Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

As the three major mainstream games in Europe and America, shooting games account for the largest proportion, with far more players than any other game combined.

As its popularity soared, on the third day after its launch, Gundam Battlegrounds became the most popular game on Twitch, bar none.

Besides the game itself, many overseas players have praised the game's voice system and team collaboration mechanism.

This level of interest has also influenced many overseas media outlets.

Coupled with the current mask mandate and the election year factor, the various conflicts between the University of Tokyo and the University of the West have eased slightly, and the Western media, free from sensationalist reporting, have also shown their "composure."

IGN, renowned in China as a master of "repeated backflips," gave it a high score of 9.5 in its review, and commented:

"Gundam Battlegrounds perfectly combines tactical shooting with map destruction mechanics, creating a completely new gaming experience. Every battle is like a meticulously choreographed movie, full of tension and drama."

GameSpot praised it.

"Spark has once again demonstrated their unique approach to game design. The optimization of the voice system and the innovation of the map mechanism have made this game a benchmark for multiplayer games."

The British magazine Edge wrote this in its cover story.

"Gundam Battlegrounds is the most innovative multiplayer game in recent years. It perfectly combines tactics, strategy and visual spectacle, bringing players an unprecedented gaming experience."

Meanwhile, Japan's Famitsu magazine stated: "Spark has once again proven with its strength that it is not only the pride of Chinese games, but also a leader in the global game industry."

Xinghuo naturally paid for these media reports.

Or rather, it shouldn't be called spending money; it should be said that a certain amount of publicity and marketing expenses were incurred.

Although it all costs money, what's more important for them to boast like this is the players' word-of-mouth.

The high reputation of "Gundam Battlegrounds" is somewhat similar to that of previous titles such as "Destiny's Path" and "Touhou Fantasy World" because they all have their own established fanbase.

This foundation is provided by the Gundam IP.

Moreover, the Gundam IP has a unique advantage that the other two IPs don't: Gundam fans have been waiting for a good game for far too long.

The emergence of "Gundam Battlegrounds" was, without exaggeration, the first college student in the village for Gundam fans worldwide.

He is the pride of the whole village.

This doesn't even discriminate based on nationality.

Any Gundam enthusiast's eagerness to promote and recommend Gundam Battlegrounds is quite exaggerated.

Within just three days of the launch of "Gundam Battlegrounds", the entire internet was flooded with detailed reviews of various Gundams, and these reviews went beyond just evaluating the performance of these Gundams in the game.

There's also a lot of information, like when this Gundam first appeared in the anime, which references from the anime were incorporated into the game by the production team, and the pilot's voice lines in the game.

And where do the slogans shouted by those battlefield grunts in space warfare and land warfare come from?

They practically wanted to feed the food to strangers.

As we all know, the loudest voices on the internet are not from the majority, but from a small group of people who like to make noise. This group argues from various details that Gundam is awesome on the battlefield.

This has attracted a group of passersby who are thinking, "Oh, there are so many details?"

Gundam Battlegrounds is indeed awesome.

In addition, Gundam Battlegrounds doesn't have the same cultural barriers as games like Destiny's Path or Touhou Fantasy World. As a science fiction, shooting, and mecha game, it has broken into the mainstream in Europe and America very quickly.

All these factors combined have led to the way things are now.

However, the most surprising thing about Gundam Battlegrounds throughout May, or rather, the most surprising thing for European and American players, was not the game's phenomenal success in the European and American markets.

Instead, it was a collaboration announcement from the indie game development team Disco Elysium.

"What the heck? Disco Elysium? Gundam Battlegrounds? A crossover?!???"

This collaboration, while not entirely inexplicable, certainly left people scratching their heads for a while.

Many players, including many media outlets, have raised this question?

What is the connection between Disco Elysium and Spark?

Further investigation revealed that this game, which previously had dual-platform availability, had actually been acquired by Spark Entertainment back in March!

"Huh!? Disco Elysium is Starfire's??"

The news caused an immediate uproar in the gaming industry.

There's no other reason than that sparks are incredibly good at hiding.

This timeline of Disco Elysium was released in January 2020. The reason for the delay was that this version of Disco Elysium was equipped with official Chinese language support in order to be released on the Spark platform.

Chapter 587 Dividing the oceans to govern?

The reason why Disco Elysium needs to have Chinese language support is because the Spark platform has a rule that, simply put, games must be released in the corresponding region and must have the corresponding language.

Simply put, without Chinese language support, it's impossible to list the product in the Chinese region.

For overseas manufacturers, if they join Spark but don't join the Chinese market, wouldn't that be a waste of time?

Therefore, basically, on the current Spark platform, except for a very few development teams that genuinely lack the capability, most manufacturers directly release the official Chinese version.

After its release, Disco Elysium's sales were not affected by its dual-platform launch on Steam and Starfire.

It still topped both the Steam "Global Bestsellers" and "New & Popular Items" charts upon its initial release.

It also topped the "Bestseller List" on the Spark platform.

At the time, this achievement was hailed as a global sensation by the media.

Of course, Disco Elysium, as a highly acclaimed indie game, won over audiences with its unique art style, profound narrative, and philosophical reflections.

It's no news that they're loved by players worldwide.

After Disco Elysium became a hit, even Gabe Newell (GabeN) of Steam tweeted his congratulations, and Western media regarded it as a powerful blow from Steam in its counterattack against Spark.

Although Disco Elysium was released on two platforms, it sold better on Spark than on Steam.

However, the theory of Western media is that dual-platform releases can bring more revenue to independent manufacturers.

The message, both overt and covert, subtly mocks Spark's tendency to pursue exclusivity, suggesting it's detrimental to the interests of developers.

"Is Steam trying to dominate the international arena...?"

When Lin Li saw this news, his first reaction was actually one of emotion.

Simply put, Steam no longer cares about killing Starfire, because they know it's impossible to kill. That's why they're promoting things like how dual platforms are more developer-friendly.

However, this publicity campaign did cause some turmoil in the development community, such as some domestic manufacturers whose relationship with Spark was not so close.

Some have gradually started to list their games on Steam.

Players are also discussing whether the success of Disco Elysium indicates that Starfire's exclusivity model is indeed problematic.

I see that players are interested in this topic.

In the media, a debate immediately broke out regarding whether a dual-platform release or an exclusive release was better.

Simply put, most foreign media outlets advocate that having multiple platforms is beneficial.

The reasons have already been given, so I won't repeat them here.

Domestic media, on the other hand, advocate for exclusive rights.

The main reasons are that choosing Spark can eliminate engine costs, provide better service, and offer better development guidance, etc.

However, the overall argument is that "Spark provides better service".

This argument, of course, could not convince overseas media, since Steam also has its own "services," so the two sides argued fiercely.

The players also joined in the commotion.

Until one French media outlet, for some unknown reason, held a live broadcast comparing Hades and Fall Guys with Disco Elysium.

Then they discovered that although Disco Elysium achieved number one on both charts.

However, its total sales did not surpass Hades, which was exclusive to Spark, by much, and were even far less than Fall Guys.

They then came to a new conclusion.

The overlap between Steam and Spark platforms is currently higher than imagined. If Steam doesn't sell it, these players might buy it from Spark instead.

In other words.

If the revenue sharing is consistent across both platforms, then releasing on both platforms does have an advantage, but this advantage is not as significant as one might imagine.

Considering Steam's 30% revenue share and Spark's 10% share.

This advantage is even reversible.

Logically speaking, from a developer's perspective, if a player who uses both platforms buys your game on Steam, it means they definitely won't buy another copy on Spark.

This means that the developer lost 20% of its profits.

Simply put, the more you sell on Steam, the more you lose.

As long as Steam doesn't change its 30% revenue-sharing model, this situation will remain unchanged.

This report can be said to have instantly killed the game. It's not that no one refuted this, but more importantly, Western media had been saying that dual platforms were beneficial to game developers.

The problem is, with Steam's commission being so high, does it actually benefit game developers or Steam itself?

in fact.

The issue of Steam's revenue sharing has been a recurring topic of discussion since the launch of Spark.

"Our Steam market share is higher in Europe and America!"

You get 30%.

"Multi-platform sales are more beneficial to developers!"

You get 30%.

"We will introduce more policies that benefit small and medium-sized developers in the future."

You get 30%.

In all past disputes over reputation and public opinion between the two platforms, Spark has always managed to win with a seemingly effortless skill, precisely because of Steam's revenue sharing.

So, can Steam lower the price?

It is possible, but it is also not.

The truth is, Steam has indeed lowered its revenue share under pressure from Spark. For games with fewer than 10 sales, the share has been reduced to 23%.

For games with sales exceeding one million, a one-time subsidy of 8% of the previous sales revenue will be provided when the game reaches one million sales.

after?

After that, it naturally remained at 30%.

Therefore, these things can only be said to have stabilized the basic base.

In the past, when the user base of Spark and Steam was quite different, developers weren't so sensitive to the revenue sharing differences, since Steam had a higher revenue share but a larger user base.

However, with the rise of Spark, Steam's core user base is gradually being eroded. Although Steam still has an advantage in the European and American markets, this advantage is no longer enough to support its high revenue-sharing model.

In particular, there's also Xinghuo using 10% of its profits to aggressively bite back.

However, as the saying goes, unless you're on the verge of death, getting capital to cut its own losses is harder than committing suicide.

Therefore, even though Steam has suffered countless losses in marketing and promotion because of this 30% revenue share, so far, apart from making minor negotiations with some major developers for subsidy policies, it has only managed to achieve so far.

There is no intention to reform the revenue-sharing system.

This is why Lin Li said the other party wanted to divide the country into foreign countries and govern it separately.

Chapter 588 Hero Saves the Beauty

Of course, after the Spark "All Games to Choose From" event in February, Steam's actions were exposed as false, and then came the handheld console vs. VR debate in March.

Nobody cares whether Disco Elysium was more profitable when it was exclusive to a certain platform or when it was on both platforms, and nobody cares about its subsequent sales.

Ever since.

For players.

This news is similar to the story of an idol who became a sensation in January due to his outstanding looks, but whose popularity quickly faded, and then in May, we heard news about this idol again.

She actually said she was going to have a wedding.

At this point, a large group of onlookers exclaimed in surprise, "Huh?"