On February 29, NetEase handed over its 2023Q4 and full-year financial declaration to the market: the revenue for the whole year of 2023 exceeded the 100 billion mark and reached 103.5 billion yuan, an increase of 7% year-on-year25%；Non-GAAP net profit was 32.6 billion, a significant increase of 4298%。
As NetEase's central business, games will be outstanding in 2023, with revenue reaching 81.6 billion yuan, an increase of 9% year-on-year4%, accounting for 788%。
2022-2024 NetEase's quarterly revenue status (data source).
This kind of enhancement not only depends on the stable old IP, but also benefits from the strong impact shown by the new products launched year after year. Whether it is the mobile game "Against the Cold" or the usual "Egg Boy Party", they all show outstanding dominance in their respective tracks. It can be said that after years of trial and error and accumulation, NetEase Games can usher in the day of harvest.
But in recent days, especially after the release of the financial report, a large number of negative new news about NetEase, especially for "Egg Boy Party", has suddenly appeared on the Internet, including the detection of a local police station to defraud minors of property by using game props, minors deceiving their parents to recharge huge amounts in the game, etc.;
A model of "Egg Boy Party" related to the new news.
This was followed by criticism of these things from a number of so-called game ** accounts on major platforms. They tried to link the revenue increase in the financial performance with the consumption of minors in "Egg Boy Party", so as to question the rationality of NetEase's game business, and criticized NetEase for "blindly seeking profits" and "harvesting elementary school students".
A classic black draft of "Egg Boy Party".
This logic is clearly untenable. According to NetEase's cherishing policy for minors, minors are not allowed to use their own identity to register an account for large recharges, and the "baby eggs" form in "Egg Boy Party" can also provide customized game content for minors.
In reality, the detailed fraud process and transfer process of most cases are generated on communication things, and "games" are just one of the tricks that can be used. In addition, under the condition that the manufacturer has done its best, if such cases still occur, the parent's duty to custody cannot be ignored.
Forcibly binding the cases related to minors in some regions, especially the deception cases, to the game itself, and to be vague about the position of the deceiver and the game company in the case, it is indeed very unnatural for normal new news workers to be employed - even the old compilers who have stereotypes about the game will not only name them when writing "Egg Boy Party", but also hide the title of the game when talking about a shooting mobile game.
In reality, "Peace Elite" is also a high incidence of juvenile-related cases.
If these new news and criticisms were only about objective reality, they would not have been so clearly oriented in the indicators. The results they wanted to achieve were clear: to dispel netizens, especially netizens who have negative feelings about the game themselves (like a large number of parents), to become hostile to the game, especially NetEase games.
It can be seen that this wave of speech that was the first to decline before 315 has a clear goal, and behind it is obviously someone who is operating——— reality, these manuscripts and ** while naming "Egg Boy Party", it is inevitable to show my ass.
The traces left on the Internet are easy to corroborate this notion. You can see that these manuscripts have consistent characteristics, such as:
A manuscript is countered by multiple marketing accounts (even on the same platform). In Xiaohongshu, you can see word-for-word identical articles on two or three related accounts, with complete and repeated tags.
The logic and structure of all the manuscripts are complete and similar, they are all about mentioning NetEase's financial report first, then transferring to the cherishing of minors, and finally criticizing NetEase** minors, and the turn is proportionately stiff but neat and tidy.
Conflating concepts, passing on obligations.
In the title, the key word "primary school students" is also unanimously applied, either "NetEase relies on primary school students to turn over" or "Primary school students support half of the sky in NetEase's financial report", it is difficult not to wonder whether it is necessary to bring these three words to the title mentioned in the document.
What is unbearable is that even if the post-00 group accounts for 27 of the egg boy users67%, the youngest post-00s (in the strict sense) are also about to enter society, and the word "primary school student" seems to be outdated, expired and too violent.
Egg Boy Party User Structure (Data Origin: Tiger Sniff).
It is also worth noting that there is clearly a rest of the audience on the street that is party games and competitive games for young people, but there is no mention of them in these articles. NetEase won results on the big dau game for the first time, whose cheese did it move? I believe that the reader once had a mystery in his mind.
Normal competition has always been supported by the market. Only by coming up with better products and providing better quality services, players will naturally buy it - but people will never support merchants who do not spend physical effort to improve their own quality and use indiscriminate tricks to scandalize their competitors.
Manipulating speech, playing pen and ink games, and scandalizing NetEase and Egg Boy in an illogical form are all nonsense in the eyes of discerning people. These clumsy performances will eventually become a red nose on the clown's face and stop laughing.