Soochow Securities Company Limited released a research report stating that A-share gaming companies demonstrated outstanding performance in H1 2025. Beyond industry prosperity and competitive landscape factors, "micro-horror search combat escape" games and "overseas SLG games" have driven corresponding companies' performance and valuation upgrades.
Specifically, the "investment-risk-return" closed loop of "search combat escape" games, through high failure penalty mechanisms and strong victory reward mechanisms, may become potential evergreen hit games. Overseas SLG games have high single-user value and low single-product success rates, but once achieving breakthrough hits, their long lifecycle brings steady performance release with extremely high returns.
**"Micro-Horror Search Combat Escape": Potential Evergreen Hit Games with Strong Performance and Valuation Elasticity from Long Lifecycle and High Profit Margins**
The "investment-risk-return" closed loop of "search combat escape" games creates player addiction through high failure penalty mechanisms and strong victory reward mechanisms. Core gameplay focuses on "search" (resource collection) and "combat" (in-game confrontation). From sub-category development perspective, there are games like "Delta Force," "Dark Zone Breakout," and "Fog Hunter" using shooting and ARPG as core "combat" gameplay, as well as "Supernatural Action Group" using micro-horror themed casual social gameplay as core "search" gameplay.
Soochow Securities expresses optimism about "Supernatural Action Group" targeting the casual social, female-oriented "search combat escape" sub-segment. As of September 2025, the market has no competing products. The firm is optimistic about the game's continuous gameplay iteration and steady user growth, expecting it to become another evergreen game for Giant Network (002558.SZ), significantly enhancing the company's performance foundation. Additionally, evergreen games have low marketing expense ratios, and long lifecycle stable revenue will alleviate the company's performance volatility from large and small product cycles. Therefore, Soochow Securities is bullish on "Supernatural Action Group" bringing Davis double-click effects to Giant Network.
**"Overseas SLG Games": Gameplay Fusion Innovation with Industry Entering New Expansion Cycle, Leading Companies Show Prominent Advantages**
According to Sensor Tower, overseas SLG mobile game market size reached $12.464 billion and $7.308 billion in 2024 and H1 2025 respectively, growing 17% and 25% year-over-year, accounting for 18% and 21% of overseas mobile game market size. Industry scale and market share have steadily increased since Q4 2023.
According to Gamma Data, Chinese companies' overseas revenue reached $18.557 billion in 2024. Among the top 100 overseas games by revenue, strategy games accounted for 41.38%, with estimated total overseas strategy game revenue of approximately $7.7 billion, representing 62% of domestic self-developed games' overseas scale, showing significant overseas advantages.
Overseas SLG games have high single-user value and low single-product success rates, but once achieving breakthrough hits, their long lifecycle brings steady performance release with extremely high returns. Overseas SLG games acquire users through paid acquisition and brand marketing, then achieve user retention, conversion, and monetization through gameplay. From ROI perspective, the core is improving user LTV, CTR, CVR, and reducing CPM acquisition costs. From overall profit perspective, the core is acquiring sufficient users while improving ROI.
Throughout SLG overseas development, gameplay and themes have closely revolved around increasing user numbers, user LTV, CTR, CVR, and reducing CPM acquisition costs for innovation. Currently, companies like Metacore's "Last War" and Dotmobile's "Whiteout Survival" have achieved breakthroughs in sub-gameplay acquisition and casual gameplay fusion innovation, further reducing frontend acquisition costs and long-term retention. Following numerical framework validation, Soochow Securities expects leading companies to continuously iterate products, bringing new industry expansion rounds. The firm is optimistic about ST Huatong (002602.SZ), Shenzhou Taiyue (300002.SZ), and other companies achieving continuous product breakthroughs and steady performance growth.
**Risk Factors** Intensified industry competition risk, new game performance below expectations risk, accelerated revenue decline of existing games risk, industry regulatory risk.