--- title: "2026 First Thunder, has China's gaming industry lost a city in its overseas expansion?" type: "News" locale: "zh-HK" url: "https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/274261098.md" description: "On January 22, 2026, Eagle Horn Network's game \"Arknights: Endfield\" encountered payment interface issues on the first day of its global public beta, resulting in random charges to players and triggering a crisis of trust. The official promised collective refunds but may face accusations of \"systemic financial fraud\" under California law, with potential compensation reaching up to 200 million USD. The game also has security vulnerabilities that affect user account safety. This incident highlights the importance of legal compliance and payment security for games going overseas" datetime: "2026-01-30T06:42:38.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/274261098.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/274261098.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/274261098.md) --- > 支持的語言: [简体中文](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/274261098.md) | [English](https://longbridge.com/en/news/274261098.md) # 2026 First Thunder, has China's gaming industry lost a city in its overseas expansion? In 2026, the first "fatal-level" landmine suddenly erupted in the gaming industry. On January 22, the global public beta of Eagle Horn Network's "Arknights: Endfield" experienced a random deduction incident at the payment interface of the overseas server on its first day. Players found that the system randomly deducted funds from other bound accounts when they recharged, leading to a bizarre phenomenon of "others recharge, you pay the bill," with the highest single deduction reaching €15,264.19 (approximately 120,000 RMB), triggering explosive complaints and a trust crisis within the global player community. The official response was to issue collective refunds, but according to California's Unfair Competition Law, large-scale "wrong payment-refund" cycles are classified as "systemic financial fraud," which can be recognized as money laundering. In this situation, California can directly initiate a public prosecution against Eagle Horn's subsidiary, with the minimum compensation for such cases reaching up to $200 million. Meanwhile, the international version of Eagle Horn quickly devised a countermeasure—upgrading the user agreement to require users to "voluntarily" waive their right to "class action" lawsuits. The security risks brought by "Arknights: Endfield" do not stop there. The game has also been plagued by bugs that remotely steal personal accounts and multiple deductions through two files. Under multiple pressures, on the day of the incident, Eagle Horn's recruitment page listed a position for "Legal (Contracts)." The importance of legal compliance and payment security in the gaming industry is once again highlighted for companies. At this juncture, we spoke with industry veterans about what new trends will emerge in the gaming overseas market in 2026 and what new landmines need to be avoided. According to incomplete statistics, in 2025, domestic gaming companies shut down a total of 117 games. Anime games (hereinafter referred to as "ACG") remain a hard-hit area, with over 20 projects being shut down or temporarily paused. The reasons behind this are not difficult to understand. ACG, characterized by "gender aesthetics" and "character obsession," often attracts a group of the most "difficult" users. Beyond role-playing, world exploration, and simulated combat, players invest a high emotional intensity in the NPCs and strategy characters within the game. When emotions overflow, the "added value" of emotional investment transforms into higher "moral" demands on the characters and even the game company. Recently, Paper Games faced controversy again due to suspected plagiarism of "Guardian" and vague otome tags. These intense emotions are inevitably built on players' high expectations for the "infrastructure" of ACG, including character design, visuals, worldviews, storylines, and interactive texts. This means that in the "invisible war" of aesthetic comparison and visual evolution, those that do not stand out will be quickly discarded. At the same time, the investment costs for ACG in distribution are enormous. In addition to traditional advertising and marketing, various offline pop-ups, cosplayer booths, and comic convention interactions are also essential. The high distribution costs inevitably lead to compressed profit margins, making ACG one of the most "thankless" categories in the industry Of course, this does not mean that game companies should ignore the content and emotional needs of players. On the contrary, games based on "emotional compensation" will always need to follow the trends of the emotional economy. However, for the vast majority of companies, their content creation capabilities and productivity struggle to meet the basic needs of players, which inevitably leads to gradual extinction and elimination in the fierce market competition. This also results in a particularly prominent "80/20 effect" in this category. Next, let's return to the topic of "new money codes." There is no doubt that the darling of 2025 will be "new SLG+X." In the top 30 monthly overseas revenue of domestic mobile games in 2025, SLG occupied nearly one-third of the list for almost a year. Data source: Sensor Tower The reason "new SLG+X" can succeed lies precisely in its ability to meet players' emotional needs. On one hand, the core gameplay strategy of SLG is applicable globally, with almost no understanding loss. By further segmenting the game system into different stages and setting levels from light to heavy, it better meets players' demands for a rich gaming experience. On the other hand, the diverse integration of "+X" gives the game itself different attributes such as social interaction, sports, and gambling, further perfecting the game ecosystem. By strengthening user stickiness through "external interaction," it further stimulates users' willingness to pay and intensifies players' sunk costs, thereby compelling players to deeply immerse themselves in the ecosystem to seek more diverse gaming experiences, forming a dual-loop model of emotional and experiential closure both inside and outside the game. So, will "new SLG+X" still be strong in 2026? Although the huge spending on advertising will lead to low profits for SLG, the industry's response is mostly affirmative. The only change is that "X" may have more extensions. In the sports year of 2026, both football and basketball may become the directions that practitioners anchor on. After all, "new SLG+X" is a successful path that can be quickly replicated, and currently, the industry has not found a more cost-effective hit than it. Has AI truly begun to "take control" of the gaming industry? By the end of December 2025, a set of interesting data seems to be proclaiming a phased victory to the outside world. According to statistics from Totally Human Media, the number of games on the Steam platform that actively disclose the use of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) has reached 10,258, accounting for 8% of all games on Steam. The total sales revenue of these games that actively disclose the use of generative AI on the Steam platform is approximately $660 million In November 2025, Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic, the second-largest distribution platform for PC games, publicly agreed with motion capture designer Matt Workman on Twitter, bluntly stating that the "AI production" disclosure labels of game stores like Steam are meaningless. The reason behind this is that he believes "AI will be involved in the development of almost all games in the future," and such data disclosures not only lack significance but could also harm the emotional connection between game companies and players. After all, as it stands, replacing concept artists with generative AI is still criticized by many gamers and industry professionals. At the beginning of 2026, the momentum of AI in gaming seems to be even stronger. At the start of the year, a mini-game called "Internet Giant Simulator" suddenly went viral, achieving over 50,000 daily page views on its launch day. Behind this overnight sensation were just two game novices with no development or coding experience. They relied on AI tools to complete the development of a hit game from scratch within a week while working at a major company. Coincidentally, another game, "Cyber Trek: Life and Death on the Aotai Line," also became popular shortly after. The series of good news seems to confirm what Zhu Huaimin, Vice President of 37 Interactive Entertainment Group, once said, "Games have become the best scenario for the application of AI technology." Of course, there are differing voices. An employee from a popular game development company in 2025 told Xia Guang She that the company's application of AI is only in secret marketing. For example, they collect information to grasp local market sentiment, then use AI NPCs to disguise players, enriching the experience and stimulating the market, thereby boosting local users' attention to the game. A head of a game company with a ten-digit annual income revealed that the company had invested nearly a billion in AI development, but whether for material generation or customer service interaction, AI was simply not usable. "The promotional images generated by AI are very strong in flavor and can be recognized at a glance. As customer service, their responses are too unintelligent; after players pay, they crave interaction and communication with the game company. After we replaced human staff with AI, we actually received a lot of complaints." In his view, the only benefit of AI for game companies is optimizing office processes. "For example, automatic contract archiving and supplier price comparison. AI is still a bubble for game production and operation." Recently, a piece of TMI in the gaming circle caused a huge stir on social media. According to insiders, Tencent's "Delta Action" team has set its year-end team-building event in Iceland and will distribute year-end bonuses equivalent to 24 to 36 months' salary. In recent years, as the gaming industry has been overshadowed by the "golden period coming to an end," with frequent news of layoffs and shutdowns, and mainstream esports traffic sluggish with sponsors "running away," this simple revelation seems to hint at a "hidden secret": the gaming industry still has a future to advance. In 2025, the overseas sales revenue of domestically developed games in China reached $20.455 billion, a year-on-year increase of 10.23%, while the overseas revenue of self-developed mobile games was $18.478 billion, a year-on-year increase of 13.16% This marks the sixth consecutive year that the gaming industry has surpassed the 100 billion yuan mark in overseas markets. This year, the top 10 most profitable games globally generated nearly 12.3 billion USD in revenue. 2026 seems to be another big year for gaming. In the global market, not only has Rockstar announced that "GTA 6" will debut on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in November 2026, but also a series of major titles such as Capcom's "Resident Evil 9: Soul's Requiem," Bungie's new shooter "Lost Starship: Marathon," and IO Interactive's reboot of the classic IP "007: The Beginning" will be released in 2026. Domestic gaming companies are also joining this battle. According to public information, Tencent's Chengdu Serpent Studio's Eclipsed Edge team is developing a single-player game "Annihilation Tide," and a "prequel" new title "Animal Punk," along with NetEase's urban open-world RPG "Infinity," and miHoYo's major new title "Honkai: Fate Spirit," all set to launch in 2026. It is worth mentioning that starting from 2025, the rise of mini-program games and SLGs has indeed attracted a wave of new entrants aiming to "make quick money," further intensifying the shadow of plagiarism in the gaming circle. Meanwhile, although "Black Myth: Wukong" has garnered global attention and recognition, domestic AAA games are still in a relatively primitive stage, with significant improvements needed in productivity and competitiveness. Companies capable of supporting long-term development are quite scarce, while the market is flooded with projects that masquerade as "AAA" but are heavily tainted with fraudulent undertones. On this basis, major companies continue to pursue their unique "dreams of responsibility." Whether it is rooting overseas, investing in local studios to support the development of the gaming industry from a global perspective, bravely bringing "national style" games to the global market, or spending lavishly on developing less favored tracks. On the first day of the international version of "Yan Yun Sixteen Sounds" on Steam, the number of online players exceeded 2 million. It is reported that a certain game company has spent tens of billions of yuan to invest in the development of an Open World game. This year, the US, Japan, and South Korea remain the core regions for gaming overseas, accounting for nearly 60% of the market. However, growth points have shifted to Latin America and the Middle East. "Now all user acquisition games will consider the Middle East, wanting to capture this market," revealed an industry insider. The reason behind this is still related to costs, "For the same price, customer acquisition and reach in the Middle East can even be ten times that of Europe and the US." Wang Jiali, the head of the Game Ecology Association, revealed that the eCPM in the Middle East market is between $4 and $6+, with high-quality materials reaching $8 to $12, while in Europe and the United States, it is only $1.5 to $3. Meanwhile, Saudi players have an average annual gaming expenditure of up to $270, which is 5.5 times that of the Chinese market. The young and wealthy population, extremely high willingness to pay, well-developed digital infrastructure, long-standing insufficient content supply, and national-level policy dividends. These structural advantages together create a "high growth, high value, high adaptability" golden window period. For small and medium-sized teams, especially independent games, under the normalization of game licensing, choosing niche categories + emerging markets, and adopting lightweight rapid trial and error is also a good decision. In 2025, the number of new overseas game companies from small and medium-sized enterprises increased by 26% year-on-year. At the same time, the Middle East region has shown an "extreme embrace" attitude towards game exports in recent years, proposing supportive policies in terms of policy, infrastructure, and funding, and is willing to continuously develop the esports industry to further improve the local gaming ecosystem. In the real-time gaming rankings in Saudi Arabia, games produced by Chinese companies account for more than one-third. Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam, is also an explosion zone. In recent years, Vietnam's gaming industry has shown a significant growth gap. According to Google and AppMagic, in 2024, the number of app and game downloads in Vietnam reached 6.7 billion, with a download rate of nearly 12,000 per minute, making it the TOP1 that year. However, at the same time, Vietnamese mobile games focus on casual games, with revenue primarily generated through advertising, resulting in a very low ARPU. In the past year, Vietnam's export revenue was less than $80 million, which is less than one-tenth of the global average. But this does not hinder the enthusiasm for the gaming industry in the Vietnamese market, nor does it prevent it from becoming a new fertile ground for game exports in the eyes of other countries. In 2025, the number of viewers for the Vietnamese League of Legends channel increased by 44%. According to South Korean media, the DRX team from the Korean League of Legends division will host regular season matches in Vietnam as their home ground in 2026, undoubtedly aiming to drive revenue. For Chinese game companies, Vietnam has also become a testing ground for game exports. It is understood that all game export companies will conduct trial operations in Vietnam. This is certainly not because the Vietnamese market is sufficiently promising or has a strong willingness to consume, but because the Vietnamese market has an exceptionally strong willingness to provide feedback. A game operator bluntly stated that Vietnamese players are particularly willing to try out games and communicate feedback with customer service, providing information that is very beneficial for game companies to improve and modify their projects. Most importantly, all of this is almost "zero-cost" (testing and trying games in China often requires a certain fee, which can reach hundreds of yuan per person), greatly reducing the cost of going overseas An unavoidable issue is that the ebb and flow of the game overseas market will still exist, and may even intensify in the coming years. According to Wang Jiali, as policies in the Japanese market become increasingly stringent, games may exhibit a situation similar to that of e-commerce—some resources may choose to withdraw from the Japanese market and flow into emerging markets. Nearly 60% of global game users obtain game information through social platforms, and the rise of emerging groups such as cross-platform players and female users has made "customized creativity + precise interaction" the key to breaking the deadlock. If in the past, game overseas promotion relied on global platforms represented by Steam, now the rise of DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) is unstoppable. "Currently, the operation of friend hubs and game communities is becoming increasingly important in game promotion and distribution. Only by engaging in deep communication with users can you truly build connections with them, thereby shaping user stickiness and extending the game's lifecycle." In Wang Jiali's view, by 2026, the promotion of independent games will also undergo a transformation from reliance on global platforms to a DTC model. This also means that as the game industry has crossed the wilderness and reached a crossroads of growth, we should recognize the necessity of shaping a healthy ecological chain for the entire industry. Beyond the games themselves, user communication spaces, the promotion of esports projects, the construction and cultivation of IP, and commercial models outside of applications will all become a collective matrix, jointly promoting the construction of the game's influence globally. When discussing the keywords for game overseas expansion in 2026, Wang Jiali believes it is "cultural attributes." "In the past, large companies did not consider cultural integration when making games, but now, manufacturers expanding into the Middle East have made very deep local integrations in terms of religious beliefs, cultural customs, and user habits, such as launching nighttime battlefield modes to encourage Middle Eastern gaming." Of course, issues related to cross-border payments remain a dilemma that the industry must face. For game manufacturers, independently building and operating payment channels still poses significant challenges. There are many issues that need to be resolved, such as the differences in overseas compliance, the cumbersome cross-border settlement process, foreign exchange conversion losses, and security protection in payment processes, and there is even a need to avoid major payment loopholes caused by "sudden ideas." For example, the issue with "Arknights: Endfield" arose from a process blocking bug caused by the company's redis thread pool not being decoupled and unequal, and the security verification and user credit issues of its partner PayPal have once again drawn external attention. Undoubtedly, for Chinese game manufacturers, the competition in the global market is not just about the games themselves. 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