On May 24th, at 8:30 PM, the lead planner of Tencent’s game “Luo Ke Wang Guo: Shi Jie” (also known as “Luo Ke World”) issued a lengthy apology.
In the apology letter, he admitted, “Reality is way more boring than fiction: no team overhaul, no parachuting in, no behind-the-scenes team. We’re the ones who messed up. It’s even more painful than a conspiracy theory. I’m deeply sorry for disappointing everyone’s expectations.”
He also stated, “I totally get why people would rather believe in ‘team overhaul’ or ‘parachuting in’ than face the fact that we messed up. It’s like, why did everything go wrong when it was fine during S1?”
According to the planner, “Over the past few days, my team and I have been constantly switching between conference rooms, workstations, and online meetings, trying to quickly discuss, identify, and fix the issues everyone’s been pointing out.”
Regarding the game’s specific problems, the apology letter explained, “During the public test, we didn’t have time to finish some adjustments and left some resources behind. Some issues we fixed in S1 didn’t get merged into S2. And some ‘diseases’ we’ve been dealing with had unexpected effects. That’s why we saw so many unexpected changes after S2 updated.”
The letter apologized for severely underestimating the risks of modifying content that players had already obtained. “We’ll make sure to prioritize the safety of existing content alongside game optimization in our future work.”
In May 2021, Tencent’s game “Luo Ke Wang Guo” made its debut at the company’s annual game release conference. This 10-year-old IP represents a big part of domestic players’ childhood and teenage memories. As soon as it went online, many players exclaimed, “The king is back!” on various live streaming platforms.
On March 26th, 2026, “Luo Ke Wang Guo: Shi Jie” officially launched its public test on all platforms. On May 21st, the game’s S2 season went live. According to the game’s official introduction, this is a spiritual world game developed by Tencent’s Magic Cube Studio, based on the “Luo Ke Wang Guo” IP. It combines spiritual collection battles, open-world exploration, and free socializing, creating a new “Luo Ke Wang Guo” full of memories and beauty.
The game explicitly states that it “doesn’t sell spirituals, doesn’t sell values, and doesn’t have card draws.” There are almost no forced payment points, only cosmetic items and battle manuals for sale. Players can even “share” exclusive battle manual pets with friends who have paid for them, making it possible to play for free.
Notably, “Luo Ke Wang Guo: Shi Jie” is similar to “World of Warcraft” and “Mole’s Garden” in that it’s centered around “childhood memories.” The game supports multiple platforms, including mobile, tablet, and PC. Within 13 hours of its public test launch, it attracted over 15 million new players and topped the Apple iOS free game chart and sales chart.
As soon as it was released, the game became a hit again, becoming a popular topic on social media at the end of March. Players were eager to recommend it, with the phrase “childhood is back” becoming a key selling point. According to recent data, on May 25th, the game ranked 8th on the Apple iOS free game chart.
Some players pointed out that compared to other nostalgic games, “Luo Ke Wang Guo: Shi Jie” has a much lower “pay-to-play” threshold, making it a special case in the nostalgic game monetization model. However, the long-term effects of this model remain to be seen.
For Tencent, “Luo Ke Wang Guo” is more than just a self-developed IP. The page game “Luo Ke Wang Guo,” developed by Magic Cube Studio, reached its peak in 2014 with over 30 million monthly active users. During that time, Tencent also released several movies based on the IP, earning hundreds of millions of yuan at the box office. As Tencent’s first original animation IP to gain widespread popularity nationwide, it provided valuable experience for the company’s future cross-industry endeavors.
On May 13th, Tencent released its Q1 2026 financial report. In terms of game performance, domestic market game revenue reached 45.4 billion yuan, a 6% year-over-year increase. Long-standing games like “Honor of Kings,” “Peacekeeper Elite,” and “Delta Force” saw record-breaking revenue this quarter. New games like “Luo Ke Wang Guo: Shi Jie” were also highly popular. International market game revenue grew 13% year-over-year to 18.8 billion yuan, with both mature products like “Clash of Clans” and “Contract: Empires” and new products like “Tides of War” contributing to the growth.
A report on the 2026 China game industry trends and potential analysis showed that mobile games dominated the market, accounting for 73.29% of actual sales revenue. In contrast, web games continued to decline, occupying only 1.23% of the market. The domestic web game market’s actual sales revenue decreased by 6.74% year-over-year, with a total scale of 4.325 billion yuan. This decline has persisted for 10 consecutive years.
