The three-year plan? It sounds like expansion, but in reality, it's contraction—clearing the field, cutting costs, and clinging to giants. Huya has gracefully become smaller, but capital markets never pay for "grace."

"Successful transformation"—in Q1 2026, Huya's executives uttered these four rare words during an earnings call. But the numbers tell a different story: annual revenue plummeted from 9.264 billion yuan in 2022 to 6.5 billion yuan in 2026, a direct evaporation of 30%. More subtly, mobile MAU—after stagnating at around 80 million for several consecutive quarters—was simply omitted from the Q1 2026 report, a core metric that once defined the company.

Lin Songtao, the chairman who arrived at Huya with a three-year plan, did not personally announce the "successful transformation," leaving many to feel that the original storyteller no longer wanted to tell this tale.

01 Same Old Story in a New Package The three-year plan did bring one change—the proportion of new businesses increased from less than 10% to 36%. Business transformation has been a rallying cry since Lin Songtao took office in August 2023. His colleague, Huang Junhong, put it bluntly: "The main goal is to increase game-related service revenue to 30% of total revenue within three years, building a more balanced and diversified revenue structure."

On the surface, Huya not only met the target but exceeded it with a 36% share, seemingly achieving its diversification goal. But how substantial is this 36%?

"Goose Goose Duck" launched in January 2026, spending most of Q1 at the top of the iOS free games chart and peaking in the top five of Apple's App Store local sales rankings in April. However, quarter-over-quarter data is merely "modest": new business revenue grew from 593 million yuan to 627 million yuan, a mere 6% increase. In contrast, when Bilibili launched "Three Kingdoms: Strategic Conquest," its gaming revenue nearly doubled in the same quarter, turning losses into profits. The performance of "Goose Goose Duck" hardly justifies the term "strategic transformation."

Huya left an ambiguous statement: "Primarily attributed to deepened cooperation with gaming companies." Investors are left wondering: Which "gaming companies" are you referring to—Gaggle Studios, the developer of "Goose Goose Duck," or Tencent, the major shareholder and key client?

In the past, Huya relied on Tencent for survival. In 2019, to bolster its own platforms, Tencent banned ByteDance apps from streaming "Honor of Kings," "CrossFire," and "League of Legends." During that period, some top streamers were forced to switch to horror games, while Huya streamers continued to attract fans and earn tips without disruption.

Now, the tipping model is faltering, replaced by game distribution. Huya's 2025 annual report shows that content costs paid to Tencent surged from 220 million yuan in 2024 to 350 million yuan.

In January 2026, Huya became the first platform to secure exclusive early pre-sale rights for "Honor of Kings" FMVP skins. Beyond this, it also gained exclusive co-branded skins and re-releases for "PUBG" and "League of Legends." During the Spring Festival period, distribution revenue for "QQ Speed Mobile," "Peacekeeper Elite," and "League of Legends: Wild Rift" on Huya grew by over 50% compared to Q4 of the previous year.

Game-related services, advertising, and other revenue generated through cooperation with Tencent skyrocketed from 118 million yuan in 2023 to 478 million yuan in 2025. This revenue corresponds precisely to the line item "Game-related services, advertising and other revenues" in Huya's financial reports—the core segment repeatedly touted as "strategic transformation" and "diversified efforts."

While new businesses grew, Huya's dependence on Tencent deepened. Relying on Tencent is not news; the news is that Huya is also forced to rely on another giant.

02 Standing on Others' Turf Huya is no longer one of the "twin giants of game streaming." Its current survival strategy involves standing on two legs, both planted firmly on others' turf.

First, the Tencent leg. Apart from the outlier "Goose Goose Duck," the popular licensed games streamed on Huya—"Honor of Kings," "Peacekeeper Elite," "League of Legends"—are all controlled by Tencent. Whoever holds the copyrights holds the power. Huya is merely a "content tenant"—what it can stream and the revenue-sharing terms are dictated by the upstream holder. Tencent extracts value through copyrights, while Huya pays the rent.

There was once a protective wall. Tencent withheld licensing from outsiders, funneling streaming traffic for "Honor of Kings" and "Peacekeeper Elite" into its own ecosystem, allowing Huya and Douyu to thrive. However, Tencent dismantled this wall in 2024 by gradually opening streaming rights for these games to Douyin.

The logic is simple: Tencent seeks game penetration—more players and more spending. Whether users watch on Huya or Douyin makes no difference to Tencent, as the money ultimately flows into its pockets. For Huya, however, this meant the protective wall was torn down by the landlord itself.

Now, the Douyin leg. Once the wall came down, Douyin's hundreds of millions of daily active users flooded in. How significant was the traffic surge? When "Goose Goose Duck" launched publicly in January 2026, it topped the iOS free chart and generated over 30 trending topics nationwide. Co-CEO Huang Junhong described it as "living up to expectations" during the Q1 earnings call, while COO Chen Peng called it "a social calling card for the youth." The entire management team devoted extensive discussion to it. Yet everyone knows that behind this success were Douyin's video clips, user-generated content, and live-streaming collaborations. Without Douyin's traffic faucet, the game would not have exploded.

With the influx of traffic, people also left. Top streamers voted with their feet faster than contracts could be signed. Streamers like Zhang Daxian and Bu Qiuren began migrating to Douyin starting in late 2023. Zhang Daxian's debut attracted 60 million viewers, with 1.2 billion likes, fully monetizing through tips, ads, and e-commerce.

The ultimate result? Huya conceded. It established a company called "Huxiao Media," signing its streamers to MCN contracts—no longer exclusive. Huya now sources commercial deals externally, while streamers handle content promotion. After completion, revenue is shared, and streamers perform across multiple platforms.

Huya no longer insists on exclusive ownership of streamers; it has transformed into a middleman. Huya is no longer a platform but an MCN agency.

Thus, its current posture is strikingly clear: its left leg stands on Tencent, determining what products it can sell; its right leg stands on Douyin, determining how many users it can reach. It is no longer a game-streaming platform clinging to its own turf but more like a contractor shuttling between two giants—procuring goods from Tencent's territory and attracting customers on Douyin's land.

Standing on two legs planted on others' turf may seem stable, but it is a choice born of necessity.

03 Overseas—Another Story Without Numbers Huya's "successful transformation" also has an overseas version. The overseas gaming market is indeed enticing: the global game creator economy reached $39.06 billion in 2025 and is projected to surge to $49.3 billion in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 26.2%. The game streaming market hit $11.7 billion in 2025, with similarly robust growth.

During earnings calls, "overseas" was one of the most frequently mentioned terms. For three consecutive quarters in 2025, management repeatedly emphasized "multiple-fold growth," "promising growth," and "future growth engine," raising the rhetoric each time. Yet, scouring the entire financial report reveals not a single line item disclosing overseas revenue separately. It is always lumped into the "Game-related services, advertising and other" category, mingled with domestic distribution of "Goose Goose Duck" and Huxiao Media's ad revenue sharing on Douyin.

How much does overseas actually contribute? No one knows. The "successful transformation" is all talk, with no tangible evidence.

So, what has Huya actually done overseas? The only traceable move is an $81 million gamble. In December 2023, Huya acquired a "global mobile application service provider" for approximately 570 million yuan. This amounted to 2.1 times Huya's annual net profit that year. It was later revealed that this company was actually an overseas app store under Tencent.

Huya's plan sounded promising: relying solely on Nimo TV for streaming wasn't enough; it needed to pair it with game distribution capabilities, creating a "streaming引流 + store monetization"闭环 to synergize with Nimo TV. Unfortunately, reality fell short of ideals. The $81 million acquisition of Apkpure only made one appearance post-acquisition, representing just the final 10 days of the acquired entity's performance, with little relevance to Huya's annual operations. As for Nimo TV's actual operational data, after disclosing TAU (over 30 million) in Q4 2021, no standalone data has been released since. For the next four years, this number never reappeared.

Domestically, Huya stands on Tencent and Douyin; overseas, it ventures blindly without daring to show its books. This is Huya's "successful transformation"—not independent progress but reliance on others; not business expansion but graceful contraction.

Conclusion: The business has changed, but its lifeline remains in Tencent's hands; new narratives have grown, but profits were carved out through cuts, not earned; it claims to walk on two legs, but both are planted on others' turf; overseas is described as a growth engine, yet the financial report dares not mention a single word about it.

The three-year plan? It sounds like expansion, but in reality, it's contraction—clearing the field, cutting costs, and clinging to giants. Over the past three years, Huya reduced costs, slashed R&D, and cut marketing expenses, while overall revenue trended downward.

This is not a successful transformation; it is—gracefully becoming smaller. And capital markets never pay for "grace." They demand growth and have little patience for stories of contraction.