In 2021, a tiny Beijing-based studio released Sheep a Sheep, a small yet deceptively difficult tile-matching game, to almost no fanfare. The game didn’t even have a dedicated app; instead, players could access it only through WeChat, Tencent’s do-everything messaging software.

The game’s legacy might have ended there, but after months spent languishing in relative obscurity, Sheep a Sheep suddenly rocketed up the player charts in September 2022. Despite a four-person development team and reported budget of just 500,000 yuan (then about $76,000), it hit 213 million monthly active users and took in over 100 million yuan in 2022 alone.

The game’s success wasn’t just a triumph for small developers; it signaled a sea change in China’s gaming industry, as more developers began taking advantage of sweetheart deals offered by mega-apps like WeChat and Douyin — the version of TikTok accessible on the Chinese mainland — to reach large audiences with relatively little risk.

For years, Chinese game publishers have chafed at the high fees charged by the country’s Android handset manufacturers — at 50%, their cuts far outstrip those demanded by either Apple or Google. By contrast, developers can keep as much as 70% of earnings on titles released directly through WeChat. Douyin, a relative newcomer to the gaming space, lets some preferred partners keep as much as 90% of the proceeds for games released on its platform.

There are increasing signs that casual gamers are also embracing these “mini games,” as the platforms term them. Requiring no bloated downloads or lengthy installations, the sector has come a long way since WeChat debuted its first mini game, Tiao yi tiao, in 2017. According to a report from China Merchants Securities, the mini game market is expected reach 42 billion yuan this year, up nearly twofold from 2022.

And while mini games remain a fraction of the overall mobile gaming market, the sector has found a lucrative niche catering to previously underserved gaming demographics like female and middle-aged players.

For developers, the advantages of mini games are obvious: low overhead, generally short development timelines, and a higher cut of the proceeds. That means the bar for a successful game is lower, allowing developers to take more risks.

While most Chinese app stores take 50% of every in-app transaction, Tencent and Douyin developer ByteDance have been aggressive in courting small developers with better profit-sharing agreements. For the most part, mini game channel costs — the share of earnings taken by app stores or other partners — are between 20% and 30%, significantly lower than that of traditional app-based games.

(Header image: Visuals from VCG, reedited by Luo Yahan/Sixth Tone)