Chinese game publishers with limited marketing budgets often face a difficult choice when promoting a new title: HeyBox, Bilibili, or Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote)?
At first glance, many people would call the comparison unfair. It is like asking which team is most likely to win the FIFA World Cup and including China’s men’s national soccer team among the contenders. Compared with HeyBox and Bilibili, Xiaohongshu barely seems to belong in the conversation. On what grounds should it even be considered?
That skepticism is not unfounded.
HeyBox got its start during the early boom of PUBG: Battlegrounds. It later built a large gaming user base through services such as data lookup, social features, and game sales, pulling ahead of comparable rivals. It also has the most mature integrated marketing pipeline among the three. Within the app, a game can move through the full cycle from exposure to search to conversion.
Bilibili, meanwhile, is familiar to most Chinese internet users. It began with anime and ACG, an abbreviation for animation, comics, and games, and has since accumulated a large base of broader internet users.
