As Giant Network released its 2026 semiannual earnings forecast, the growth curve of this veteran gaming company has once again become clear.

According to the announcement, Giant Network expects net profit attributable to shareholders in the first half of this year to reach RMB 2.0 billion to RMB 2.2 billion, up 157.38% to 183.12% year over year. Net profit attributable to shareholders after deducting non-recurring gains and losses is expected to reach RMB 2.2 billion to RMB 2.4 billion, up 172.74% to 197.54% year over year. By comparison, Giant Network's full-year 2025 net profit attributable to shareholders was RMB 1.755 billion, meaning that profit in just the first half of this year has already exceeded last year's full-year level.

What is even more noteworthy is that the forecast range for net profit after deducting non-recurring items is about RMB 200 million higher than net profit attributable to shareholders. This suggests that the company may have been affected by non-recurring losses in the first half, which dragged down final attributable net profit. Excluding these one-off factors, the profitability of its core gaming business should be even stronger.

01

This Was Not a Sudden Comeback

Giant's Growth Had Been Building for Some Time

This report card is certainly eye-catching, but it is not an isolated short-term breakout. If the observation window is extended slightly, it becomes clear that Giant Network's current growth had already been building; the first-half financial report simply presented this trend in a more concentrated way.

After reaching a phased high in 2018, Giant entered a period of shrinking revenue scale from 2018 to 2022, with revenue falling from RMB 3.78 billion to RMB 2.038 billion; profit also fluctuated, with net profit attributable to shareholders dropping from RMB 1.078 billion to RMB 851 million. Legacy products such as ZT Online and Battle of Balls stabilized the base, but lacked growth elasticity, while new titles failed to take over in time.

The turning point came in 2023. In March of that year, Original ZT officially launched, generating more than RMB 300 million in gross billings in its first month and more than RMB 1.5 billion for the full year. The title helped Giant's revenue grow to RMB 2.924 billion, up 43.50% year over year, putting the company back on a growth track. In 2024, the company entered a 'mini-program validation year': legacy products began extending more clearly into mini-game and mini-program ecosystems. Overall revenue remained largely flat, but profit improved significantly. By 2025, the main growth driver had fully shifted to Supernatural Action Squad, with revenue surging to RMB 5.047 billion, up 72.69% year over year.

Monthly iOS Gross Billing Trend for Original ZT Since Public Beta

In April 2023, Original ZT's monthly iOS gross billings reached US$9.3 million, or about RMB 63 million. Since then, the figure has declined along the product life cycle, and current monthly iOS gross billings are around US$1.6 million, or about RMB 11 million.

From a developmental perspective, Giant's changes over the past few years were not simply the result of 'getting lucky' with one product. Instead, the company first used legacy IP to stabilize its base, then expanded the user scale of existing products through lightweight mini-programization, and finally waited for a new hit like Supernatural Action Squad to break out, pushing the company into a new profit-release cycle.

02

Supernatural Action Squad Is Moving from Hit Product to Evergreen Title

Domestic Monthly iOS Gross Billings Remain in the Millions of Dollars, While Overseas Growth Still Needs Time

Next, let us return to the present. In the first half of this year, the biggest pillar behind Giant Network's performance growth was undoubtedly still Supernatural Action Squad.

The title launched in January 2025. At first, it did not have the heavy industrialized look often associated with traditional high-DAU products, but it quickly differentiated itself with a combination of 'Chinese-style light horror + multiplayer treasure hunting + co-op extraction shooter' gameplay. In June of the same year, its monthly iOS gross billings exceeded US$2.3 million, or about RMB 16 million, and monthly iOS gross billings have not fallen below that level since.

Monthly iOS Gross Billing Trend for Supernatural Action Squad Since Public Beta

In 2026, financial report data shows that the game's single-day and single-month gross billings both reached record highs during the Spring Festival period. In February, iOS gross billings were estimated at US$11.3 million, or about RMB 76.3 million. By the end of Q1 2026, its cumulative registered users had exceeded 200 million, with DAU surpassing 10 million.

After entering Q2, monthly gross billings declined to some extent. In June, iOS gross billings were about US$3.7 million, or about RMB 25 million. Even so, the official team maintained operating momentum through events such as the 'Treasure Hunting Festival.'

With the arrival of Q3, led by the summer season, the game launched the 'Yunnan Worm Valley' map in early July as a crossover with Candle in the Tomb, directly embedding tomb exploration, mechanism puzzles, encounters with strange creatures, and treasure recovery from the original IP into its own core loop of 'team treasure hunting - resource collection - safe extraction.'

This collaboration further strengthened Supernatural Action Squad's already established Chinese-style adventure identity and provided a new content consumption point for the summer version. In terms of chart performance, after the crossover launched, the game once climbed to No. 6 on the iOS games grossing chart and entered the iOS overall Top 10, while single-day gross billings peaked at US$670,000, or about RMB 4.55 million.

Supernatural Action Squad's Position on China's Domestic iOS Game Download and Grossing Charts in July

All of this indicates that Supernatural Action Squad has gradually grown from a phenomenon-level hit into a classic high-DAU product with long-term vitality.

At the same time, overseas markets have also become an important observation point for the product's future incremental growth.

According to DianDian Data, the title entered the Hong Kong, China; Macao, China; and Taiwan, China markets in mid-to-late November 2025. At that time, it did not carry out large-scale user acquisition, and first-month downloads were only 110,000. It has not expanded acquisition significantly since then, and current monthly downloads are around 30,000. On May 27, the overseas version, Tomb Busters, officially launched in more than 120 countries and regions, including the United States, Japan, and Korea. However, its user-acquisition scale was only slightly higher than that of the Hong Kong, China; Macao, China; and Taiwan, China version during the same period, resulting in first-month downloads of only 530,000; current daily downloads have already fallen below 5,000.

From a data-performance perspective, Tomb Busters remains at a relatively low level overseas. One reason is that Giant has not yet truly opened the throttle on user acquisition. Whether during last year's Hong Kong, China; Macao, China; and Taiwan, China test or this year's late-May launch across more markets, the game did not enter an obvious large-scale paid acquisition phase, so downloads naturally struggled to scale quickly.

Image from BigBigAds

On the other hand, this also shows that overseas expansion for Supernatural Action Squad cannot succeed by simply changing versions. The title's success in the domestic market depends heavily on the communication environment jointly formed by Chinese-style light horror, treasure-hunting adventure, acquaintance-based social play, and short-video meme culture. In overseas markets, player acceptance of the thematic context, horror expression, team cooperation, and extraction loop all needs to be revalidated.

What Giant may need to do next is not immediately pursue explosive global scale, but continue testing localized packaging, content cadence, and user-acquisition models in different regions. Only after the product finds a more stable overseas expression should the company consider further amplification.

03

Evergreen Products May Not Break Out, but They Remain Giant's Safety Cushion

Mini-Programization Helps Legacy IP Reach New Users

Of course, Giant's current results cannot be judged solely by Supernatural Action Squad.

If this new title is responsible for raising the growth ceiling, then evergreen products such as the ZT Online series and Battle of Balls continue to stabilize the base.

Among them, the ZT Online IP celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2025. Cumulative gross billings across the entire series have exceeded RMB 30 billion, and active users increased by more than 16% year over year. These figures show that it still has continuous operating capability and user-return potential. Battle of Balls has surpassed 600 million cumulative device installs, and peak DAU once exceeded 29 million. It supports Giant's user base in the casual competitive direction, meaning the company is not reliant solely on the national-war MMO track.

In June, monthly iOS gross billings were US$450,000 for ZT Online, US$470,000 for ZT Online 2, US$330,000 for King ZT, and around US$55,000 for Green ZT.

Battle of Balls currently generates monthly iOS gross billings of US$1.2 million, or about RMB 8 million.

In addition, Night of Full Moon launched a new CCG battle mode in April this year, and its iOS IAP gross billings have never fallen below US$150,000 this year, or more than RMB 1 million. Space Werewolf and its overseas version Super Sus continue to support Giant's social deduction category and Southeast Asia market layout. Although these products vary in size and growth rate, together they form Giant's mid-tier support layer.

Beyond the stable operation of legacy products, Giant's more obvious move over the past two years has been to push some mature products into mini-game and mini-program ecosystems, reopening opportunities to reach users, reactivate them, and break through among younger audiences.

After the mini-program version of Original ZT launched, it drove the product's monthly gross billings back to US$15 million, or about RMB 100 million. In 2025, annual new users exceeded 30 million, and gross billings grew 18% year over year. King ZT covered platforms such as WeChat, Douyin, and Kuaishou, adding more than 27 million new users for the year and surpassing RMB 700 million in annual gross billings. Battle of Balls followed a similar path: in 2025, it formed a dual-engine model driven by the mini-program ecosystem and the app side, with more than 35 million new mini-program users for the year and active users exceeding 1 million.

Overall, evergreen products and mini-program transformations are unlikely to replicate the growth slope of Supernatural Action Squad, but they have stabilized Giant's user base, cash flow, and coverage across subcategories.

04

Four Pipeline Titles Are Advancing Across Different Categories

AI, Another Main Thread, Was Placed on the Table Early

Giant's current performance is already very impressive, but for a gaming company, whether a growth cycle can continue ultimately depends on whether follow-up products can take over.

At present, the pipeline products under Giant that deserve attention mainly include two titles. The first is Famous General Kill, which enters the 'social deduction card' track. Its gameplay centers on multiplayer role deduction and turn-based card battles. Compared with the four identities commonly seen in traditional social deduction card games, this title expands the system to 16 identities and adds three-weapon holding, famous historical generals, multi-mode competitive play, and PVE content.

In terms of testing cadence, Famous General Kill began a non-wipe paid test in December 2025. Current monthly iOS downloads are around 50,000, and monthly gross billings are estimated at about US$300,000, or roughly RMB 2.1 million. The game landed on Steam on March 17, 2026, and is planned for official launch and promotion during the 2026 summer season.

The second is the history-themed SLG Five Thousand Years. Its foundation remains season-based sandbox gameplay, general development, resource management, and siege confrontation, but its differentiation lies in its attempt to embed the national-war MMO-style organizational relationships that Giant knows well, such as clans, kings, vassals, official-position allocation, and seasonal rewards, making player relationships more organization-heavy.

The title has been in development for more than three years and has undergone more than a dozen tests since its first test in 2024, including five paid tests. The most recent paid test, the 'Beacon Flag Test,' began on May 15 this year. The high-frequency iteration and correction suggest that Giant has high expectations for this title.

It is worth noting that in addition to the two products explicitly mentioned in Giant's financial report, the company also has two new titles worth watching: Endless Immortal Cultivation and Codename: Winter Survival.

The former is a new title under the ZT Online IP, using a xianxia cultivation theme to carry MMO gameplay experiences. However, there is currently limited public testing and gameplay material. The title obtained its publishing license on June 23, 2025, and is expected to launch in the second half of the year. The latter is an extreme-cold apocalypse survival game whose packaging easily brings Whiteout Survival to mind. It opened pre-registration on TapTap in April and began the 'Pioneering' data-wipe test in July.

In simple terms, Famous General Kill and Five Thousand Years are currently the clearer pipeline priorities, while Endless Immortal Cultivation and Codename: Winter Survival provide more category experiments.

In addition to new games taking over, AI is another main thread that Giant has continued to invest in recent years. It may not immediately contribute large-scale revenue, but it will affect the company's future R&D efficiency, product experience, and imagination space for new businesses.

According to the financial report, Giant has already applied AI to content production, ad placement, social media operations, customer service, and other processes. In game art production, AI also covers UI, modeling, animation, 2D assets, and other workflows, with AI-assisted generation accounting for more than 80% of 2D art assets. On the product side, Supernatural Action Squad launched the 'AI dummy' gameplay feature. By the end of Q1 2026, the number of matches involving this feature had exceeded 400 million, and more than 2.9 billion AI dummies had been generated cumulatively. In addition, the company is advancing the Qian Ying series of multimodal models and has launched Vibe Me AI, an AI video-generation product for overseas markets, which once topped the Google Play photography chart in both the United States and Singapore.

For now, AI is more like a foundational capability that Giant is laying in advance for the next stage of growth. It improves internal R&D and operating efficiency while the company continues to search for gameplay and application scenarios that can be implemented in specific products.

05 Conclusion

Overall, Giant Network's first-half results appear on the surface to be an earnings forecast showing a sharp year-over-year increase in net profit, but behind the numbers is the result of a reordered product structure.

Supernatural Action Squad has brought Giant back to the center of the hit-product table. Evergreen products such as ZT Online and Battle of Balls continue to stabilize the base through mini-programization, while Famous General Kill and Five Thousand Years carry the imagination space for the next wave of product succession. AI provides the long-term narrative, but in the short term it still needs to serve the core gaming business.

Therefore, the most important question for Giant now is not just how much money it made in the first half, but whether it can turn Supernatural Action Squad's breakout into a more stable product system and long-term operating capability. If this product can continue to stabilize high DAU while new pipeline titles gradually take over, Giant Network's current growth may be more than a financial-report highlight; it may mark the beginning of a new cycle for the company.