The tragedy of game anchors switching jobs: killing one thousand enemies but losing eight hundred of their own

After being suspended for several days, his Weibo account was cancelled, many die-hard fans turned to black, and Douyu’s official Weibo quietly deleted the “family” Weibo… After Haishi switched to Douyu Live, the expected results have not yet been determined, but various negative things have come one after another. It can be seen that Haishi is not doing well now, and he may even start to miss the days when he was the “number one” on Huya Live.

The trigger for Haishi's departure from Douyu was publicly stated to be a fight between him and Chuhe. But a deep throat told Dongdong Notes that the infighting among anchors was just a superficial phenomenon, and the actual instigator was the giant behind the live broadcast platform. "Haishi was a anchor promoted by Huya, and the platform provided him with the best development resources. However, after achieving success, Haishi began to demand more from the platform. For Huya, suppressing Haishi was something that had to be done."

Simply put, Huya used Chuhe to suppress Haishi, with the intention of making him listen in the future.

If the crackdown is successful, the platform will not have to raise Hi's salary, and can also maintain the stability of the platform, thereby warning other anchors not to cause trouble easily. Even Hi - cannot go against the platform.

Unexpectedly, a Cheng Yaojin appeared halfway through. Just when the "Hi Chu dispute" was getting difficult to resolve, Douyu came out and intercepted Huya.

One had different ambitions, and the other was determined to win. Douyu and Hishi quickly reached a cooperation intention, and Hishi decided to officially join Douyu on August 27.

An industry insider analyzed to Dongdong Notes that for Douyu, signing Hai Shi might be a gamble. If Hai Shi can survive Huya's pursuit and successfully transition to Douyu, then Douyu's continuous poaching strategy will form a host matrix, which will be particularly advantageous in the live broadcast of Honor of Kings. Even if Hai Shi can't survive, this incident has already created a hot topic for Douyu and recharged its popularity, successfully attracting millions of fans.

It can be said that on the surface it seems that the top anchor Hizi is being fought over by the two live streaming platforms, but in fact, Hizi has become a pawn in the competition between Huya and Douyu.

At present, Douyu has gained a lot of traffic, and Huya has introduced AG Super Play Team to strengthen the team, which has little impact. However, Huya's diehard fans and fans of other anchors are still "attacking" Hishi, and Douyu's attitude is also ambiguous. Hishi's future is very uncertain.

The transfer live broadcast was full of criticism, and it was difficult for Hi to be happy

Is he sick or banned?

After Hi announced his move to Douyu, the already lively live game streaming industry instantly heated up, with the most attention paid to the conflicts between streamers and the interactions between streamers and fans. However, after Hi transferred to Douyu, he only did one day of normal live streaming, and then there was no news for several days.

Therefore, rumors spread that Hi was banned. Perhaps to dispel the rumor, Hi chatted with netizens on Douyu for half an hour on the evening of the 5th, but it should be emphasized that he did not broadcast the game live this time.

Someone asked if he was banned from live streaming, and Hi replied: "Do I look like I'm banned? Some people actually said I won't live stream anymore. This is scary. I came to Beijing to see a doctor, and someone said I won't live stream anymore."

However, many netizens were not friendly to Hi who had not appeared in public for many days, and some even said: I hope the disease will defeat Hi soon. And the comments that Hi was banned from broadcasting have not stopped.

On the evening of September 6, Haizi finally resumed broadcasting after a five-day hiatus. He conducted an unusual "faceless" live broadcast of King of Glory on Douyu. It is extremely rare for a host not to show up during a mobile game live broadcast. Haizi explained that "I can only use my mobile phone to broadcast live in the hotel."

During the tens of minutes of live broadcast, Hi's influence was demonstrated, and the number of online viewers exceeded 2 million at the peak. However, Dongdong Notes found that a large part of them were black fans, and the comments were full of insults and expulsions.

For a while, a fierce verbal battle broke out between Hi's fans and black fans in the live broadcast room, and various aggressive voices continued.

During the entire live broadcast, Hi automatically blocked the comments from haters and fans in the barrage, and focused on the lag of Sun Wukong grabbing kills and clearing the jungle in the Glory Gold Level 2 ranking match. Hi explained that the lag was due to the poor hotel network.

Industry insiders analyzed that Hai Shi's resumption of broadcasting was due to pressure from fans and platforms, as a long-term suspension of broadcasting for gaming anchors would have a huge impact on all aspects, and Hai Shi could not take any risks. On the other hand, judging from Hai Shi's Weibo post on the 5th, his visit to Beijing was not simply for medical treatment, and there might be a hidden turning point behind the "care from a leader of a department of the Ministry of Culture."

Although it is currently unclear whether Haishi received any kind of help, it is certain that Huya has not withdrawn its pursuit of accountability against him, and the attacks on him by various anchors and fans will not stop.

Not only that, Hi's own image has further collapsed, and the veteran fans have fallen apart. According to Deep Throat, the one who is still defending Hi is one of the five veterans who "grew up eating Hi Hi snacks", while Xi Lou and Lan Ruo each led a part of their fans to leave, and the other two veterans are currently keeping a wait-and-see attitude.

It’s hard to get excited about Hi’s Douyu live broadcast.

The frequent job-hopping of anchors brings mixed feelings

The competition among live broadcast platforms has gradually extended from content, technology, and resources to the anchor level, and each platform will compete for anchor operations. This situation is more prominent in the game live broadcast industry. Game anchors have higher fan loyalty and stickiness. They all have their own fixed fan base, and the number of fans of top anchors basically ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions.

It can be said that awesome anchors can provide the platform with a huge base of fixed users.

In addition, the influence of current game anchors is not even inferior to that of some celebrity artists, and they can bring attention and topics to the platform. Therefore, there have been a series of incidents of live broadcast platforms poaching anchors recently, such as A Leng, the former number one anchor of Momo, Zhang Daxian of Penguin E-sports, and Hishi of Huya.

However, the impact of job-hopping on anchors and platforms is not only favorable, but also unfavorable. Dongdong Notes focuses on the unfavorable impact.

For example, on the day of Hi's first show on Douyu, the platform arranged for top anchors such as Lu Benwei and Zhang Daxian to stop broadcasting, and asked them to go to Hi's room to give gifts to increase his popularity. "It is said that this was required by the platform. The platform also asked several anchors to give gifts to Hi, just to ensure his fame and the number of people in his live broadcast room." Some anchors broke the news on Weibo.

Douyu's approach did bring millions of viewers to Hi's live broadcast that night, and his popularity soared. Just like Huya's previous support for Hi, Douyu also took certain measures to take care of the former Huya "King of Glory" who had just been picked up.

However, this practice has invisibly caused conflicts between anchors and other anchors' fans' disgust towards Hi. Recently, Hi's suspension of broadcasting and his resumption of broadcasting without showing his face may have been affected by this aspect.

The consequence of job-hopping is not just a decline in popularity and loss of fans, but also the loss of real money.

Zhang Daxian, who was poached by Douyu a while ago, paid a heavy price for his job-hopping. On September 4, Zhang Daxian announced on Weibo that he had paid 2 million yuan in liquidated damages to the Penguin Esports platform. Many people know that Zhang Daxian is a popular anchor cultivated by Penguin Esports and has an exclusive contract with Penguin, but he jumped to Douyu due to salary reasons. After a period of coordination, the dispute was finally resolved.

The departure of top anchors will have a certain impact on live streaming platforms. Take Huya for example. After Hishi left, the number of Huya uninstalls increased instantly, and the number of negative reviews in the app store also increased. Even if Hishi's more than 4 million fans did not all transfer, it caused a considerable impact on Huya.

However, this impact is likely to be only temporary, because a few days later Huya recruited AG Super Play. Huya’s official Weibo announced that the King of Glory Professional League team AG Super Play will join Huya Live and start live streaming on September 8.

With the influence and fan base of the AG team, Huya can not only quickly recover from the traffic loss of Hi's, but also attract more King of Glory players and AG fans to gather on the platform.

In general, the platform's constant poaching and the frequent job-hopping of anchors seem to quickly bring traffic to the platform, but at the same time it also creates the negative effect of inflated anchors' salaries and increased cost pressure on the platform. More seriously, due to the disorder behind poaching and job-hopping, the game live broadcast industry is becoming a hotbed of lawsuits, which is undoubtedly a damage to the entire game live broadcast ecosystem.

In an article titled "Poaching anchors is a trend, and the game live broadcast industry is trapped in a vicious circle of competition" published last week, Dongdong Notes predicted that if game live broadcast platforms continue to poach anchors, they will only end up dead. The right way is to cultivate excellent anchors, innovate business models, and follow the rules of the game.

I believe that users who truly enjoy watching game live broadcasts do not want each platform to be messed up by the battle for anchors, leading to resentment towards certain anchors of "it would be a bolt from the blue if you are well".

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.