--- title: "Tech giants are scrambling for mini-games, not just looking for 'the next hit'." type: "Topics" locale: "zh-CN" url: "https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/topics/31492991.md" description: "The prosperity of the mini-game market has provided Tencent and ByteDance with new channels to increase user engagement and commercial value. However, the sustainable development of the market does not solely rely on chasing hit products but on the prosperity of the ecosystem. Original © New Entropy Internet Group Author: Jiang Li Editor: Mu Jin, Jiu Li Mini-games, originally designed to kill fragmented leisure time, are now demonstrating increasingly strong vitality. From their inception in the early 21st century during the feature phone era to their rapid development and transformation after the popularization of smartphones, mobile games have long established a vast market scale in China alongside the growth of the internet. With the continuous deepening of the industry..." datetime: "2025-07-04T09:57:14.000Z" locales: - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/topics/31492991.md) - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/topics/31492991.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/topics/31492991.md) author: "[新熵](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/profiles/10215178.md)" --- > 支持的语言: [English](https://longbridge.com/en/topics/31492991.md) | [繁體中文](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/topics/31492991.md) # Tech giants are scrambling for mini-games, not just looking for 'the next hit'. The boom in the mini-game market provides new channels for Tencent and ByteDance to increase user engagement and commercial value, but the sustainable development of the market is not just about chasing blockbusters, but about ecological co-prosperity. Original ⓒ New Entropy Internet Group Author 丨 Jiang Li Editor 丨 Mu Jin, Jiu Li Mini-games, which were once created to pass the time during leisure, are now bursting with increasing vitality. From the early 21st century during the feature phone era to the rapid development and transformation after the popularization of smartphones, mobile games have long had a vast market scale in China with the development of the internet. As the industry continues to deepen, app games that were once in the limelight are now facing challenges such as the peak of traffic dividends and serious homogenization. In this context, mini-games that do not have independent apps and rely on content platforms, with features like instant play, no download required, and easy to start, are attracting more and more users' attention. This also provides new growth for the mobile game track. According to the "2024 Game Industry Report" released by the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association Game Working Committee, the actual sales revenue of the Chinese mobile game market in 2024 increased by 5.01% year-on-year, while the revenue of the mini-program game market, as a sub-track, increased by 99.18% year-on-year. Data from Giant Engine shows that the active user scale of mini-games in the first half of 2024 even surpassed that of app games. Regarding the future market scale of mini-games, the DataEye Research Institute has made predictions based on multiple factors: it is expected that the mini-game market scale may reach 61 billion in 2025. ▲ Image/DataEye The solid mass base and broad development prospects have attracted a large number of small and medium-sized game developers, and major game manufacturers that once focused heavily on app games or PC games have also entered the market, forming a prosperous market. On the other hand, the traffic, user engagement, and commercial value that mini-games can bring have also prompted major companies to accelerate their layout, using their top apps as carriers for mini-games. WeChat and Douyin are currently the two leading platforms in terms of mini-game user scale, and the Tencent and ByteDance behind them have also shown full attention to mini-games. In the past June, first, Douyin Mini Games and Giant Engine held two mini-game industry salons in June, and then Tencent held the WeChat Mini Game Developer Conference in Chongqing on June 25. In addition to disclosing the advantages of their respective mini-game ecosystems, they also conveyed their confidence in continuing to layout the market. However, just as short dramas have experienced a process from barbaric growth to refined development, the booming mini-game track also needs to consider some issues: For mini-game developers, in an era where short videos and short dramas are prevalent, how to compete for more user time among a variety of fragmented entertainment types? For platforms aiming to increase traffic and user engagement, is the most cost-effective path to focus on chasing the next blockbuster or to focus on extending the lifecycle of existing blockbusters? ### **Big Companies Bet on "Short Dramas in the Game World"** As super apps with rich business formats, WeChat and Douyin's layout of mini-games is based on the same consideration, which is to retain more users, gain more traffic, and pursue higher commercial value. As mini-games born relying on platforms, their booming development in the WeChat and Douyin ecosystems is also due to the massive user base, which is mutually causal. In fact, to some extent, the characteristics and development paths of mini-games are similar to short dramas, with features such as being small and beautiful, having low participation thresholds, and providing instant satisfaction, and they also target the fragmented time of casual users. Even the business models are similar. Based on this, Tencent and ByteDance's layout of short dramas and mini-games fundamentally have similar purposes. However, for a long time, compared to the highly topical short dramas, mini-games, the "short dramas in the game world," seem to have a lower volume. In fact, Tencent and ByteDance's layout of mini-games was not much later than that of short dramas. WeChat's layout of mini-games can be traced back to 2017. At the end of 2017, WeChat announced the launch of the mini-game platform for the first time at the Pro Open Class and released the demo "Jump Jump." In January 2018, the WeChat mini-game function was fully launched, initially focusing on self-developed products such as "Jump Jump" and "Happy Landlord," aiming to increase user engagement. Through social fission, Jump Jump quickly went viral that year, which initially verified the feasibility of mini-games. In April 2018, WeChat opened the mini-game platform to third-party developers, allowing developers to submit works. Since then, WeChat's "social + lightweight game" business model has taken shape. As an early entrant, relying on social advantages, WeChat has become a fertile ground for mini-game developers. According to data released by WeChat officials at a salon a few days ago, as of now, the monthly active users of WeChat mini-games have exceeded 500 million, making it one of the most sticky lightweight entertainment platforms in the mobile internet. Users play an average of 6 mini-games per month, with the average daily online time increasing by 10% year-on-year, and more than 80% actively entering through native scenarios such as WeChat pull-down, search, and sharing, significantly enhancing user participation. Douyin's layout of the mini-game track is later than WeChat, but with the massive user resources accumulated as a leading short video platform, the scale has rapidly developed since the release of the first mini-game "Sound Jump Ball" in 2019. At the mini-game industry salon in June, Yan Hongxu, the IAA gameplay operation director of Douyin Mini Games, stated that in the overall market, Douyin Mini Games ranked first in growth rate, showing a high growth rate of 130% last year, with user retention, 7-day retention, game lifetime LTV, and profitability data all steadily maintaining growth. Relying on the two leading platforms, the mini-game market scale continues to expand, and the huge market cake also attracts more participants. In fact, this track is already crowded with large platforms with user resource advantages, such as Alipay, Meituan, and Kuaishou. However, at present, Alipay only uses mini-games as a supplementary function to enhance user activity and user engagement, without obvious resource tilt. In contrast, Meituan has consecutively held game developer platform conferences at the end of 2023 and 2024, aiming to deeply integrate games with diverse content ecosystems such as novels and films, creating a new pan-entertainment platform. As a short video platform competing closely with Douyin, Kuaishou also regards mini-games as one of the platform content ecosystems. At the 2025 Magnetic Conference in March this year, Kuaishou disclosed that in the fourth quarter of 2024, the content consumption industry represented by short dramas, mini-games, and novels grew rapidly, with the daily consumption peak of mini-game traffic exceeding 12 million yuan. The "2024 China Internet Value List" released by the third-party data agency QuestMobile disclosed the NO.1 app in the TOP50 track user scale, among which WeChat, as an instant messaging platform, ranked first with over 1 billion monthly active users, Alipay with about 900 million monthly active users, Douyin as a representative of short video apps with about 780 million monthly active users, and Meituan as a representative of local life platforms with 460 million monthly active users. From the above data, it can be seen that the platforms that layout the mini-game track share common characteristics of being at the forefront of user scale and having rich platform content ecosystems. As one of the platform content ecosystems, the super market potential of mini-games also becomes an important reason for major companies to maintain their focus on them. ### **There is also a Talent War in the Mini-Game Circle** The preference of users for mini-games and the market scale formed by it are becoming an unignorable dividend cake for game manufacturers. Taking the head mini-game platform WeChat as an example, relying on video accounts, the viewing time of mini-game live broadcasts increased by 54%, and the number of short video views increased by 22%. Currently, nearly 70 mini-games have a DAU of over one million, and more than 300 have quarterly revenue exceeding ten million. Based on this, traditional game manufacturers facing growth bottlenecks are also looking for increments. It is reported that 70% of listed game companies have entered the market. Compared with small and medium-sized developers, listed game companies have technical and resource advantages. In addition, putting successful classic game IPs into mini-games is undoubtedly increasing revenue while saving development costs. Based on the current three monetization models of mini-games—IAA (advertising monetization), IAP (in-app purchase, including game item sales, level payments, etc.), and IAAP (hybrid monetization), combined with traffic investment, classic game IP user base, etc., the effect of this business expansion move by traditional game companies is also very obvious. For example, 37 Interactive Entertainment launched the national style fun nurturing game "Seeking the Great Thousand" mini-program game in 2023, which topped the WeChat mini-game bestseller list for several months and basically remained in the top three of the bestseller list last year; at the beginning of 2025, the company's "Time Big Bang," "Heroes Have No Flash," and other products were also launched one after another and achieved good results. Giant Network successfully expanded the mini-game channel in 2024, and the "King's Journey" launched contributed 600 million yuan in revenue throughout the year, with more than 25 million new users, verifying the feasibility of heavy MMO games in the mini-program track. Currently, mini-game versions of several classic games under Giant Network, such as "Original Journey," "Journey 2," "Ball Battle," and "Night of the Full Moon," are all in the development or testing stage. In addition, Bilibili's management revealed in the first quarter financial report conference call of 2025 that its flagship SLG product "Three Kingdoms: Strategy Under Heaven" will launch a mini-game version and support data intercommunication with the app end. **The entry of traditional game manufacturers makes the competition among participants in the mini-game track more intense, and to get more traffic for their mini-games, increasing investment in advertising has become a must. According to reports from Tiger Sniff, since August 2024, the daily consumption of mini-games on the two major advertising platforms has been about 94 million yuan, slightly exceeding the daily consumption of about 90 million yuan for mobile game apps, becoming the main force of domestic mobile game traffic investment.** This also provides opportunities for major companies like Tencent and ByteDance, which have marketing service platforms. To attract more high-quality developers, both companies have launched relevant incentive policies. This year, the intensity of relevant incentive policies continues to increase. In May, Tencent released a special incentive for the first purchase of WeChat mini-games, with a maximum incentive of 25%. The incentive policy lasts from June 1 to August 31. Douyin Mini Games and ByteDance's marketing service platform "Giant Engine" released support signals in multiple dimensions such as talent subsidies, advertising grants, project support, and operation subsidies in June this year. At the end of June, Douyin even launched the so-called largest support policy in history: from July 1 to August 31, new and old games can receive incentives ranging from 10% to 25% based on incremental levels, with a maximum reward of 3 million yuan. Although many mini-games currently choose to go online on multiple platforms simultaneously, there is no doubt that greater incentive policies will to some extent affect the decisions of mini-game developers. In other words, Tencent and ByteDance are also competing for more game developers through incentives for developers. ### **From Blockbuster Creation to Ecological Co-prosperity** The memory of mini-games going from niche to nationwide can be traced back to the end of 2017 with the explosive WeChat mini-game "Jump Jump"; in 2022, "Sheep a Sheep" quickly spread on social platforms, becoming a phenomenal mini-game; as time goes on, blockbuster mini-games like Catch the Goose and Screw the Screw have successively gone viral. **The commercial value brought by phenomenal blockbusters is undoubtedly huge, and the low investment and high return characteristics of blockbuster mini-games amplify this point even more.** For example, "Sheep a Sheep," which once swept the social circle, according to its founder Zhang Jiaxu, initially had a team size of less than ten people, with an initial investment cost of about 500,000 yuan, and by early 2023, the revenue had exceeded 100 million yuan. However, compared to the vast number of mini-game developers, the number of blockbuster mini-games is still a minority, and more mini-game developers need to face the challenge of disproportionate traffic investment and income. In addition, facing the occupation of people's leisure fragmented time by short videos and short dramas, mini-games need to come up with more advantages to compete for user time. For mini-games to achieve sustainable development and commercial returns, on the fertile ground of platform incentive policies, they need to walk on two legs: one is to continuously create new blockbusters, which requires continuous deepening of innovation capabilities and in-depth observation of user preferences, capturing user social pressure release, short-term sense of achievement, nostalgia, and other needs; the other is to maintain old blockbusters and create evergreen income trees. Through technical upgrades, IP linkage, refined operations, and other measures, extend the lifecycle of old blockbusters, allowing developers and platforms to simultaneously obtain predictable income sources and user engagement. For WeChat and Douyin, the two major social platforms, belonging to the two camps of instant messaging and content, under the normalized competition for mini-game developers, it is not a zero-sum game. It is understood that many mini-games are currently online on multiple platforms, and the different user profiles of each platform also make the rankings of mini-games vary between platforms, which also gives platforms the choice to focus on different styles of mini-games based on user profiles. ▲ Image/AI Production In addition, a more stable way is the interconnection between platforms. Since 2023, Douyin has gradually opened the external link jump of WeChat mini-games, and some Douyin live rooms also have related promotions for WeChat mini-games. Only by making the cake bigger together can we achieve a win-win situation for all parties. Platforms use traditional methods such as earning coins and red envelopes to retain and attract new users, which is also a way to enhance the vitality of the mini-game market. **The commercial value brought by phenomenal blockbusters to game developers and platforms is beyond doubt, but compared to the pursuit of blockbusters, a good market environment formed by a good ecosystem may be the best solution to face competition. After all, a single flower does not make spring, but a hundred flowers in bloom bring spring to the garden.** ****Source:**** **Tiger Sniff, "Tencent Eats Meat, ByteDance Chases Soup"** **Jia Shi Consulting, "2025 China Mobile Game Market Status Report"** **Financial Associated Press, "Mini Games Become a 'Big Cake'? Major Companies Compete for the 40 Billion 'New Blue Ocean'"** **Daily Economic News, "Seizing the 'SLG + Mini Game': 37 Interactive Entertainment, Giant Network, Bilibili, NetEase Launch a New Round of User Competition"** ### 相关股票 - [ByteDance (BYTED.NA)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/BYTED.NA.md) - [Tencent (TCEHY.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/TCEHY.US.md) - [Tencent Holdings Limited (TCTZF.US)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/TCTZF.US.md) - [TENCENT-R (80700.HK)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/80700.HK.md) - [TENCENT (00700.HK)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/00700.HK.md) - [Tencent HK SDR 10to1 (HTCD.SG)](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/quote/HTCD.SG.md)