Mini-games take off, "Anime boyfriends" fall out of favor. Is there a new trend in the overseas expansion of the gaming industry?
▎Chinese games have captured one-third of the global market.
TMTpost author | Globalinsights
On September 25th, the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) 2025 opened at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan.
"I feel like I've arrived at Itaewon (one of Seoul's most international business districts and a trendsetter in South Korea)," sighed Xiaoli, a gamer on-site.
Xiaoli, who didn't want to rush the first wave of the event, even postponed her trip by two days. But when she arrived at the venue at 9 a.m. on September 27th, the queue for entry had already circled the venue.
Provided by the interviewee
The inside of the venue was even more bustling. Popular Japanese booths such as "Persona 3 Reload" (P3R) and Nintendo Switch 2 (NS2) had estimated waiting times of over 50 minutes for the trial play.
The booths of domestic games were no less popular.
Some people arrived at 10:20 a.m. and rushed to the booth but still couldn't get a trial play ticket for "Arknights: Endfield." Some people tried five times to play the new NetEase game "Infinity" but failed every time and returned empty-handed. Only the free backpacks could console their wounded hearts.
"Just like at the Gamescom, domestic games are very popular," Xiaoli sighed.
"Infinity" won the Future Expectation Award at the "Japan Game Awards 2025"
In the past two years, games have become the hottest topic in the overseas market.
Chinese games have also repeatedly sparked public attention overseas: In South Korea, Lee Won-hee of the K-pop girl group illit and Lee Yong-bok of the boy group Stray Kids became a hot topic after being reported for being addicted to "Identity V" and "Genshin Impact"; China's first 3A game masterpiece, "Black Myth: Wukong," won two major awards, "Best Action Game" and "Players' Voice," at the 2024 The Game Awards (TGA), known as the "Oscars of the gaming industry"; the mobile version of Tencent's "Delta Force: Operators" had over 10 million registered users just four days after its global launch; "Nirvana: The Endless Journey" developed by Kuro Tech topped the free app charts in 107 countries and regions during the pre-download phase.
Whether in terms of game types, operation strategies, or overseas performance, the overseas expansion of games is showing new characteristics and trends.
01 "Mini-games" are sweeping the overseas SLG market
Without a coherent narrative, exquisite modeling, or gorgeous special effects, just looking at the screen, it seems no different from the countless mini-games in the news feed ads labeled "Save this mother and son." Such a seemingly "shoddy" mini-game has achieved cumulative revenues of over $3.3 billion two years after its overseas launch, becoming a well-deserved hit.
Moreover, it is no longer bound by the argument of being a "flash in the pan."
This game is "Whiteout Survival" - a dark horse in the overseas market among domestic strategy games. According to Sensor Tower data, the second-day retention rate of "Whiteout Survival" reached 42%, and the monthly retention rate reached 8%. In the white paper published by Google Play, the average second-day retention rate and monthly retention rate of SLG mobile games are only 30% and 3.2% respectively.
Just as "Whiteout Survival" was being studied as a typical hit case and labeled as a "survivor bias," another SLG (Strategy and Simulation Games) under XD Inc., "Kingshot," came along. In less than four months after its launch, it achieved cumulative revenues of over $75 million and ranked among the top 10 Chinese mobile games in terms of overseas revenues that month.
Image source: @XD Overseas
The previously quiet SLG market is now seeing frequent hits in the form of "mini-games," completely breaking the previous argument that only high-quality games can succeed overseas.
The biggest reason behind this is the grafting of gameplay in these SLG mini-games.
Taking "Whiteout Survival" as an example, compared with traditional "heavy" SLG games, "Whiteout Survival" offers a segmented gaming experience. Relying on the "X + SLG" strategy, it combines light gameplay such as simulation management and tower defense with traditional heavy SLG, maximizing player retention.
In the early stage, players can fully enjoy casual gameplay in the "post-apocalyptic" setting. Survival is not difficult, and even new players can easily get started. They just need to buy packages, hunt, and collect resources at key points to experience the thrill and sense of achievement of rapid upgrading.
It is not until Chapter 6 of the game that the relevant SLG content will be gradually unlocked.
"At this stage, the proportion of simulation management gameplay is still quite high, which to some extent improves the problem of traditional SLG games being too monotonous during the early development stage or the later promotion stage. It can also retain more simulation management enthusiasts," Huang Yi, the vice president and board secretary of Century Huatong, once shared with the media.
Due to its flexible gameplay and social nature of team battles, compared with some SLG games that target male players, "Whiteout Survival" shows a gender-neutral characteristic.
Huang Yi once admitted that the proportion of female users of "Whiteout Survival" exceeds 20%. The development team of "Three Kingdoms: Ice Age," also an SLG game, once shared that the number of female players currently exceeds 30%.
On Xiaohongshu, many female players share their gaming experiences and post to "call on friends" to establish new social relationships in the game.
Of course, marketing is also a crucial part.
Marketing and buying traffic are almost the survival methods of mini-games. Through some "misleading" advertisements that show different art and narrative styles from the original game but are attractive enough to users, or even completely different casual gameplays, these games can attract the attention of "passers-by" and encourage them to click or download.
However, this approach also comes with great risks. Users may quickly uninstall, complain, and blacklist the game after opening it due to the discrepancy between the advertisement and the actual game, loving it but also hating it at the same time. On X, many players have complained that the ads for "Whiteout Survival" are more interesting than the game itself.
Now, the marketing strategies of mini-games are also becoming more diverse.
On the one hand, "Whiteout Survival" has launched more differentiated advertising materials on TikTok, YouTube, and X, such as real-life scenario-based dramas and live reaction explanations. On the other hand, in terms of localization, XD Inc. also customizes events according to the cultural characteristics of different markets. For example, in the Japanese market, it once incorporated the Hokkaido Snow Festival in a differentiated way.
"Whiteout Survival" will not be the last successful overseas mini-game. The reality is that the industry should perhaps pay more attention to mini-games in terms of gameplay, marketing, and user experience.
02 Are otome game boyfriends no longer working?
On the other hand, the once-famous otome games seem to be "stuck."
Over a month ago, the female-oriented games witnessed a "historic moment." "Love and Producer: Deep Space" won the Best Mobile Game Award at the 2025 Gamescom in Germany, setting a new record for Chinese female-oriented games.
Although there are always subtle comparisons and rivalries within the otome game circle, there is no denying that "Love and Producer: Deep Space" represents the current ceiling of domestic female-oriented games.
Image source: Weibo @Love and Producer: Deep Space
In the past year, "Love and Producer: Deep Space" has earned nearly 6 billion RMB globally, with a peak monthly revenue of $58.9 million in December 2024. Among them, the Chinese market accounts for 64% of the game's total revenue, while the traditional Chinese (Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan), Japanese, Korean, and European and American servers together account for 36%.
The market performance of "Love and Producer: Deep Space" has broken the stereotype. From January to July 2025, Japan, which has a strong otome game culture and is regarded as the "main battlefield for otome games overseas," only contributed $21.3 million in revenue. On the contrary, the European and American servers, which have long been regarded as a no-go area for otome games due to cultural and consumption differences, contributed $78 million in revenue, ranking second with a 17.89% share.
The reason why "Love and Producer: Deep Space" has gained wide recognition may not only lie in the five men who became popular globally in the short video challenge of "Women usually classify men into four types," but perhaps more in its portrayal of intimate relationships, which transcends cultural, geographical, and even gender barriers. Female players around the world are willingly spending money on these "five Chinese men" and even putting their photos into nationality testing software, hoping to include them in their own nationality.
On X, some men have even publicly stated that they are also addicted to the game.
However, since July, "Love and Producer: Deep Space" has actually entered a period of calm.
While "Love and Producer: Deep Space" was making a splash at the Gamescom in Germany, Sensor Tower data showed that although it still ranked first among female-oriented mobile games, its revenue in the 34th week of 2025 decreased by 73% compared with the previous week (August 18 - 24, 2025). According to Qimai data, the revenue of "Love and Producer: Deep Space" in August decreased by 32% year-on-year. In September, the level of discussion continued to be low.
The biggest reason may be the extreme lack of playability.
Although female-oriented games have long been regarded as having a "weak gameplay," the performance of "Love and Producer: Deep Space" in the past two months has been a bit too "lazy."
First, the "Shen Xinghui · The Crown of Descent" event launched at the end of July was suspected of false advertising. The actual combat effect was significantly different from the game's PV, and players' multiple feedbacks were ignored, leading to collective protests and a halt in spending. Then, the summer limited card pool was criticized for not balancing the art and gameplay. In the following month, there was a creative standstill, and the first mixed card pool "When No One Knows" since the public beta was re-launched in a lazy way.
More importantly, the main storyline of the game has not been updated for nearly eight months. Player Refa told Globalinsights that she has only been playing the game in a routine way for the past two months. "I just log in every day to do the daily tasks and collect the daily rewards, and it only takes ten minutes."
Another reason is that the attention of the audience has been greatly "diverted."
On the one hand, as a cultural form with a deep influence overseas, K-pop has combined with "animated movies" and made a strong entry with the "three-dimensional + two-dimensional" combination "K-POP: The Huntress Squad," which was released on Netflix and in North American theaters successively.
Two months after its "debut," it has had over 236 million views on Netflix, its single has topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and it has outperformed BTS and BLACKPINK on Spotify. The Huntress Squad has set new records for K-pop, breaking the slump of fifth-generation girl groups and becoming the current top female K-pop group, continuously occupying the audience's attention.
On the other hand, the double-male lead theme, which has the strongest communication power and the most meme-worthy audience, has made a comeback.
In early July, Brazilian player Rebeca noticed that a double-male lead TV series called "Revenged Love" was being frequently discussed on TikTok and X. One of the anime bloggers she followed even created a series of fan-made works and kept shouting "Da Bao" in the captions.
Out of curiosity, she clicked on the dedicated YouTube channel for the series one weekday evening and was hooked. She not only bought a VIP membership but also created a new account and joined a group on X to follow and interact with the series. When the series was approaching its finale, she even tipped 50 Brazilian reais for the show. During the more than a month when she was addicted to "Revenged Love," she hardly opened "Love and Producer: Deep Space."
However, the good news is that the slump of "Love and Producer: Deep Space" may be coming to an end. The new card art and storyline released on the game's official X account have unexpectedly received explosive data. Amy, a member of the data team, admitted that this new card, which was launched on September 25th, may be a crucial step for the game's recovery.
03 The overseas expansion of games has entered the era of "everyone sharing the pie"
Looking at the bigger picture, the overseas expansion of games in 2025 seems to finally allow more people to share the benefits.
The "2024 Research Report on the Overseas Expansion of Chinese Games" shows that in 2024, the overseas sales revenue of Chinese self-developed games reached $18.557 billion (approximately 130 billion RMB), accounting for nearly 40% of the actual domestic market sales revenue. In 2014, this figure was 3 billion RMB. In just ten years, the overseas sales data of the entire industry has increased by six times.
Image source: Sensor Tower
Among them, Tencent, XD Inc., and NetEase still rank in the top three.
The keywords for Tencent Games are "localization" and "industrialization."
According to statistics, from 2018 to the present, Tencent Games has carried out more than 60 investment and acquisition events in the overseas market. This includes, but is not limited to, the acquisition of Slamfire, the parent company of Turtle Rock Studios, which developed "Back 4 Blood," at the end of 2021. In 2022, it acquired 49.9% of the shares of the Guillemot brothers, the largest shareholders of Ubisoft, for 300 million euros, doubling its shareholding ratio to 9.99% after the increase; it also became the second-largest shareholder of From Software (FS), the producer of "Elden Ring," with a 16.25% shareholding ratio.
Compared with other leading companies, NetEase's overseas revenue share is not very prominent. To expand beyond Asia, NetEase is also actively trying localization.
From 2022 to 2024, NetEase established the Jack Emmert and Jar of Sparks studios in the United States, invested in the Quantic Dream studio in France, and established the Rebel Wolves studio in Poland; it also established the GameLook studio in Los Angeles, focusing on 3A games.
Fortunately, the popular games developed by NetEase in the domestic market are starting to have a global impact. After 2024, "Egg Party," as a new weapon, has established a foothold in Southeast Asia and is now entering the American, African, and European markets. Huang Zhuo, the general manager of NetEase Leihuo's marketing department, revealed at the ChinaJoy CDEC Summit that NetEase will launch several high-quality games overseas, such as "The Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun," "The Sea of Oblivion," and "Infinity," to launch a new round of attacks.
Image source: Xiaohongshu @The Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun
As one of the current three giants, in the situation of Tencent and NetEase dominating the market, XD Inc. took three years to transform from mainly acting as a game agent to self-developing games and emerged from the competition.
The 2024 annual report of its parent company, Century Huatong, shows that XD Inc.'s revenue in 2024 was approximately 15 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 155%, accounting for nearly 70% of the entire group's revenue.
In the first half of this year, Century Huatong reached a new high, with a revenue of 17.2 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 85.5%. The net profit attributable to shareholders was 2.656 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 129.33%. As of September 22nd, the company's stock price has skyrocketed for a year, increasing by six times year-on-year, and its market value is approaching 150 billion RMB, emerging from the slump caused by the suspicion of financial fraud.
According to statistics from the Data Treasure of the Securities Times, among the A-share gaming companies, 20 companies have announced their overseas business revenues for the first half of 2025, with a total of 21.823 billion RMB.
Among them, the overseas business revenues of five listed companies exceeded 100 million RMB. ST Huatong, Kunlun Tech, and 37 Interactive Entertainment reached 8.958 billion RMB, 3.441 billion RMB, and 2.724 billion RMB respectively.
The growth is not only in terms of amount.
Among the top 100 global mobile game publishers in terms of revenue released by Sensor Tower in August, 32 Chinese companies were on the list. According to statistics, the total revenue of these 32 companies was $2.04 billion, accounting for 35.1% of the total revenue of the publishers on the list.
Whether in terms of the number of companies or the revenue, Chinese companies have occupied one-third of the seats in the world's leading gaming market.
The overseas expansion of games is still a blue ocean.
Whether it is the "small and beautiful" or the "high-quality" approach, Chinese companies are finding their own paths.
This article is reprinted with permission from Globalinsights
Author | Wuta, Editor | Li Xiaotian
This article is from the WeChat official account "TMTpost", author: Wuta.
