China’s Internet cafes are disappearing at a rapid pace, with more than 12,000 of them ending their operations last year.
Internet cafes were once a popular place for China’s “post-80s” and “post-90s” to surf the Internet, play games and spend their Time. However, with the popularity of personal computers, young people are now more accustomed to playing games via cell phones, and last year’s outbreak of Newcastle Pneumonia (CCP virus), Internet cafes are fast disappearing. The Workers’ Daily notes that 12,888 Internet cafes across China ended their operations last year alone.
Lao Jin, who has operated an Internet cafe in Jinan, Shandong province, for 16 years, told the Workers’ Daily, “When the lease expires, I’ll quit.” This year may be his last year as an Internet cafe operator.
In his second year as an Internet café, Lao Jin rented a 200-square-meter store to expand. He recalls, “When business was at its best, there were six Internet cafes of this size on this 600-meter street, and at night and on holidays, every house was full.”
“Now I’m the only one left here. If someone had told me then that one day my Internet cafe would close down, I wouldn’t have believed it.” Lao Jin said.
The Workers’ Daily noted that, according to statistics, the number of revocations of Internet cafe related businesses in China was 3,638 and 9,250 cancellations in 2020. In other words, 12,888 Internet cafes disappeared across China in the whole of last year.
As of February this year, the number of Internet cafes still in business in China was 124,818.
Industry insiders say that when Internet cafes were more popular, China’s Home computer penetration was not high, and the only way to access the Internet and play games at that time was to go to Internet cafes. But for today’s “post-00s” young people, there is no longer a reason to go to Internet cafes.
Chen Guanxu, the owner of an Internet cafe in Beijing, recalls that the game “Jedi survival” was launched in 2017 and swept the world. In order to attract customers and seize the industry’s “new windfall,” Internet cafe owners have invested in upgrading their “Internet cafes” to “Internet cafes.
“The difference between Internet cafes and cyber cafes, first of all, lies in the hardware configuration, processors, graphics cards, high refresh frequency gaming screen, high-end mechanical keyboard and mouse, professional gaming chair is the standard, a computer needs over (RMB) million.” Chen Guanxu said, the Internet cafe also increased the water bar, hand games, table games and other ancillary services, positioned as a place for gamers to rest and socialize.
And in the “Internet cafe” upgrade “Internet cafe” round of reshuffling, failed to successfully upgrade the first to be eliminated.
During the opening of “Eleven” in 2017, the high-end equipment for Chen Guanxu’s Internet cafe attracted many customers, and the membership recharge amounted to RMB 500,000 in half a month. However, the number of people playing the game declined sharply due to some vulnerabilities in the game “Jedi survival” and the emergence of plug-in software.
According to the analysis, this “return to the light” has dealt a huge blow to the Internet cafe industry, as the equipment, maintenance and personnel costs have increased after upgrading to an Internet cafe, but consumers are not buying. In addition, the emergence of some major cities, “e-sports museums”, also let the individual business, financial pressure of the Internet cafe operators one by one defeat.
Also experienced the transformation of the Internet cafe owner Wang Meng Shang said that in recent years, the market is no new explosive games, to play games in the Internet cafe customers are even less. “At first it was envisaged that 3 years to pay back the capital, and then decided to pull out of the business or continue to invest when the equipment faced elimination, who knew that the raging Epidemic in 2020 directly crushed me.”
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