Game accompany supervision storm: some players leave the game to accompany the game, the guild will disperse to be rectified
Xiao Ke (pseudonym)’s mobile phone vibrated, and a guest who had met in the game before sent an invitation to accompany him, "Miss Sister, will you take the order?" With little thought, Xiao Ke decisively rejected the other party, "Recently The escort industry is on the cusp, and you may be reported if you don't pay attention. There is really no need to take this risk."
The Beijing News Shell Finance reporter learned exclusively from multiple independent sources that, starting from September 7th, 7 accompaniment software including Hello Voice under Huanju Group, Xiaolu Paiwan under Huya, and Bixin have been removed indefinitely.
In recent years, the game companion industry has exploded rapidly with the benefits of games being recognized by the mainstream market, attracting countless young people including Xiao Ke, and the rapid growth is mixed with various gray phenomena such as eroticism and scams.
Nowadays, many accompaniment platforms have been removed from the shelves. Zhang Xue (pseudonym), who has been accompanying for many years, knows the reason, and may be related to the suspected eroticism in the industry.
"Similar things have been exposed many times before. But so many platforms have all been removed from the shelves, and it feels that the market will undergo a major reshuffle."
What kind of shadows are there behind the accompaniment industry, which has a market size of tens of billions?
Into the circle
Late night order
"Playing games can make money"
Xiao Ke (pseudonym) still remembers that before graduating from university, when she was busy looking for a job, her students in the same bedroom spent time playing games every day.
Faced with her concern, the other party waved the phone in his hand, "Isn't this making money?"
Xiao Ke, a classmate, serves as a companion on a domestic platform.
After careful inquiries, I was even more surprised to find that the companion game market has already formed a scale with the influx of players. Many companion players can earn five to six thousand yuan per month, which is much higher than the first salary of ordinary college students. .
This made Xiao Ke also moved to play with.
But after entering the industry, I found that playing with me was not as easy to do as I imagined.
Xiao Ke once joined a accompaniment guild for a short time, but soon discovered that the other party's order resources and external promotion content had long been monopolized by the experienced grand accompany.
I am a self-defeating "little transparent" in the guild, and even if I get scattered orders occasionally, the income will not be too high.
After thinking for a long time, Xiao Ke decided to "go it alone."
Unlike the companion play stationed on the platform, individual companion play orders are more dependent on luck.
After studying the time to play with on multiple platforms, she deliberately set her time to play with in the middle of the night.
Many players need to vent through the game late at night due to work and life pressures. At this time, other players have either finished their work or are playing games with other players, which allows her to pick up opportunities.
To this end, she constantly adjusted the play time, from the initial order at 10 o'clock in the evening, delayed to 12 o'clock in the evening, or even later.
Xiao Ke knows in her heart that players who are still immersed in the game late at night do not rule out boring people, and the night can make people's desires infinitely magnified.
Once, she has heard many times that her colleagues have said that she was harassed, and it mostly happened in the middle of the night.
"I didn't think much about it at the time, I just thought I could make money." Sure enough, Xiao Ke met more than 60% of male guests late at night, and they would talk about sensitive topics during the game.
The difference is that some implicitly suggest that Xiao Ke can be her girlfriend; some are rich and want to support her at a price of 20,000 yuan per month; some offer prices straightforwardly and ask her to go to the hotel line. Accompany to play.
"It's too common to encounter guests who send harassing messages in this circle." Xiao Ke said, "I will meet one almost every few days. When this happens, he usually chooses to black out, otherwise he will think you can accept this. Dialogue of this scale will become more and more excessive in the future."
However, under the temptation of the order, Lin Fei (pseudonym) chose another direction.
The popularity of the game market has driven tens of thousands of young people into the accompaniment industry, and Lin Fei is one of them.
In May 2019, Lin Fei, who likes to play games, was introduced by a friend and got to know the head of a domestic game guild with nearly a hundred companions.
With the strong invitation of the other party, Lin Fei started a playing career in ignorance.
"You can play games and make money. This is much more interesting than normal work." Lin Fei told Shell Finance reporter, "Many customers don't really value winning or losing, as long as you are lively enough. Of course, if the sound is good, it's a bonus. of."
Lin Fei said that joining the guild has its own benefits.
Soon after signing the contract, in addition to learning how to create an atmosphere and how to stick to users, Lin Fei also received a steady stream of orders every day.
Although this is an industry with a high degree of freedom that depends on the mood of the order, she spends almost every night in the game from 8 to 12 o'clock. The huge increase in fame and income has made Lin Feile in it.
In the days of playing with him, Lin Fei played games with guests from all over the world with different age identities.
"There are circulated in the circle the'industry rules' of'players who accompany you to play with the stream. Although you need to invest in communication, you can't substitute too many personal emotions." Lin Fei said, "you need to change the content of the chat at any time according to the other party's situation. , Looking for topics to create an atmosphere. But after all, it’s a job, and no one can tell the truth behind it."
Out of bounds
"Too honest" no business, soliciting customers to play sideballs
The so-called accompany is the person who accompanies the player to play with each other during the game.
The market has expanded, and the background has changed.
These young boys and girls do not need high-strength operation and awareness, nor the consciousness that every hand will win.
You only need to act like a baby in the game to please the guests, or warm and considerate to relieve the other party's sorrow, so that the player can get a better experience.
"Playing with the circle is not as unbearable as outsiders think, but it is certainly not absolutely clean." On September 10, Zhang Xue (pseudonym), who had been playing with the circle for many years, told the Shell Finance reporter on September 10th. Playing the book is just a routine job, but it has become the “gray industry” of today due to the influence of some guests and accomplices'crossing the boundaries' behavior."
In 2018, Zhang Xue, who usually likes to play games, and her friends used their free time to play with them.
Although the Internet often broke the news that "playing with suspected eroticism", Zhang Xue did not take it seriously, "any industry has unspoken rules, just keep the bottom line."
Soon after, Zhang Xue registered an account on an accompaniment platform. In addition to filling in basic information such as good game, game rank, accompany price, etc., she also deliberately posted a few refined photos in hopes of attracting the attention of guests.
As a newcomer, guests and traffic are the first difficulties that need to be solved.
But for a long time, few people came to her to place an order, even if there were a few guests occasionally, they left after playing a game or two.
This made Zhang Xue very puzzled. After inquiring about it, she found out that she was "too honest" in the game.
"Many of the accompany girls are very sweet in the game, and they dare to answer anything." A friend told her, "In the accompany circle, it is too common for women to be "harassed" by customers in the game. But as long as the money is in place , Everything is easy to say."
Under the instigation of friends, Zhang Xue started to take the initiative from playing with the Buddhist family.
Whenever someone in the platform or WeChat group places an order, she always jumps out and greets them affectionately.
But compared with other peers who jumped out to grab orders, I was still too conservative.
In order to grab the order, everyone made their own tricks.
Sending photos, shaking videos, and even some people uttering voices in a seductive tone.
"It feels like a'draft' scene. Accompanying the show to publish photos of themselves in various costumes, and introduce themselves with a slightly provocative voice. The guests choose to accompany the players according to their own preferences, and then pass the other party’s Link, go to the platform to place an order." Zhang Xue said.
A friend told her that as long as she makes customers happy in the game, she may receive more than ten orders every day, calculated at a price of 40 yuan per order, even if the platform deducts related expenses, it can earn nearly 10,000 yuan every month.
The huge benefits stimulated Zhang Xue, and she unconsciously gradually lowered her previous bottom line.
In addition to taking bolder photos, I also dealt with the harassment messages of guests from time to time in the game. "At first, I was disgusted when I heard the guest's explicit words. Later, I felt that as long as I didn't meet offline, nothing would happen."
The bottom line is lowered in exchange for money.
With the increase in orders, Zhang Xue has gained far more revenue than before.
Although she gradually began to cope with the "provocation" of guests easily, she found that the conversation topics and bottom line of the other party were getting lower and lower. In addition to occasionally saying a few game-related words, more talked about things such as what kind of clothes they would wear. Sensitive topics such as underwear.
The reason that made her completely determined to quit was that a customer who frequently placed orders chatted with Zhang Xue in private, asking her if she could meet in private, and was willing to pay some "more fees."
Zhang Xue understands the other party's intentions and has heard that some colleagues in the circle have agreed to similar requests.
But this made her feel uneasy. "Today's bottom line is far from the original intention of entering the industry. If you agree, you may be completely lost in the future."
shrink
The guild’s disbanded team once relied on packaging "Lolita" to grab orders
"The wind has been too tight recently, and no one dared to take orders rashly." Lao Fei, who runs a play guild in Zhejiang, is uneasy.
A few days ago, he temporarily disbanded the team, and after paying a sum of money to him, he encouraged everyone to "just take a long vacation."
However, Lao Fei has no confidence as to when the team can be recalled again. "It is not clear how long this storm will last, let alone where it will go in the future."
The original intention of establishing a play guild came from an unintentional word.
Once, when Lao Fei was playing a dark game with his friend, a buddy joked: "Every time there are a few rough guys, when can a girl play together".
This made Lao Fei think, "Male players want to play games with girls, at least feel comfortable when playing games."
Soon, Lao Fei borrowed 100,000 yuan from his parents, recruited three or four players with good skills, and started playing guilds, featuring games such as Glory of the King, League of Legends, and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
During that period of time, Lao Fei would publish accompany information on Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Tieba and other platforms every day. Once there was a customer inquiry, he would immediately win the other party under the name of "trial play", and then use "low price". attract customers.
Knowing that he can't compare with the big domestic platforms, he decided to take the low-price route.
Compared with the price of a single order of tens of yuan, he kept the price around 10 yuan, hoping to grab customers.
Unfortunately, this almost blood loss model did not bring him a source of customers. “At most, there are only two or three orders a day, and it’s common not to open for a few days.”
A few accompany players gathered together to discuss the pain point: the team does not have girls, which obviously does not meet the player's needs.
Lao Fei discovered that although there were girls among the customers who placed the order, they were only a minority.
More male guests complained many times during the game that they wanted to be accompanied by a girl, but only a few men were paid.
Although Lao Fei moved around and recruited two women to accompany him, he obviously couldn't cope with the increasing number of guests.
After gritting his teeth, he decided to arrange for employees to pretend to be girls in the game.
He downloaded multiple photos of beautiful women from the Internet for packaging, and bought props such as voice changers so that the employees could call up corresponding sounds such as "Yu Jie Yin" and "Loli Yin" according to customer needs when playing with them.
"Actually, after many attempts, it looks like that. As long as you don't show up, no one knows that you are actually a man."
This effect is immediate.
During that time, many guests who didn't know the truth came looking for news.
However, Bai Mi always has a singularity. Once, an employee unintentionally revealed his true voice while accompanying the player in the game. The other party quickly reacted and quickly went offline and accused the ALFY team of "deceiving feelings", and even claimed to expose them on various platforms. Scam.
"There is no way, in addition to returning the cost of the previous order from the other party, he also gave a'hushing fee' to calm the situation down." Lao Fei said.
Heavy punch
Multi-platform delisting, "the industry needs to be rectified due to too many slumps"
On September 10th, Chongqing in early autumn was full of coolness in the sultry heat.
At 7 o'clock in the evening, Lin Fei hurriedly finished the meal in a few bites, and habitually sat in front of the computer to board the game.
While preparing to wait for the customer to go online, she suddenly woke up and realized that she didn't have any orders today.
This is the third day she stopped playing with her.
Since many accompaniment platforms in the industry were taken off the shelves indefinitely on September 7, everyone in the accompaniment market is in danger.
In order to avoid being affected, her companion play guild also announced the suspension of its business.
The Beijing News Shell Finance reporter learned exclusively from multiple independent sources that, starting from September 7th, 7 accompaniment software including Hello Voice under Huanju Group, Xiaolu Paiwan under Huya, and Bixin have been removed indefinitely.
On the cusp of the rectification of the game industry, an insider close to the company told reporters that this round of removals was mainly aimed at rectification of chaos in the playing field.
There is a difference between "removal indefinitely" and "removal forever". "Removal indefinitely" means that there is no clear time for removal, but the company can be released after rectification in accordance with relevant requirements.
Another veteran in this field optimistically predicts that the rectification time will be about two months. You can refer to the previous situation of Miaopai and Tantan.
The game has been around for a long time.
As early as in the era of Warcraft and CS's popular network, novice players were accustomed to looking for masters to play together in order to improve their skills and experience the pleasure of the game, and the game came into being.
In recent years, with the rapid explosion of the game market, players’ demands for technology and social networking have been enlarged, and the game accompaniment market has become hotter, becoming the "fourth track" of the e-sports industry in addition to games, live broadcasts, and events. It also attracted the attention of many capital giants.
According to public information, in 2018, the companion game industry ushered in a financing climax.
Many platforms including Bixin and Laoyuegou are favored by capital.
In March 2018, Laoyuegou announced the completion of a 200 million yuan Series C financing led by Tiantu Capital; Bixin Platform received tens of millions of US dollars in Series A financing from IDG Capital.
In July of that year, Baoji E-sports completed the A round of financing led by Qiming Venture Capital, followed by Sequoia Capital China, Zhen Fund and Morningside Capital, with a financing amount of 15 million US dollars.
Suddenly, the stimulation of capital brought the enthusiasm of the companion play industry to a climax.
However, the latest round of financing by the top players in the above-mentioned industries has stagnated in 2018.
There are various factors in the cold.
However, according to a number of industry insiders, the weaker supervision of the accompany industry platform, and the mixed industry of practitioners, ultimately led to the industry's suspicion of ambiguity, eroticism and other gray attributes may be the biggest reason.
However, the current scale of accompany play should not be underestimated.
Public information shows that in 2017, the size of my country's game companion market was only 182 million yuan, but now the market size has increased dozens of times.
Similarly, according to iiMedia Consulting data, 10%-20% of the future e-sports game market will be converted to the companion game industry. It is estimated that China's e-sports game market will be 135.3 billion yuan in 2020, and the future market size of the companion game may exceed tens of billions.
Now, Lin Fei decided to take advantage of the pause of the accompanying play to completely relax, and reconsider the future, "playing with me is considered a youth meal, and no one knows how long it can be. After playing the game, I still have to return to reality."
"In the industry, both guests and accompany players are like the positive and negative sides of coins. There are people who simply want to play and accompany the game, there are also guests with other purposes, and accompany players who take risks in order to make more money."
Unlike Lin Fei's complete departure, Lao Fei still has expectations.
"The accompaniment industry will not disappear due to the removal of the platform. It's just that the industry has too many miasma and needs to be rectified." Despite his optimism, Lao Fei also made plans for the future. "If it is not possible, I will go to the contemporary plan. At least continue. It’s safer."
Qin Che, Shell Finance and Economics reporter of the Beijing News