Dragon Tides' Official Account Uses Chinese Dialect Slur 'Shabi Biaozi' as Marketing Meme — Players Ask: Who Exactly Is This Game For?

A Chinese gacha game still in its pre-launch marketing phase decided that the best way to hype up its official social media was... deploying dialectal slurs and edgy historical memes? Welcome to the trainwreck that is Dragon Tides' (归龙潮) community management.

It all started when Dragon Tides' official social media account posted content featuring two highly controversial phrases. 'Shabi biaozi' (撒币彪子) — where 'biaozi' is a northeastern Chinese dialect insult roughly equivalent to calling someone a braindead fool, combined with 'sha' (spend money stupidly). Then there was 'distributed jingguan' (分布式京观) — 'jingguan' referring to ancient trophy displays of enemy skulls on battlefields. Players screenshotted everything and the posts went viral across gaming forums.

The NGA thread erupted immediately. One commenter nailed it: 'I thought this was just dumb community management — turns out it's deliberate troll behavior.' Another quipped that they should just hire Sun Xiaochuan (a notorious Chinese internet troll figure known for 'abstract culture') as their brand ambassador at this point, essentially equating Dragon Tides' marketing with bottom-tier meme culture.

But the real burns came from players questioning the game's entire identity. A top-voted comment put it perfectly: 'What demographic is this game even trying to attract? They swing left and right hitting everyone — their community management is a so-called genius. Did they confuse gacha gaming with showbiz, thinking 'all publicity is good publicity'? Celebrities can survive on traffic, but mobile games live and die by their core paying playerbase.' This hit the nail on the head — the fundamental flaw in Dragon Tides' strategy is thinking edgelord engagement translates to revenue.

The 'distributed jingguan' screenshot became one of the most-shared pieces of the controversy, with another player asking: 'What kind of troll game is this? Are they trying to pull a "equally offending everyone" strategy that another game already crashed and burned with?'

One particularly insightful comment dug into the deeper industry trend: 'Lots of games riding the guochao (national trend) wave try to look edgy and progressive by adding this kind of stuff — they think they're being hilarious.' This points to a growing problem in Chinese game marketing: studios slapping 'guochao' labels on their products while filling their socials with lowbrow shock humor, thinking it makes them look cool and modern. Another commenter piled on: 'Almost every Chinese gacha game and a huge chunk of single-player titles love deploying dead memes to seem trendy, but it just makes the creators look like clowns.'

There's also a plot twist. Someone claimed to have spotted a post on Tieba (Baidu's forum platform) from an alleged former employee denying they were the one who posted the controversial weibo content. Whether genuine or just damage control, this 'Rashomon'-style finger-pointing only added more fuel to the dumpster fire.

As of now, Dragon Tides' official channels have offered zero formal response. But looking at the community reception, whether this was intentional edginess or genuine incompetence, the 'shabi biaozi' incident has successfully tanked what little goodwill the game had left. As one commenter perfectly summarized: 'I'm increasingly confused about what playerbase this game is even trying to attract — are they just farming content for drama tourists?' If that isn't the most brutal eulogy for a game's marketing strategy, I don't know what is.