The week of November 10th, we issued a proprietary mini-survey on the usage of Dota 2 in China. Dota 2, the standalone sequel to Valve's Defense of the Ancients (Dota) that was based on a Warcraft 3 mod, licensed to and operated in mainland China by Perfect World, has been highly anticipated in China. However, as with other regions of Asia, gamers who loved Dota do not necessarily want to play Dota 2 because Dota 2 is monetized whereas Dota is not. Perfect World launched an unlimited closed beta test in China on September 25th.

We figured that six weeks after that launch would be an interesting time to ask a few questions about the game. We had zero screening criteria - we simply issued the questions and closed the survey after the first 1,000 responses within 3 days. One of the downsides of that is that many of the respondents do not play this type of game at all, and that we do not have any demographic or psychographic data about the respondents.

The data showed that of the 1,059 respondents, 622 claim to be gamers (Note: they may have interpreted this as hard-core gamers, ignoring that playing casual or mobile games also qualifies as being a gamer). Of the 622, 34% have recently played Dota 2. Most of these gamers who play Dota 2 do so at home or in the dorm, for less than 1 hour per day. If they also play another MoBA style game, it would be League of Legends or Dota. The biggest reasons not to play Dota 2 among gamers who like MoBA games are that they already enjoy a competing title, or that they haven't taken the time to try Dota 2. 

Xiaomi released data about mobile games through app.xiaomi.com during the National Day holiday period in October. Here are their disclosed metrics:

1. 50 new games in total were launched on Xiaomi Game Center in Oct, 10 of which were debut launch titles.
2. October's top 10 downloads for mobile game are "Mine Rush" (Tian Tian Pao Ku), "Temple Run 2", "Rhythm Masters" (Jie Zou Da Shi), "Plants vs Zombies 2 HD", "Need for Speed™ Most Wanted", "WeMatch" (Tian Tian Ai Xiao Chu), "Deer Hunter 2014", "Despicable Me", "Frontline Commando:D-DAY", and "Link Link". Four of them are WeChat games.
3. October's top 10 downloads for online game are "Space-time Hunter" (Shi Kong Lie Ren), "I'm MT", "Lian Wu OL", "The Legend of King", "Castle Clash", "Dream One Piece", "Tian Tian Ai Xi You", "Hordes and Lords", "Red Alert 4", and "Shen Diao Xia Lv". "Lian Wu OL" rose to number three in a very short time, indicating the popularity of casual dancing online games on mobile.
4. October's top 10 grossing: "Space-time Hunter", "I'm MT", "Dream One Piece", "The Legend of King", "Shen Diao Xia Lv", "Mei Nv Zha Jin Hua", "Qin Mei Ren", "Tian Tian Ai Xi You", "Castle Clash", and "Hordes and Lords".

There were a lot of campaign and events during the holiday. The "prepay and return" campaign received the best results, with more than 20% increase in revenue. 

The Communist Party of China (CPC) announced that more Free Trade Zones are planned for the future, based on the success and enthusiasm of the recently declared Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone. Other cities applying for FTZ status are Guangzhou, Tianjin, Dalian and Chongqing. FTZs already exist in other cities, including Shenzhen. Each zone will determine what goods and services shall be allowed free access within. Perhaps more games industry production will be allowed in these zones, but it is not yet stated.