This domestic game at the China International Fair for Trade in Services has brought the city of "Haitelo" into Shougang Park.

At the 2026 China International Fair for Trade in Services, a game titled "Loop of Anomaly" brought its "Hetelo City" to the "Grand Beijing Audiovisual" exhibition area in Hall 7 of Shougang Park. Put on AR (Augmented Reality) glasses, the originally flat game scene instantly "leaps" out of the screen, with neon-lit buildings and suspended tracks seemingly within reach.

This is a supernatural urban open-world RPG (Role-Playing Game) independently developed by Perfect World, and it is also one of the most representative domestic games going global this year. Since its global public beta at the end of April, "Loop of Anomaly" has covered more than 180 countries and regions, repeatedly ranked among the top five on the overseas iOS (Apple's mobile operating system) game bestseller list, and topped the PS (Sony PlayStation game console) popular list for many times in the Japanese market. A game from China is being noticed by the world.

At the 2026 China International Fair for Trade in Services, the game "Loop of Anomaly" made its appearance at the "Grand Beijing Audiovisual" exhibition area in Hall 7 of Shougang Park. Photo provided by the interviewee

Breakthrough

Building a "city" in the two-dimensional gaming track

The game is developed by Hotta Studio (Tower of Fantasy Studio) under Perfect World, whose last representative work was the light sci-fi open-world game "Tower of Fantasy", which once topped the iOS free game list in many countries. With the experience accumulated from "Tower of Fantasy", the team set its sights on a more complex challenge — moving an entire modern city into the game.

When you open "Loop of Anomaly", players do not enter the common continent of swords and magic, but a modern city named "Hetelo".

From the perspective of the industry background, the release timing of "Loop of Anomaly" is not easy. According to the "2025 China Game Industry Report" released by the Game Publishing Committee of China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, the actual sales revenue of China's two-dimensional mobile game market in 2025 was 28.281 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.64%. The entire track is waiting for a differentiated new product. The combination of "two-dimensional + urban open world" gives "Loop of Anomaly" more confidence to break through.

From the perspective of the product itself, the gameplay of "Loop of Anomaly" is not limited to fighting monsters and upgrading. Players can drive taxis, deliver goods, race cars, fish, modify vehicles, and decorate houses in the game world. "Hetelo City" is described by the official as a city that you can "live in". The R&D team defines this theme as "humanistic open world", emphasizing the interaction between players and the characters in the city. Players can interact with taxi drivers, go to hospitals to handle events, and even return to campus to experience the roles of teachers and students. This theme has a relatively high development ceiling, leaving sufficient space for subsequent content updates.

Repercussions

A report card from the overseas market

Product design is only the first hurdle. After being launched in more than 180 countries and regions, whether overseas players will recognize it is a more direct verification.

Before its launch, the global pre-registration volume of "Loop of Anomaly" exceeded 35 million. New problems also followed: in the initial stage of launch, crashes, frame drops, and overheating issues made players' feedback pour into the official community one by one. The "Loop of Anomaly" project team did an unconventional thing: they sent an open long letter to players, listing 45 bug fix lists at one go, and distributed exclusive props to all server players that allow them to choose any one of multiple high-level characters. This honesty stabilized the most critical group of players in the early stage of launch.

Recognition with real money also comes from PC players. In the past, this type of game with anime-style features was almost all dominated by mobile platforms, while in the overseas first-month revenue of "Loop of Anomaly", the PC and game console accounted for about 70% in total.

Why do players who are used to seeing blockbuster games pay for it? The production team's attitude is very clear: commercialization does not follow the "gacha anxiety" routine, let players fall in love with the characters and content first, and then make payment a natural and willing choice. Implemented on the product, the most intuitive measure is "no off-rate limited characters", that is, limited characters will never deviate from the expected draw pool. No matter how much money players spend, they can't get duplicate characters they already own, which has been a long-standing pain point for players of this type of game. Weapons can also be obtained through normal gameplay, and there are no hidden payment traps in the character development route.

This restraint comes from the confidence in the gameplay itself: it does not rely on "gacha traps" to retain players, but on the detailed design of the "Hetelo" city. Player feedback from multiple markets and the popularity of fan creation (secondary creation based on the original work) all exceeded the team's expectations.

In terms of distribution, the project team also did not spend a lot of money on extensive advertising. "Loop of Anomaly" invested resources in places where target players gather: in Japan, it appeared on the cover of established game magazines; in South Korea, offline activities were held in trendy business districts crowded with young people; online, it relied on live streamers' broadcasts and word-of-mouth in player communities. An unexpected result confirmed this strategy: in Pakistan, where two-dimensional games are relatively unpopular, "Loop of Anomaly" won the first place on the iOS free list on the day of its server launch, and the company did not spend a penny on local advertising, all relying on players' spontaneous communication. Such outstanding word-of-mouth effect is rare in the current global expansion of Chinese games.

This also gives a revelation to domestic game companies: whether a game can gain a firm foothold in overseas markets does not depend on the sprint at the moment of launch, but on gradually building up positive word-of-mouth after the server goes online.

Changes in the industry landscape

From agent distribution to "one global integrated strategy"

What is more noteworthy than the performance of a single product is the upgrading of China's game global expansion model reflected by this game.

Perfect World started its overseas business very early. In 2006, the independently developed PC game "Perfect World International" was exported to more than 100 countries and regions, and it was one of the early explorers of domestic games going global. After that, the company gradually set up overseas branches to build its own team from the previous agent distribution model, and finally implemented a new strategy — "global integration". That is, to regard the global market as a unified overall market, coordinate resources, manpower and time in a unified way, produce general content globally, and at the same time adjust measures to local conditions to adopt differentiated distribution strategies for different regions.

Yi Di, Senior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Perfect World Group, said: "For Chinese games going global, high-quality content is the core attraction, the overseas distribution system is the network to reach users, and technology is the underlying support. Only when the three are integrated can culture go from 'going out' to 'going deep' into the local user groups. This concept is embodied in the distribution strategy of "Loop of Anomaly": in major regions such as Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States, this game is fully independently distributed by the company, and the R&D and distribution teams collaborate under the same global framework.

In the context of a larger industry, the 15th Five-Year Plan Outline proposes to "promote the global expansion of high-quality online literature, online games, film and animation, high-quality exhibitions, etc.". From agent distribution to global integration, the overseas path of Chinese games is quietly upgrading, and the overseas performance of "Loop of Anomaly" is exactly a footnote to this positive change.

Article source: Beijing Daily