"Former top female streamer of Douyu" Xiao Tuantuan's debut live show on Douyin: gained millions of new followers, the live streaming industry has undergone a total reshuffle.

"What year is this, my youth is back!" A phenomenal iconic scene has arrived in the game live streaming circle.

On the evening of September 12, the former top streamer of Douyu, "Yitiao Xiao Tuantuan", held her debut live stream on Douyin, with a large number of top game streamers gathering in her live room for a collective group event.

Yang Qijia, a top streamer for *Delta Action* on Douyin, sent 10 Carnival gifts, and Xu Xubaobao showed up in the live stream and sent multiple Carnival gifts in a row... This debut show had amazing explosive power. Less than 1 hour after going live, the number of new followers exceeded 200,000, and it topped the hourly popularity list on Douyin.

To show her sincerity, Xiao Tuantuan gave away 370 units of iPhone 17 worth 5999 yuan each during the live stream on September 12, and later set the game rules of "giving away 30 units if you successfully evacuate" and "giving away 10 units if you fail to evacuate" in her *Delta Action* live streams, which further enhanced the interactive experience.

Throughout the whole live stream, the number of followers of Xiao Tuantuan's Douyin account rose from 31.299 million shortly after the broadcast started to 32.077 million, with a total increase of 778,000 new followers.

It is worth mentioning that after switching to live streaming on Douyin, Xiao Tuantuan still insists on not showing her face, but she no longer uses her old image, and has replaced it with a new 3D virtual avatar.

Responding to the fans' question of "why don't you show your face" in the live stream, she joked that she is "a streamer using a virtual avatar who will lose followers once she shows her face", and said that she might appear on camera wearing a mask in the future, but will never show her full face.

On September 13, Xiao Tuantuan went live again, and her popularity still ranked first, with the heat of her debut show not fading. As of press time, the number of followers on her Douyin account has reached 32.302 million, an increase of 1 million followers compared to before she started broadcasting.

From Douyu to Douyin, from the "top PUBG streamer" to a streamer using virtual avatar, this resumption of broadcast is not only the return of a single streamer, but also a landmark event of the large-scale migration of game streamers from traditional live streaming platforms to Douyin, which has industry vane significance.

After months of preparation and two consecutive live streams, can Xiao Tuantuan return to her peak in 2018?

From the pre-heating rhythm, content design to guest linkage, it can be seen that Xiao Tuantuan's return this time is not a last-minute decision, but a long-prepared comeback.

Her last live stream dates back to March this year on her old platform Douyu, and in late July, her contract with Douyu officially expired, and Xiao Tuantuan officially announced that she would stop broadcasting again. At that time, she revealed in the live stream that she would communicate with multiple platforms, and it would not be long before she reunited with everyone.

One month before the official live stream, Xiao Tuantuan released multiple pre-heating videos on her Douyin account. One of the videos titled "You may not know me, but you must have heard my voice" got 544,000 views. A netizen asked in the comment section "What year is this", and Xiao Tuantuan replied: "It feels like I'm back to 2018."

As a phenomenal "PUBG streamer" of the first generation on Douyu, Xiao Tuantuan once secured her position as a top game streamer on the platform with her magical milky voice and funny and cute live streaming style, attracting a huge number of fans.

At her peak, she had as many as 44 million followers on Douyin, and more than 26 million followers on her Douyu account.

Her commercial value is also amazing. At the peak of her popularity, Wang Sicong once sent 30 super popular gifts and 1 spaceship gift in her live stream in one go, with the total value of gifts reaching 65,000 yuan, just to order the song "Poisoned Perfume". According to the data of Douyu's reward ranking list in May 2019, her live streaming revenue that month reached 5.39 million yuan, second only to Xu Xubaobao, the top male streamer at that time.

In September 2020, after Xiao Tuantuan's navigation voice pack was launched on Amap, it quickly became one of the most popular navigation voice packs on Amap, with more than 10 million users. Even today, many people still set her voice pack as their preferred option. In her latest live stream on September 13, Xiao Tuantuan revealed that her new navigation voice pack has been recorded and will be launched soon.

The turning point of her career came in 2023. After Chen Shaojie, the founder of Douyu, was arrested by the Public Security Bureau of Dujiangyan City, Chengdu on suspicion of operating a gambling establishment, many well-known Douyu streamers disappeared one after another.

Xiao Tuantuan also announced to stop broadcasting in January 2024, and released a statement saying that she had no choice, experienced many interesting and bad things, and felt that she had grown a lot.

During the off-air period, old fans have always missed her. In January 2025, Xiao Tuantuan returned to the Internet through a small Douyin account, and said in the live stream that she stuck to her bottom line and did not do anything to disappoint everyone.

Some netizens joked that "little known fact: Xiao Tuantuan has finished her 8-year sentence", and she also joked that she was released after serving her sentence. Her main Douyin account also resumed updates in January 2025, and she began to share daily Vlogs, saying that she had got a new virtual avatar, taught herself AI, and tried to produce multiple CEO-themed AI short dramas.

Compared with the regular live streaming rhythm in the early years, the arrangement and sincerity of this comeback are directly maximized. At the same time, this comeback has received widespread attention from most of the game industry, which is also a rare grand occasion in her early live streaming career.

Xiao Tuantuan mentioned in her comeback debut that the reason why she can cooperate with Douyin is inseparable from the strong recommendation of top game streamer Xu Xubaobao. As early as August 2023, when Xu Xubaobao officially settled in Douyin, he recommended Xiao Tuantuan to the Douyin official, but at that time, restricted by the unexpired contract with Douyu, the cooperation was not reached until now.

Looking back on her early live streaming, Xiao Tuantuan almost focused on *PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds* the whole time. The PUBG gameplay is the core label of her live stream and the key to her popularity. But with the iteration of the live streaming industry and the update of popular games, she completely broke the bondage of a single game in this comeback.

Her debut show mainly focused on the popular new shooting game *Delta Action*, making the live stream full of freshness. Later, she also made it clear that she will take into account PUBG, and unlock a number of popular new games at the same time, striving to make the live content richer and more diverse, adapt to the viewing preferences of the current audience, and say goodbye to the old live streaming mode of "playing only one PUBG game the whole time".

Many old fans said that Xiao Tuantuan, who has returned again, has become much calmer. She also confessed in the live stream that she suffered from long-term insomnia before this broadcast, and was very nervous when facing the long-lost public attention, with extremely high requirements for the live streaming effect, equipment presentation and audience reputation.

When facing the controversial comments on bullet screens and netizens' jokes, she can also respond calmly, no longer the green and ignorant look in the early years. After two years of precipitation, Xiao Tuantuan's conversation and mentality have become more mature and stable.

Game live streaming changes every ten years: Old platforms lose traffic, new platforms take over

Xiao Tuantuan's debut show is not only the personal comeback of a top streamer, but also the epitome of the huge traffic migration in the game live streaming industry.

The game live streaming industry once experienced a "golden age". Around 2014, platforms such as Douyu, Huya, Panda and Zhanqi launched the "thousand-streamer war". The exclusive contract system first created by Douyu made game streamers jump from grassroots to high-income professions, and streamers once ranked first among the most desirable emerging professions for post-95s generation.

After that, Huya and Douyu went public one after another, and the pattern of two strong competitors seemed stable, but the real fission began around 2020. Comprehensive content platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou and Bilibili, with their huge traffic pools, incorporated game live streaming into the entire content ecosystem, realizing the traffic circulation between short videos, live streaming, social interaction and e-commerce.

At the beginning of 2024, the live streaming permission for *Honor of Kings* on Douyin was fully opened, ending the five-year ban on live streaming. Tencent and ByteDance officially "removed the barriers" in the game field, which is regarded as a key turning point for the reshaping of the industry pattern.

At the same time, the decline of old platforms is almost irreversible. After Chen Shaojie, the founder of Douyu, was arrested on suspicion of illegal activities, top streamers left one after another, and the platform's content ecosystem was severely damaged. From 2021 to 2025, the platform's revenue declined year by year. To save itself, Douyu continued to reduce costs and increase efficiency, reduced its dependence on individual streamers, and increased investment in PGC content such as copyright events and group live streaming of streamers. According to its financial report for the second quarter of 2026, the year-on-year decline in Douyu's revenue in the second quarter narrowed, and the gross profit