After the "soft pornography" and "pyramid scheme" incidents, the social platform Soul has once again been labeled as "involved in gambling."

In early August, the video media @青蜂侠Bee reported that the game "Interstellar Manor" within the Soul platform, named "farming," concealed a gambling mechanism where users recharge to plant "fruits," the platform initiates probability-based lotteries, and rewards can be cashed out off-platform. The live rooms within the platform even used "farming" as a code to predict lottery results, encouraging users to place bets. According to reports, some users lost 200,000 yuan within a few months in the "Interstellar Manor."

Subsequently, Soul quickly blocked various "farming" live rooms and denied involvement in gambling. However, some media outlets found that related live broadcasts still existed.

Wearing the cloak of the metaverse, Soul began telling AI stories again this year, but its "blind date without considering appearance" feature has been criticized by users as a hotbed for swindlers seeking money and sex.

On March 27th of this year, Soul's parent company Soulmate Inc. updated its prospectus on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in preparation for its third attempt at an IPO. Despite narrowing losses, monthly active users are declining. Under pressure from investors, Soul, which once occupied a place in the "soulful social" arena, is gradually losing its edge.

Gambling Controversy

"Users enter the manor, choose a fruit to plant, and increase the yield by watering and fertilizing. When the fruit is purchased by the merchant, users can receive 'fragments' as a reward." The gameplay of the "Interstellar Manor" game within the Soul app and related live activities were pointed out by the media to "contain a gambling mechanism." The reason is that in this traditional "farming" game, there is a gambling model of "user deposit—platform opening—user off-platform withdrawal."

According to media reports, in order to plant "fruits," users need to first purchase Soul coins with cash, and then from planting "fruits" to being "purchased," each game process has a clear price tag, requiring users to continuously spend money. One of the reasons for attracting players to spend money on "farming" is the lottery gameplay packaged as "fruit purchase."

In the Interstellar Manor, the platform, acting as the "merchant," randomly selects a fruit to "purchase" every three minutes. When a user's fruit is purchased, they will receive a large number of "fragments" as a reward. When users accumulate enough fragments, they can enter the upgraded gameplay of the Interstellar Manor: opening blind boxes with fragments. These blind boxes usually contain virtual gifts such as avatar frames and necklaces, which are also a form of "social currency" circulated within the Soul platform.

Soul game accused of "involvement in gambling"

It should be noted that according to Soul's platform rules, virtual items within the platform cannot be traded for cash. However, outside the platform, users can trade virtual items through third-party channels such as WeChat Pay, and the emergence of "backpack merchants" on the platform has become a means of reselling virtual items. They purchase a large number of virtual items and then resell them at a premium to earn the price difference. "Backpack merchants" have gradually become one of the channels for off-platform withdrawals from the "Interstellar Manor."

According to reports, in order to increase the "winning rate," players usually plant multiple types of fruits at the same time. A player of the Interstellar Manor game said, "Many people will recharge thousands of yuan in Soul coins, and some can multiply their fragment count in one game, but at the same time, it is also possible to lose everything."

When players can only exchange game chips for cash and the virtual items they obtain can be further resold for cash, some live rooms within the Soul platform even open to predict lottery results and encourage users to place bets. The live content derived from this game has been singled out by the video media @青蜂侠Bee as "containing a gambling mechanism."

Currently, the betting live rooms using "farming" as a code have been blocked by Soul, but subsequent media follow-ups have indicated that such live broadcasts can still be found, and gambling activities continue as usual. Soul also denied the gambling accusations when responding to the media, stating that the platform prohibits users from privately trading virtual items.

On the Black Cat Complaint Platform, there are numerous related complaints, with some users requesting refunds. Soul App, acting as the merchant, has refused to issue refunds.

Three Consecutive Years of Losses

After the "soft pornography" and "pyramid scheme" incidents, Soul has now been labeled as "involved in gambling."

Soul was launched at the end of 2016, focusing on building social relationships based on interest graphs. At that time, its slogan was "Follow your soul to find you," featuring "blind date without considering appearance," taking a differentiated route in the arena of stranger socialization. In 2021, following the popularity of the metaverse concept, Soul expanded its user base to "Generation Z" and proposed the concept of "social metaverse," changing its slogan to "the social metaverse for young people."

Despite wearing the cloak of the metaverse for the past two years, Soul has still been unable to reverse its losses.

In March 2023, the revised prospectus submitted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by Soul showed that from 2020 to 2022, Soul's revenue was 498 million yuan, 1.281 billion yuan, and 1.667 billion yuan, respectively. Despite substantial revenue growth, Soul has not been profitable. Over the past three years, Soul has incurred annual losses of 579 million yuan, 1.324 billion yuan, and 509 million yuan.

Another data point is that Soul's monthly active users have not increased along with its revenue, but have instead decreased by 7.3% year-on-year in 2022. Despite chanting the slogan of "social metaverse," Soul has not benefited from the rise of the metaverse.

Soul's CEO, Zhang Lu, once stated that Soul aims to become the most interesting gamified social product, "We will create more tools and interesting graphical gameplay to make users have more fun interacting in the metaverse."

In 2022, Soul released the Lingxi system and NAWA Engine as the foundation for realizing the "social metaverse." The Lingxi system is an intelligent recommendation system based on the full-scene portrait of Soul users within the platform, improving the efficiency and quality of user relationship building. The NAWA Engine can help users shape their personal image and 2D/3D virtual social scenes at low cost and with diversity. The 2D capabilities include portrait beautification, stickers, lens effects, stylized filters, etc.; the most important capability in 3D is the 3D Avatar, as well as 3D stickers, AR masks, scene rendering, etc.

Initially, the addition of metaverse gameplay had a certain effect. The prospectus shows that Soul's main source of revenue currently comes from value-added services, with Avatar and virtual gifts being the largest contributors. The Avatar feature allows users to use "masks" in videos, with the price increasing as the masks become more exquisite and rare.

The Avatar feature allows users to use "masks" in videos

However, in the key features of metaverse socialization such as identity, socialization, immersive experience, low latency, diversification, ubiquity, economic system, and civilization, Soul has yet to introduce a refreshing experience for users.

By the second half of 2022, Soul had not yet turned its losses into profits through social metaverse, and the metaverse concept had cooled down. The current Soul seems more like a metaverse that can only trade virtual assets.

Users or Capital?

The metaverse has not enabled Soul to turn losses into profits. In the new prospectus, Soul has added AI narrative: the development of AI-assisted natural language processing, AI algorithms, and AI-assisted visual and auditory content generation technologies.

Queenie, the project leader of Soul META, once stated, "AIGC is the focus of Soul this year, and we will continue to integrate NAWA POP with AIGC capabilities to launch a series of innovative products."

In the field of artificial intelligence and conversational generation, Soul has released the chatbot "AI Guo Dan," which can engage in multi-round personalized conversations with users. However, this chatbot is quite awkward on a social platform like Soul: why would users who come here to find Soulmates based on interests and hobbies want to chat with a robot?

Data from Qimai shows that after the addition of AIGC, Soul's downloads have not increased but have instead declined, and user growth has been weak. Compared to similar "stranger social" platforms such as Tan Tan and Momo, Soul has no advantages to speak of.

Soul's downloads are gradually declining

On the Black Cat platform, complaints about "unauthorized charges," "misleading recharges," "inability to refund," and other issues are rampant, and old problems such as "soft pornography," "widespread use of chatbots," and "poor review mechanisms" still exist in the comments section of the iOS App Store.

The "soulful social" Soul is deviating, and continuous losses, a cold reception for the social metaverse, and insufficient narrative drive for AIGC have made Soul's path to IPO difficult.

The dilemma facing Soul is quite clear: users or capital? The two are not fundamentally contradictory; on the contrary, they should rise together. What Soul needs to address is finding its position in the social arena, plugging existing loopholes, regaining user trust, and finding a positive and innovative path to commercialization.

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