile app that is used to buy PC games. So you're using your phone to buy Steam products that you will be playing on your PC. Yes, that's how they do it. So actually because of WeChat and this high digitalization, using your mobile phone everywhere, even if you're a beggar on the street, yes, you will be using your mobile phone all the time. So it's not a shocker that they're buying PC games also via the mobile games. And you can also see the average library worth of abox user. It's here the most 41% it's somewhere between $800 to $2,000. So yeah, they are willing to spend money definitely. But of course premium games, free-to-play games are way more accepted

than, you know, premium games where they have to spend lots of money um without having the chance to check the product before they play it. Yeah. So you also have to keep that in mind. Yes, they're willing to spend money, but if you have something free, like a free demo, anything free, they'll be much more willing to play your game and then maybe buy your game. So, here's also some other pictures what you can do on Heybox. Here's actually a profile of 11 bit studios and this is for example one of the content pieces that I used to create when I was responsible for games operators u profile on heybox. can do any kind of activities like ask me anything videos. Basically all what you do on western social media platforms. You can recycle that. You can create something specifically for a Chinese market. Yes. And some studios. Yes. For example, they create videos where they wish everyone a happy new year. And it trust me it actually works very well. There are also other platforms similar

to Heybox but less popular. For example, Songfo. This is also like a platform similar to maybe King Penguin or AnBA, other platforms that actually help you with redistribution of the keys. But you should keep in mind that Hbook is definitely number one and it will stay like that. Um, in order to register the account, the full account, you will need to uh upload your personal ID. That's yeah, they're scanning everything. You need to upload your personal ID and send them a direct message with the domain of your studio. So for example, you cannot actually let that for example a marketing agency that will be supporting you uh wouldn't be able to do that without the email on your domain. You have to keep that in mind if you want to register the full account on heybox and then start doing any activities. So yeah I told you about you know some good tips that I want to share with you to make your sales more effective. So let's localize our game for the Chinese market.

Do you see? I'm still waiting. I'm still waiting. Doesn't one see any errors, any problems with this page? Note, Taiwan. Yeah, that's the answer. So guys, uh, you have to be extra careful with doing anything because sometimes, oh, maybe you'll be putting a flag, maybe you'll be putting a map, maybe you'll be putting, I don't know, maybe element of design, maybe a cookie, maybe a dumpling, and then suddenly someone can say that's a that's a disturbing the social order. That's an insult to the glory of the nation. So actually, you need to be extra careful with all of these areas that I will talk briefly in a moment. So I told you that um my guilty pleasure is reading Steam comments. Um for example the Steam comments that we are actually not giving enough empathy, not enough attention to the Chinese players that is becoming sort of a trend. But still in China, um,

one of the most common things that Chinese players love to do is to check which games don't have localization and they're basically filtering games. And trust me, Mayo, Jungwin, or doesn't have Chinese, no Chinese is the most common comment on Steam. So you need to be really careful about you know not publishing your game let's say publishing your game without the Chinese version. I'm talking only about u the text because sometimes I also get asked would they appreciate having a voice over. I would say if you don't have a large budget just don't do it like think about the basics first right you need your text localized into simplified Chinese. Simplified Chinese is just mainland China. Traditional Chinese, that's Taiwan, Hong Kong, right? Taiwan, 23 million people. Hong Kong and the Canton area around 30 40 million people.

But simplified, that's, you know, the overwhelming majority of the users on Steam. So yeah, you need localization definitely because you don't want to get review bombed, right? So first step is to do localization. Sometimes they will be nice and sometimes they will be leaving comments like this. Yes, I recommend this game but I need Chinese. Official Chinese language please. Good game, better Chinese. Uh or here not recommended. Good game, but please add Chinese. Chinese please. Yeah. So sometimes you might have a good product, sometimes you can have a game that is good mechanically, but if you're missing this Chinese, yes, probably somebody will tell you that in the reviews. The other case, the other area that need to be extra careful about is bad localization because right now we're in the beautiful era of AI tools that can do the work in seconds. But you need to watch out

because sometimes when you want to do something, I would say let's say you're aware of the AI tools, you don't want to do the transl machine translation. And so I want to trust community members or professionals who say that they are fluent in Chinese. Also keep in mind that an extra pair of eyes proof reading is also very very important and I want to share with you share with you um kind of case studies. Here is also a comment that I can see that sometimes yes you want to do a good job. You don't want to you know rely solely on AI tools or other machine translation tools. you want to do something something of a better quality, but sometimes uh when you're let's say too poetic, maybe when you want to kind of do something out of the box, people will not really appreciate it. And that's actually the case of Hollow Night Silk Song. Hollow Night Silk Song developed by Team Cherry is great title. You've all heard about it, but it

sparked a huge controversy in China after it was launched. So, Hollow Night Silk Song it actually um was um once it was published then 4 days after the launch the average ratio of positive comments positive feedback was around 90 91 92% worldwide excluding China. In China it was around 30%. Why? Because Tim Cherry actually wanted to do something I would say I I would say they wanted to do something very good. They wanted to involve the community into the process of creating the game. They actually asked one of the community member to help them with the translation. That guy who was a fan of the game, he said, "Sure thing, guys. I'll definitely help you with the localization." And what did he do? He actually localized the game, but he actually localized some of the texts in classical Chinese, which is like, I don't know, Shakespearean English, right? So, it was very hard to read. It was frustrating and people

definitely didn't appreciate the extra effort that this guy did. And what's even more shocking is the fact that this guy actually was documenting everything on Haybox. Let's say before the launch, he actually broke the NDA and he was sharing with all the world how he's going to work on Hollow Night Silk. And of course, nobody believed him. Of course, nobody thought that he's going to translate that this way. he was, you know, people were thinking that they're messing with them, but in fact, that was the reality. So, yeah, a quick hot fix was the solution. Same thing with other title, Hell Divers 2. Also, bad localization. People, they say, you know, at least, you know, if you want to because it's a bare minimum to have a localization, but please at least have someone maybe one extra pair of eyes to read that. Another sensitive area would be anything to do

with philosophy, morality, religion, these kind of areas. And it might be, you know, you might sit here and think, why is this guy talking about philosophy and morality while my game is, you know, a sudoku or maybe cooking simulator. There's no philosophy in my game. Watch out for that because let's say any game that involves any choices, moral choices definitely will be might spark a controversy might be surprising to you by for example how the community will react to what you put into the game. An interesting case study is Frostbank. After it was launched, there was a huge debate in within the Chinese community and uh it sparked some positive feedback, some controversies, but the question was why would the game say something like we survived, but was it worth it? There is this question if you, you know, manage to um survive the winter after you finish the game. And there's a lot

of choices that you can make in the game. I'm sure if you've played it, you know what I'm talking about. One of the first choices we can make within the first minutes of the game is whether you're going to send the children to work in the mines to get extra resources. Surprise, surprise. 90% of the Chinese community, they send the children to the mine to get extra resources. And they were kind of shocked. Come on. But why do I have any repercussions? Why are there any consequences, bad consequences of that? Come on. The goal was collective survival. We had to survive as a collective. So yeah, they were kind of shocked. Why would the game imply some bad consequences of this action? A similar case with a Polish title called Haven Do. This is a game that, you know, kind of works like a Minecraft on water. You have your isolate islands and you're building stuff. And uh one of the structures that you can create is a church that gives you extra statistics.

And imagine how many people were commenting, "Oh, why is there a church in this game? Why isn't there any pagodas or I don't know mosques? You guys are, you know, pushing the Christian agenda. We don't want to be, you know, uh, indoctrinated by you guys." The developers had no idea that, you know, they would spark such a controversy. That was, you know, just a just a building that you could create in this game, right? Another interesting case to talk about you know anything to do with internal affairs anything that actually involves China's internal policies affairs for example this is an old case but these things these cases actually happen all the time I would say for example changing the language if you have something like China brackets Taiwan China brackets Hong Kong Yeah, that's problematic. For example, in Football Manager, you could

actually have separate teams as an independent countries where you could play as Taiwan versus Hong Kong. So, yeah, basically like the the the community was furious and uh I would say that it sparked a lot of controversy and still up to date. Football Manager is not really a popular series of games in China just because of this blunder, just because of this one case study. Another interesting case, this is a game that I used to work on. Uh, infection free zone by games operators. I wouldn't say that there was like any controversy, but there was a challenge. Um, because this is a game where you can choose any location on the map and play there, have your base. So, we were using open street maps, but open street maps um, they don't have a good coverage on China. So, for example, I'm this Wanglay, 16 years old Wanglay from imagine all of these comments, potential comments like, "Why isn't there this, you know, uh, vendor that sells pancakes

here? It's in my village. Why did you guys put it here?" You know, sometimes you don't get the coverage. So, we need to find we need to find a solution. Which maps could we use to get a better coverage on China? So we could ask Tensen maps by the maps GA maps but there is one thing a western studio western company asking about data on maps any issues any potential challenges. Yes. Basically we're treated like spies that we want to let's say get maps for example on Chinese military bases. Yeah. So you want maps and you can play wherever you want. So, can you play in these special military zones or like for example, can you play in let's say um on the people's square in Beijing? That could be a challenge. But eventually, we managed to find a map provider and actually China got a good

coverage in on this map. But I remember before the game was launched, that was one of the most commonly asked questions. Will I be able to play in my village? and I had hundreds of comments to answer. We will work our best. Can you guys help us with that because that's actually problematic. And guys, trust me, there was one committee member who said that, "Oh, my uncle knows someone who works in Tencent and he can contact you with someone who works directly on the maps and suddenly it worked. So yeah, a solution was found, but I needed to give kind of more love and attention to to the community because without their help, we wouldn't be able to launch this game. Another case that could let's say that's that kind of was controversial also by games operators, but I wasn't responsible back then on this project. Um that is a game 112 operator when you can actually play as um this um dispatcher of uh ambulances,

fire trucks and actually one of the cities where you could play was Shanghai. So actually the community said that actually it's so rude, so offensive that you're showing so many accidents in Shanghai, so many fires, so many people getting killed. It's not that in the real way. Yeah, it's not that in the real life. But you know that was just a game. That was just a game. about you know rearranging you know strategically aligning where to go with the ambulances and fire trucks. So what else? External affairs that is also one of the case cases of games that I worked on Factorio of Whoop Software. Um the controversy here was I'll be brutally honest the studio openly said that we are supporting Ukraine we are giving money to the Ukrainians on the front and the community left let's say they were you know furious about that and they were is saying lots of comments that you shouldn't guys do that you shouldn't involve into any politics. My first task as a marketer for the studio was um just help us address this 1,000

comments saying don't buy this game because they support Ukraine. What could you do? What could you do with that? You know, unless you change maybe the company's policy, they will not change your mind. So, you also need to watch out for the actions that you do externally. Yeah. Uh bones and nudity. Sorry for the Polish version here. Bones and nudity. If you have something like blood, bones, nudity, you need to watch out for that. Sometimes you can change your assets. That will be a solution. Yes. But as I mentioned, you can publish, you know, even the gore brutal elements in your game, but you need to be extra careful about promotion because if you send your game that will have any nudity and an influencer will record a gameplay video, then the influencer might get banned. You don't want that. Also, same with your account on Heybox or BDB. Yeah. So yeah, sometimes a changing of the asset might be the solution, but let's be honest, who has time to let's say change all of the assets if your game is all about

violence and shooting and killing people? Yeah. Here you can also see some other adjustments that were given to some of the games. For example, PUBG Mobile, one of the most popular titles. This is not a blood. This is a paint. Yeah, because that's actually green. So you're not actually killing someone. Uh that person is just surrendering to you. Yeah, this guy goes on the knees, waves to you and says bye-bye. So that's the way how you kill people in PUBG. Another thing to consider different social media environment. This is a huge slide and I'm not going to talk about it in detail. I can send you the presentation if you want. Uh but you also have to keep in mind that there are other platforms to consider while doing activities in China. For example, doin Chinese Tik Tok. This is the best tool to get to top of the funnel. Bitty bitty that you're definitely familiar with. This is like a Chinese YouTube. You can publish content there, find influencers, find live streamers. And one thing to

keep in mind, the Chinese, they can also bind their accountb account with Steam. So, they can also buy your Steam games on BDB. And also influencers. Yep. Without influencers, it's very hard to get traction in China. You need these sweet guys to promote your video games because they're super powerful. I would say that the return of investment on influencer marketing activities is bigger, is higher than in other countries. Like yes, you can have very good results of influencer marketing activities, but it's better if you try to do that organically. that's my job, you know, to speak Chinese with them to build a relationship and then publish your games free of charge for extra keys, for example. So, yeah, this is actually one of the reasons why Chinese influencers are so so um let's say I would say influential and they have such a good uh output of the work. This is these are lenses. Yeah. These are lenses that saw a an influencer and somebody is selling that on a e-commerce platform. Yeah. So,

basically they're like gods. these influencers. And of course, yes, you can go to some events in China like China Joy or sometimes called Sona Joy because it's so hot there. Uh but I would say that you wouldn't really get really good results out of that because it's very hard to uh have your stand have your booth because you would need ISBN license. So if you don't have ISBN license, don't think about it. You can go as an attendee because for example, China is the world's largest gaming event, 380,000 attendees. So it's like massive as far as as it goes about the scale. Here are some also like results. So let's say some examples of the close um connection that you can have with influencers, Chinese influencers. For example, here you can see one guy that wrote something like uh in Polish, please tell the producer that you've done a great job. So yeah, sometimes you can even have sort of a friendships I

would say with some of these influencers. But as I said, you need to give more attention, more love to these people. Here's also like one of the comments that I got from a fan of Factorio. And the last thing, and I'm finishing pricing. How do you price the game? There is no perfect answer to that. But there is one threshold one financial threshold that the Chinese don't overstep and that's 100 renb which is like around 50 slott or 20 something less less sorry that'll be like 10 some 12 maybe yeah so that's actually like a huge threshold for them. So if it's like 99 renb, yes, they willing to buy it. Sometimes they will be waiting for months just to buy your game and maybe then refund it because China has the highest refund rate in all of the markets around 25%. So yeah, you need to you need to be extra careful about about the pricing

and uh here you can also see like how much they're willing to spend for example for mobile games. Uh so like after the 100 threshold it boom goes down. It's all up to 100 minb. And I would say that's everything from my side because my time is out, but we still have some time for a Q&A session if you have any questions to me. Um, thank you so much guys for your attention. Thank you so much for being with me. If you also want to keep in touch, you can find me on LinkedIn. I think this code leads to my LinkedIn and I'm listening to your questions guys.
Before we go to the questions, quick reminder that we will have QR code here in a moment.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
For writing this marvelous talk.
And here we go with a quick question.
One hand.
Thank you. It was uh very interesting. I have two questions.
Sure. The first question maybe you

recommend some uh publisher from Europe that published uh in China and the second question uh how uh Chinese uh I don't know working with European culture for example read the uh European literature uh and so on for example Agata Christie
okay okay
thank you so much for these two questions first of all uh do I recommend u any Chinese publishers Let's be honest, I don't recommend anyone. Um, I especially wouldn't. Let's, if you were to cooperate with someone, think about the bigger companies. If you really want to consider a Chinese publisher, don't trust these small uh companies that might approach you on the email and say, "Oh, I'm a publisher. I can help you." No, forget about it. Um, I would say that there are companies like mines, sorry for the um promotion here. Like my company, Senolink, we do that. We help with promotion, with marketing activities. Um, but in terms of Chinese

companies, I would say maybe you can also have like on private conversation. Maybe I can also think about something else. But for now, I would say think about that. The Chinese publishers and Chinese companies will have a full um leverage on what they do and sometimes they might be not transparent about the data. So sometimes they might say, "Oh, the numbers are way better, but in reality it won't be that good." So they will also be binded to them. You will be will be interdependent because they will registering all of the accounts on themselves. So if you want to terminate the contract, they will say, "Oh, but you know the social media accounts are on us. So you will have no access to that. You have to watch out for this when working with the Chinese publishers." And the second question is how much they know about us in terms of culture, right? H I would say that they have a good understanding on us because at school, yeah, they're also learning about, you know, huge figures from European culture. They're also learning about, I don't know, Napoleon, Nagatak Christi, and uh maybe also some people who are more into history and culture. They will also, for example, know what

Poland is, where Poland is, and they will definitely know Shopan and Amber and Polish vodka. Yeah, but that's not that much. Let's be honest. I would say that they know way more about us than we know about them. So, thank you for these two questions. Anyone else? Um, I think I think you were one, two, three. I think like that. One, two, three. Are there genres of non-mobile, meaning PC and console games that stand out in China?
Anything to do with, let's say, rivalry combat. So, if you have, let's say, like a mobile game. Yes. Or maybe something like a cozy games that have this kawaii style. Definitely, they are way more popular. Um, there's also a trend going on right now. You can see that in for example domestic titles as well like Genshin Impact Yan Buan which means like if there is too much masculinity I don't play it. So I'll be brutally honest. Yes, if your game is about you know maybe hot chicks cooking dumplings yes that

will be very successful. So yeah definitely something that involves rivalry or something that is cozy kawaii. Thank you. I think that was the second question. also like grinding games like like Factorio that I showed you where you can for example grind for thousands of hours. Yeah, that's also super super popular and then after 3,000 hours they will still give a negative.
Um so yeah, very very nice presentation. Thank you for that. Uh my question is because one of my favorite bits of the presentation was the one about the glory of the nation. Uh and I wanted to ask you if you know of any games or if there are any games.
Yes. sole purpose is the the betterment of the glory of the nation like very obviously like kitschi
I have one I one thing to add like on top of that because uh there was one one huge controversy with plague incorporated that game was kosher until pandemic broke out so it was a game that

was available everybody played it that is a nice strategy game but then in 2020 it was actually unavailable to play because it was starting to you be a threat to the glory of the nation but uh answering also your question are there any games that are very much showing let's say that we are the servants of the glory of the nation right I would say that maybe with this trend of you know these games not like Wukong but games that might be Wukong likes so maybe these games that are revolving around the Chinese culture that Chinese themed they might be you know promoting Chinese culture Chinese values. Um, like on top of my head, I'm quite curious to see like games that will be, you know, just like wooding waves or like these cozy gamings that are mostly played by female players like these Hungai impact. Um, probably, you know, subconsciously they're also

spreading like some Chinese values and some Chinese aesthetics and is also part of a bigger trend like China maxing. So, yeah, I would say that you don't won't feel it. It won't be like it won't be like you know a flag with five stars and communist elements. Not really. But this aesthetic Yeah. And this you know vocabulary even that they're using that might be you know the soft power. And sorry because there's another one and second question. I'm afraid we may not have time for all the questions so please make it quick.
Hi. Uh do you know what happened with Slay Despire 2?
Yeah. Uh there was actually controversy in March and April. I could have added that presentation. You're right. So actually one thing about balancing uh they mentioned Chinese players they love bugs or some features that actually help them get extra statistics. So basically they were complaining that oh actually you fixed something that was fun. You

didn't listen to us. We told you that we like this element. Yeah. In a nutshell. And also there were like two controversies like first after the launch and there was like another one where you had like within 12 hours you had like 3,000 negative comments on that but I think was also like to do with parts of the localization as well I think but I'm not sure about that. Definitely like the balancing thing that's also very important to keep in mind. Another question I saw one hand there. Yeah.
Yeah. This will be the last one.
Okay.
Wow. What an honor. Uh thank you very much for the presentation. Uh I wanted to ask uh because you mentioned about after the success of Blackmail Wukong you know that the even the Xinping addressed it you know in his speech uh
has it has the entertainment or maybe even more precise games became part of any you know fiveyear plan or something like that because
no not at all like there is no let's say support because I was also thinking since they are giving given more and

more appreciation will there be a time where maybe the government will be giving no subsidies or will be will be will be helping these game developers basically do their work. Right now it's very hard to get any funding. You can only be a private company that has millions or you know be tensson as your publisher um or netis but being a solo defaf in China and get like a scholarship for that super hard thing. It's not like a case for example of other European countries like Germany where you can get lots of funding from the government uh and create your video games or same like here in Poland like if you're a solo deaf and you want to apply for some programs it might be challenging.
I'd say that's good for us. Thanks.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for the questions guys.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Have a