Tencent's Dream Star Gets Crushed by NetEase's Eggy Party Despite Desperate Promotion — Even King of Glory Couldn't Save It

Last year it was 'farm eggs,' this year it's still 'farm eggs' — that one quip from NGA's gossip board captures the entire party game landscape in a nutshell. Eggy Party remains the undisputed king, while Dream Star, which once boldly declared a 'Chinese New Year final battle,' couldn't even sniff the top of the charts.

For context, 'farm eggs' (农鸡蛋) is community slang bundling together the biggest mobile game cash cows: King of Glory (nicknamed 'Nong' from 农药), PUBG Mobile (鸡 = chicken, slang for the battle royale), and Eggy Party (蛋 = egg). This revenue ranking chart gets dragged out every Chinese New Year for the community's annual roast session, and this year's verdict is identical to last: Eggy Party sits rock-solid at the top, while Dream Star is nowhere to be found.

One commenter fired the most devastating question: 'Where does Dream Star rank?' — accompanied by a screenshot showing they searched the entire chart and couldn't find it. The answer was self-evident. The comment section erupted in collective schadenfreude.

A top-voted comment nailed it: 'Eggy Party has the first-mover advantage and players have sunk costs — Dream Star can't just brute-force its way in with money.' Another player piled on with insider-level analysis: 'The bigger issue is Dream Star's bizarre game design decisions. It's supposed to be a casual party game, but all the decent rewards are locked behind competitive rankings. Zero small rewards for casual spenders. Since February, every gacha banner has a 100+ pull pity minimum. They're trying to hook whales when they should be building a broad casual spending base.'

The monetization horror stories got even worse. A player broke down the newest legendary skin: 'The orange-tier skin requires limited-time event currencies that expire after each event, with a 1.6% drop rate and a hard pity at 1,240 RMB (~$170). The collab banners are similarly absurd. It's honestly hilarious at this point.' Their conclusion? They'd just log in for a few casual rounds as a Fall Guys substitute and nothing more.

Faced with this crisis, Tencent pulled out what might be the most desperate card in mobile gaming history: players discovered that King of Glory's own splash screen now carries a Dream Star promotion ad. That's Tencent's crown jewel — the single most profitable mobile game on the planet — being used as a billboard for its struggling little brother. The community was stunned but merciless: 'Dream Star gets crown prince treatment, but unfortunately it's a crown prince who can't be saved (阿斗, a Chinese idiom for an incompetent heir).' This was reportedly the first time anyone had seen King of Glory promote another game this way.

Perhaps the most lethal blow came from the target demographic itself. A player went home for the holidays and found all their elementary-school-aged nieces and nephews playing Eggy Party. When asked why not Dream Star, the kids' answer was devastatingly simple: 'Because that one's a copycat.' When even the children reject you, there's no PR spin that can fix that.

Industry observers offered a broader perspective: since TikTok (抖音) rose to dominance, Tencent's old playbook of throwing money at competitors to win market share — which worked during the PUBG Mobile era — simply doesn't work anymore. NetEase now has TikTok as a distribution channel, making it nearly impossible for Dream Star's cash-splash strategy to make a dent. One commenter even compared Dream Star to Girls' Frontline 2: 'Didn't Dream Star promise a Chinese New Year showdown? Why is it so quiet?' The reply was savage: 'Girls' Frontline 2 also promised a New Year showdown, and look how that turned out.'

The thread ended with a comedic twist: one player bragged about pocketing 1,000-2,000 RMB in 'red envelope' money from Dream Star's promotional events, complete with a laughing emoji. Behind the self-deprecating humor lies a brutal truth — when the most entertaining thing about a game is exploiting its promotion giveaways rather than actually playing it, its fate is probably already sealed. One sharp-eyed commenter also noticed that LOL Mobile's revenue somehow surpassed Teamfight Tactics on the charts, which was another minor surprise buried in this year's rankings.