Statement |This article does not include commercial cooperation.
Author |Night Wind.
Yesterday (January 29), ByteDance's game box platform "Touch the Fish" issued an announcement announcing that it will cease operations on March 29, 2024. The account migration of each game on the platform will be arranged by the game operator itself, and the unconsumed currency in the platform will also be emptied with the suspension of the platform.
Touch the Fish was launched in February 2021 and has been in operation for almost three years now. It once created a brilliant record of breaking 20 million MAU in three months after it was launched, but the popularity quickly declined, and in the end it was just a flash in the pan. In fact, Byte's involvement in the game box business has been far more than three years, and it has been paved long before "Touch the Fish". And now it seems that the game box business has been affected by the change of internal development strategy very early.
Byte began researching the game industry in 2015, officially entered the game at the end of 2017, and established Ohayoo in 2019 to carry out the casual game publishing business. Presumably, it was shortly after that that the game box business began to be deployed.
The earliest achievement of the byte game box business was "You Xiaobang", which began testing in March 2020. There are very few games online here, only a few popular mini-games from Ohayoo such as "My Kung Fu Special Cow", and a small number of games that are not released by Ohayoo. Several of the featured products were linked to community features, using in-game rewards to encourage active community behavior, as a way to try out initial community building.
On the basis of "You Xiaobang", "Egg Roll Game" began testing on Android in October 2020. In addition to Ohayoo's casual games, this new platform also launched a number of medium-to-heavy games such as NetEase's Onmyoji Monster House, Giant Network's Ball Ball Wars, and also includes some indie games. The new platform also adds a platform currency feature called Egg Roll Coins, which users can earn through active activities in the game and the community, which can be used to top up in-game or skip ads in Ohayoo games. In this way, the platform ecology has become richer, and user retention is also guaranteed.
On the basis of "Egg Roll Game", there is "Touch the Fish". "Touching the Fish" was launched in February 2021, adding functional sections such as short ** and barrage interaction, which is basically closer to the ecology of Douyin and has also attracted many Douyin talents. From April to May of the same year, the app began to carry out various cooperative promotion tasks on Douyin, including the drainage of the "Touch the Fish" platform and the drainage of new games on the platform. After officially launching the business, the first step of the platform is to try to absorb the target users on Douyin, which can be regarded as maximizing the use of the resources at hand.
The purchase volume of the application was basically launched at this time, and the scale of the launch caught up with the similar competitor "233 Paradise", which was gaining momentum at that time.
With the help of Douyin promotion and buying volume, the MAU of "Touch the Fish" exceeded 20 million three months after its launch. Two months later, the number of DAUs applied exceeded 2.5 million.
However, it can also be seen from the above figure that after three or four months of application at that peak, the popularity gradually decreased. In fact, it also gradually added the cloud gaming function and SDK access function of its own cloud game, and the overall situation is becoming more and more perfect. But it didn't make much of a difference.
This may be related to the resignation of Xu Peixiang, the head of OHAYOO, due to personal reasons in August 2021. The three departments of game platform, R&D center and distribution under OHAYOO are currently in charge of Zhao Qi, head of ByteDance's growth middle office, while the original four departments of business, marketing, distribution and operation, and product are merged into the distribution department. According to a person familiar with the matter, the daily activity of "Touch the Fish" has declined seriously, and it was not taken much seriously after Xu Peixiang's resignation, and it was later merged into Douyin.
Since 2022, many similar competitors have reduced their delivery efforts, and "Touch the Fish" has also reduced the amount of materials released since February. This should also be one of the reasons for the decline in daily activity of the app.
On the other hand, the platform did not access the popular "Wang Shovel's Road to Riches" and "Rabbit Ke Entrepreneurship" launched after OHAYOO; On the contrary, in August 2022, the multi-** distribution service was launched, which helps developers choose the best ** materials through algorithm intelligence, which seems to be more like a mature technology from Douyin. This also seems to confirm the statement that the "Touch the Fish" project was later merged into Douyin.
During that time, the explosion of "Egg Boy Party" made everyone have a new understanding of the potential of UGC, and Byte may have tried to explore the possibility of this gameplay on the basis of "Touch the Fish". At the end of 2022, Byte tested the waters of a "momoyo" in some markets such as Southeast Asia, and on the basis of retaining the basic functions of "Touch the Fish", the content of the short ** was replaced from oral promotion to the actual game screen. The app also adds a certain UGC element, allowing users to improve their games based on the games created by others and using the basic materials provided by the platform. The entire platform looks more like a brainstorming game iteration machine. But it didn't make much of an impact, dataAI shows that it has been taken off the shelves on October 4, 2023.
Since the beginning of 2022, there have been several rumors that Ohayoo has been marginalized. In April 2023, it was reported that Ohayoo had been laid off as a whole, and it was said that there were only about 30 people left in the team at that time. Ohayoo responded that the relevant information was not true, but admitted that it had made business strategy adjustments. If the number of 30 people is closer to the actual situation, then "Touch the Fish" should not be counted among them. It's just that even if it is merged into the Douyin department, "Touch the Fish", which has a serious decline in daily activity, has never received much attention.
Last month, Byte made a big splash in cutting its gaming business, and the news was sensational. "Touching the Fish" has no commercial value, and it is not unexpected to leave the show at this time. In fact, the app was removed from the shelves on January 17, and there have been data migration announcements for games on several platforms a few days in advance. It is not difficult to imagine that Ohayoo may also announce its exit soon, or it may also be integrated into the mini game platform business and game promotion business retained by Douyin.