Bilibili Launches In-House Game Publishing Division, Poaches Producer Who Worked on Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact & Tower of Fantasy — Players Roast 'Mobile Game Graveyard'

Bilibili just dropped a bombshell. Right in the middle of the gacha game industry's brutal winter — with studios across China downsizing and the 'second dimension game' (二次元, a.k.a. anime-style gacha game) market contracting — B站 has done the exact opposite. They've announced a brand-new first-tier division: the Self-Developed Game Publishing Department. The kicker? The guy running it has a resume spanning three of China's most iconic anime gacha titles: Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact, and Tower of Fantasy. Sounds impressive on paper. But B站's players? They're absolutely not buying it.

On March 4th, Bilibili issued an internal memo establishing the 'Self-Developed Game Publishing Department' (自研游戏发行部) as a first-tier company division, reporting directly to CEO Chen Rui. The department is led by Chen Tengpeng (alias: 二猴哥哥), and it absorbs the previously existing Self-Developed Operations Team 1, plus the Guangzhou and Beijing sub-divisions from the former Game Publishing Center. The memo states this restructuring aims to push forward the 'R&D and operations integrated' (研运一体) model — corporate speak for tighter coupling between game development and live service management.

Chen Tengpeng's career trajectory is genuinely impressive. He joined Tencent after graduating in 2013, working on casual and anime game titles. In 2018, he jumped to miHoYo as the product operations lead for Honkai Impact 3rd's Chinese server, later becoming the global product operations lead for Genshin Impact — arguably the biggest Chinese game export in history. By 2022, he was back in Tencent's orbit, this time at their overseas publishing brand Level Infinite, heading up the global dual-platform launch of Tower of Fantasy. That's a career arc hitting nearly every major milestone in China's anime gacha ecosystem.

A netizen on floor 14 even posted a screenshot of Chen's detailed resume and asked if anyone could verify the exact month he left miHoYo for Tencent — a not-so-subtle hint about potential non-compete agreement issues that could be lurking beneath the surface.

But here's where it gets spicy. The NGA comment section is absolutely roasting this announcement. The top-voted comment (floor 1) delivers a surgical strike: 'What is this, the Grand Council of State (军机处)? Reporting directly to the emperor? LMAO.' The joke being that a department head reporting straight to the CEO is either an incredible power move or organizational theater — and players clearly think it's the latter.

Floor 4 is even more brutal: 'I've worked with B站 on two projects, and all I can say is the people running their mobile game division are absolute garbage.' This commenter claims firsthand experience collaborating with B站's game team and delivers a verdict so harsh it can't even be printed in full. Floor 8 adds: 'B站 doing in-house R&D? Developing non-recyclable trash? Has Uncle (Bilibili CEO Chen Rui's meme nickname) not given up yet?'

The most iconic roast comes from floor 12: 'The mobile game graveyard has recruited such a powerful general — surely things are looking up now! When's the de-gamification happening?' The 'mobile game graveyard' (手游坟场) label has haunted Bilibili for years, earned through a string of flopped titles. Floor 16 calls it out directly: 'Remember what happened with Sladar (斯露德)? B站 self-developed = I'm not playing it.'

Floor 18 delivers perhaps the most absurd anecdote: 'They managed to launch Uma Musume (赛马娘) with full marketing... but then there was nowhere to actually download it. This is genuinely one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen in the gaming industry.' Floor 17, a self-declared former player of a B站-exclusive game, vents: 'The operations and game design were pure garbage — they smashed the hen AND the eggs together, then tried to sell ground meat at the price of a whole chicken. Impressive, really.'

Floor 9 spotted a fun coincidence: Chen Tengpeng's resume hits all three 'elemental' gacha games — Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact, and Tower of Fantasy — essentially the holy trinity of Chinese anime gacha. Meanwhile, floor 15 cites an industry figure's public take that 'anime gacha games are dying,' calling B站's timing the equivalent of 'joining the Kuomintang in 1949' — a classic Chinese internet idiom meaning backing a losing side right before total collapse.

Looking at the overall sentiment, player confidence in Bilibili's game self-development capability is basically at zero. In a contracting market where even established studios are struggling, B站 doubling down on self-developed publishing is either a bold strategic pivot or another chapter in the ever-expanding saga of the Mobile Game Graveyard. Either way, it's going to be entertaining to watch.