The history of porting Shadow Fight 2 under Tencent (feedback and a couple of useful tips)
About cooperation with the main Chinese publisher of the Celestial Empire – the company Tencent – and adaptation of the game Shadow Fight 2 to its requirements, – App2Top.ru the project manager of Nekki Sergey Sorokin told.
China…
The Chinese have both an App Store and a Windows Phone Store. However, if you really want to succeed in the Middle Kingdom, you need to go to local Android markets, like MyApp.
MyApp is a mobile application store of one of the largest Internet companies in China – Tencent. This market is responsible for 30% of mobile downloads in the country (moreover, it costs 25% of smartphones in China).
How do I get started with Tencent?
If we talk about Shadow Fight 2, then Tencent came to us, and not vice versa. At that time, our application was already in the market 360. We wanted our application to be distributed in it as an exclusive (in order to get a feature and promo “in honor of this”). 360 we were refused. After that, communication with Tencet began.
Having reached a consensus on the requirements, we began to cooperate.
There were two managers on the part of Tencent: one was responsible for contracts, money transactions, features, and the like, and the second, let’s say, was a release manager: through him we received the necessary SDK, made requests for the necessary art, etc.
Porting
After signing the contract and setting “real” deadlines, we were able to start porting.
For porting, we needed 1 manager and 2 programmers. One programmer was on full-time, the second was on support. Why is that? It’s simple: it’s always easier to figure out how to do better together.
Of course, it was not without the help of a server programmer, but it took him one day to do everything about everything.
SDK
The SDK guide to MeApp is voluminous. Fortunately, Tencent, especially for those who carry out porting, highlights those points in the documentation that must be implemented in order for the application to work adequately.
Ok? Yes! But, despite this, I recommend reading the documentation in full.
The thing is that sometimes not only what is needed is highlighted. Plus, there may be a situation when you need to add something, but they forgot to highlight it for you.
Of the significant drawbacks, I would single out the fact that the guide, unfortunately, is not fully translated into English. So the programmer must know Chinese.
The scheme itself can be neglected, the most important is highlightedComments in the code would certainly be helpful
Payment card
A huge advantage of porting to MyApp is that you need to apply a minimum of changes to your application. The most difficult thing we faced was the need to remove advertising (it’s simple), as well as embed a new payment system (it’s a little less simple). Let’s focus on the latter in a little more detail.
All payments in your application must be made via SMS from three local mobile operators (China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom). In order for payments to go, IAPs must process a pair of IDs at once: Goods ID and Ponit ID. The first is the IAP number in the game, the second is the serial number of the transaction. For each of the operators, you will need to set this pair of IDs for each IAP.
Here, by the way, there is another important point: Tencent has its own restrictions on the maximum price of IAP, so the cost of each will need to be recalculated.
When working with SMS payments, the following points should be taken into account:
- Be sure to be able to fake a payment to check its operability with the new system.
- Need a Chinese working SIM card.
- It is important to be prepared for the fact that the health check of your code will be carried out by Tencent managers.
Communication
And point 3 can just create sudden problems.
Firstly, Tencent managers are as secretive as possible: no matter how much we tried, they did not give us any contacts other than e-mail. You will have to communicate with them exclusively by mail.
Secondly, there is a big time difference. When we went to work and were ready to communicate with Chinese colleagues, Tencent employees safely went to bed.
Thirdly, the answer to the simplest question can be waited for as much as 4 days.
Fourth, the answer can be either incomplete, or if you have a lot of questions in one letter (besides complex questions like: why don’t your libs work – although the code is correct?), some of the questions may go unnoticed altogether.
Personally, we had to duplicate these questions (sometimes several times).
All these difficulties (mail, time difference, long answers and knocking out answers) led to the fact that the deadlines were shifted, and very much.
As soon as tough ultimatums came from our side, things went much faster: in the end, this led to a successful release.
So my advice is: be as persistent as possible in all aspects and requests.
Here’s the thing: despite the fact that there are difficulties, Tencent managers are trying to help both with testing and with providing additional information.
With the exception of the mentioned disadvantages, the porting took place quite smoothly.
Yes, Tencent takes the lion’s share of your income – 60%. All income statistics come in the form of reports for a certain period (however, it already depends on what you specify in the contract). No one forbids you to leave your statistics, however, taking into account taxes, deductions and refunds, a more accurate answer will still be from Tencent itself.
In conclusion, I would like to say that unlike other markets, such as 360, in MyApp you have no restrictions on the size of the application (in 360 the ceiling is 50 MB), and the very fact of the exit guarantees the feature. Plus, there are no mandatory features that must be embedded in the application, even if you are against it, like Kakao’s friend lists.
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