NetEase's Eggy Party Announces 500M Registrations on Same Day as Tencent's Yuanmeng Launches Open Beta — December 15 Showdown Gets Real

Have you ever seen mobile game studios go head-to-head this hard? NetEase's Eggy Party (蛋仔派对) just announced it hit 500 million registered users and scheduled a celebration event for December 15 — the exact same day Tencent's Yuanmeng Zhixing (元梦之星) launches its open beta. This isn't coincidence; this is a full-on corporate cage match — the "Supreme Battle 2.0."

Tencent is going absolutely nuclear: a 1.4 billion RMB first-phase investment to build out the content ecosystem and esports scene, a fleet of celebrity endorsements, plus IP collabs with Honor of Kings (王者荣耀) and Crayon Shin-chan (蜡笔小新). Ads are literally everywhere — from gaming media outlets to short video platforms.

As one player put it: "Every gaming media outlet I can find today has been bought out by Yuanmeng's ads. Tencent is really going all-out this time." Classic Tencent money printer energy.

However, NetEase's 500 million registration claim is getting roasted hard. One player fired back: "500 million? How many people even live in China — 500 million of them play this game?" Others dug up old receipts: "Over a decade ago they were already claiming '300 million people's FPS dream' — 500 million in today's internet era is nothing surprising." But that was quickly countered: "The '300 million mice' (referring to CrossFire's marketing slogan) meant 300 million internet users at the time, not 300 million game players."

Some players cut straight through the noise: "Honestly, most of those accounts are just bot farms and reroll accounts." Others pushed back though: "Does this game even have a reroll market? The inflation on that 500M number might not be as bad as people think."

Setting aside the data skepticism, one player gave a pretty solid rundown of what Eggy Party actually is: it's a social party game, essentially "Wipeout" in the metaverse. NetEase managed to make it massively popular among female college students and elementary school kids without QQ/WeChat account binding — which is genuinely impressive for a NetEase title. That said, NetEase also got called out for being stingy: last year a mount cost 1,288 RMB and skins regularly hit triple digits.

But for the December 15 event, NetEase is actually going all-in. According to players who checked the details, they're giving away a 68 RMB skin for free, plus a collector's edition item and 60 RMB worth of in-game currency. The community reaction: "This is what it looks like when NetEase is truly desperate enough to be generous."

Looking back at the original "Battle Royale War" — Tencent's PUBG Mobile (和平精英) came from behind and crushed NetEase's Knives Out (荒野行动). Now the party game genre is getting the exact same sequel. Can the "Pig Farm" (NetEase's community nickname) hold its first-mover advantage? Can the "Goose Factory" (Tencent's nickname) work its magic again with 1.4 billion in firepower? The "Supreme Battle 2.0" promises to be just as entertaining as the games themselves.

Players can barely contain their excitement: "Head-to-head snipe-off — make it even more intense!" "Fast forward to: having Eggy Party on your phone blocks you from using QQ and WeChat." "This is what real corporate warfare looks like — give us more!" Grab your popcorn, folks. December 15 is going to be one heck of a show.