“Sheep Makes A Sheep” Goes Viral: The Founder Once Operated WeChat’s First Mini-game With A Monthly Revenue Exceeding 100 Million

Elimination games like "Tetris" and "Happy Match" have been played in new ways.

After 2 days of fermentation, on September 15th, "Sheep made a sheep, donkey made a donkey" and "Sheep made a sheep the third level" were still trending on Weibo. "Yang Le Ge Yang" has been on the hot search list for three days, and the server crashed three times. It attracted the attention of Weibo netizens and ranked first on the hot search list.

After experiencing it, Sohu Technology found that the rules of the "Sheep Make a Sheep" game are simple, but it is difficult to pass the level. When the player clicks on three bricks with the same graphics on the screen, the bricks will enter the slots at the bottom of the interface, and the three identical bricks will be eliminated. There can be up to 7 bricks in the slot, and you need to eliminate all the bricks to pass the level.

The difficulty of the game is that the blocks overlap each other. Only when the upper block is clicked into the slot will the block covered by it be activated. As the number of bricks and overlapping layers increases, the difficulty of the game increases exponentially.

The main page of the game "Sheep, a Sheep"

In addition, each level of the game has three auxiliary tools and a resurrection opportunity, which need to be shared with friends or obtained after watching relevant advertising push. Currently, embedded advertisers include ByteDance, Dingdong Maicai, Tmall, etc.

If the player passes the second level, he will join the "sheep flock" in the area. The more "sheep" in the "sheep flock", the more people will pass the level. The game uses regions as rankings to stimulate users' desire to win and lose with regional and collective sense of honor. Most of the players above said that the game is fast-paced, the simple "Match 3" has a low barrier to entry and can bring direct feedback. Some players also described the game as a "new opium".

"Yang Le Ge Yang" is ranked by region

In terms of game level settings, the game interface displays "one level per day". The first level is simple, but the difficulty of the second level soars. The number of overlapping layers of bricks is close to 20. Some netizens commented on the two levels, "The first level allows you to draw a circle, and the second level allows you to become Picasso."

The pass rate is only 0.2%. Some netizens said, "I haven't passed the level after playing for 7 hours."

"Yang Le Ge Yang" boasted on the WeChat mini-program introduction that "the clearance rate is less than 0.1%." Some netizens said, "I still haven't cleared the second level after playing it for seven hours."

With the popularity of the game, a large number of clearance strategies have appeared on Xiaohongshu and Weibo. Many users have questioned that the game cannot really be cleared, but is just a trick used by game developers to make users watch advertisements.

Some players found that there was a bug in the game, saying that at the end of the game they found that some bricks did not have 3 remaining and could not be eliminated. There is even a plug-in called "Sheep Makes a Sheep" on the Internet. According to Sohu Technology, this plug-in can achieve unlimited resurrections and use of props by replacing WeChat files on the computer.

There is a bug in the game "Sheep of a Sheep"

Luoski, a person in the game industry, once told the media that he had communicated with the team before, and the product was actually not finished yet. It became popular all of a sudden. The other party said that he did not buy the hot search.

According to the data displayed on the "Yang Le Ge Sheep" mini program, more than 41 million sheep participated in the challenge in just half a day on September 15. Only 40,000 sheep passed, and the clearance rate was only 0.09%.

Data from WeChat Index shows that the keyword "Yang Le Ge Yang" has been searched more than 4.09 million times on September 14, an increase of nearly 60 times compared to the previous day. On Weibo, the topic #杨婷格羊# has 180 million followers and nearly 200 million people discussing it. There are 6 topics in the Top 30 of Douyin's hot search list related to "Sheep has a sheep". The number of videos related to the topic #sheep legesheep has exceeded 350 million times, and its official Douyin account has reached 170,000 fans in 3 days. There are also heated discussions on platforms such as Mai.

According to calculations, even if the ecpm is calculated at a relatively low level of 10 yuan (one person watches 10 ads a day), this game can reach a daily revenue of one million yuan.

On September 14, the official Weibo of "Yang Le Ge Yang" stated that there is currently an abnormality in the server, which makes it impossible to log in to the game. The company is urgently investigating and repairing it. Please wait patiently. After the repair is completed, we will synchronize it with everyone as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding. At the same time, the official blog of "Yang Le Ge Yang" took advantage of the popularity to announce that "urgent recruitment of back-end server development" was announced, and stated that both recommendation and self-recommendation would be rewarded 5,000 yuan.

The team has less than 50 people. The founder once operated WeChat mini-game, the first product with monthly revenue exceeding 100 million yuan.

"Yang Le Ge Yang" was developed by Beijing Jianyou Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jianyou Technology"). According to public information, Jianyou Technology was established in January 2021 with a registered capital of approximately 1.17 million yuan. Legal representative Zhang Jiaxu, Xiamen Thunder Network Technology Co., Ltd., and Beijing Lexan Technology Co., Ltd. jointly hold shares. Zhang Jiaxu holds 85.5% of the shares, Thunder Games holds 10%, and LeShan Technology holds 4.5%.

Equity penetration chart of Beijing Jianyou Technology Co., Ltd.

It is understood that Jianyou Technology focuses on leisure and social tracks. The team is composed of Zhang Jiaxu, the producer of "The Pirates Are Coming" and core members. The company has less than 50 people. According to its 2021 annual report, the number of insured people is only 7, and the office The location is located in the office of Longqi Square, Changping District, Beijing.

As a small start-up company, Jianyou Technology received investment from Thunder Network in June last year. It is worth mentioning that "The Pirates Are Coming" is the first WeChat mini-game product to have a monthly revenue of over 100 million, with daily active users reaching 25 million.

Thunder Network is a subsidiary of the A-share listed game company Gigabit () and is the publisher of "Moore Manor" and "Obi Island". According to the data, Gigabyte became a shareholder in June 2022 and holds 10% of the shares of Jianyou Technology, making it the second largest shareholder.

After "Yang Le Ge Yang" became popular, Gigabyte responded to investors saying that it had paid attention to the game. The game was developed by Gigabit's joint-stock company, and the investment ratio was not high. The related income will be reflected in Gigabit's investment income.

Public information shows that Jianyou Technology has registered the software copyright for "Yang Le Ge Yang". The game was first published on June 13, and the registration approval date was July 29. In addition, the company has also registered software copyrights for Wandering Pet Home, Moon Village, Crazy Wipe, and Rescue the Watermelon.

After the game became popular, it also caused plagiarism controversy. On September 14, some netizens discovered that this little game was suspected of plagiarism. Judging from the exposed game screen, the gameplay of "Sheep of a Sheep" is almost the same as that of "Sheep", the only difference is the icons of bricks in the game. In response to this, the official response of "Sheep's Sheep" stated, "The game uses the most basic gameplay. If the 'make three in a row' gameplay is considered plagiarism, then there are too many such games, and the company will not pay attention to it. , users naturally have their own judgment.” In addition, another game developed by the company, “Rescue Big Watermelon,” was also considered to have plagiarized the previously popular game “Synthetic Big Watermelon.”

game interface

Previous similar games such as "Synthetic Watermelon", "Traveling Frog" and "2048" have all briefly become popular. "Sheep's Sheep" uses simple game rules to take advantage of users' mentality "I will definitely be able to pass it next time", allowing users to challenge repeatedly. Products designed for users' similar psychology also include Pinduoduo's cash withdrawal mechanism. Some game marketing scholars believe that by controlling the difficulty of the game, game developers appropriately arouse players' negative emotions and guide players to make comments based on negative emotions such as "posting complaints on Weibo," "watching ads," "repeated challenges," and even "paying." Behavior.

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