Bilibili Live

Bilibili Live names itself in its own page title, calling itself the ACG danmaku live-streaming platform, and the phrase is doing real work: danmaku — comments that fly across the video itself — is the product, not a feature of it. The categories run from League of Legends and Valorant to otaku dance, singing, drawing and food, with a fully built-out virtual streamer section carrying its own sub-tabs. On the company's own about page, live is listed as one line among several commercial products, beside mobile games, paid content, advertising, comics and e-commerce, which is the honest description of what it is: a division of a much larger video business rather than a company in its own right. One absence is worth stating at the outset, because it shapes everything else: Bilibili publishes no English-language description of the live service at all. The English copy that exists belongs to the corporate entity and to the separate international video site, and an English-speaking reader arriving at the live section has nothing in their own language to read.

You watch a stream with the comments running over it, and the login prompt offers two reasons to sign in: original-quality picture and the ability to fire off danmaku of your own. The category tree is broader than gaming, taking in chat rooms, radio, knowledge, life and two categories the page calls interactive play and play-for-me. Broadcasting is a desktop or phone affair, with a Windows client for a computer stream, the Bilibili app for a phone, and a separate dedicated streaming client for people who want more control. Streamers can join a guild, and the agreement is clear about what that means: the revenue split and the payout then follow the guild's terms, and a dispute with the guild is the streamer's problem rather than Bilibili's. Real-name verification is required before anyone can go live, which is the rule that sets this platform apart from the others in this batch.

The agreement names the paid items — batteries, B-coins, coins, Grand Voyage, highlight messages and gifts — and then declines to say what any of them cost. It states that live services consist of virtual value-added services plus other services that may be charged or free, and does not say which is which; it adds that prices vary by client and payment channel, with the payment page at the time of purchase being authoritative. That is a deliberate refusal to publish a price list, and it means a reader cannot know the cost of anything here without starting a purchase. The only concrete figure on a Bilibili-owned listing is a platform-wide premium subscription at 15 yuan a month, which is not a live price and should not be read as one. Refunds are excluded by the same agreement: virtual items are digital goods, and once paid for they cannot be converted back or refunded except where Bilibili cannot provide the service. Streamers carry their own income tax and value-added tax, and Bilibili withholds where it pays out.

The age rules here are the strictest in this batch and they run in an unusual direction. Bilibili reserves the right to refuse minors any top-up or tipping service and any live-broadcasting service whatever, and to demand real-name verification when it suspects a minor is behind an account. A moderation announcement sets out tipping bands that follow the Chinese regulator's framework: no tipping at all below the age of eight, guardian consent between eight and sixteen, and guardian consent or proof of income above that, with tipping limits and reminders switched on by default and refund disputes involving minors to be handled in the way most favourable to the child. Anyone going live must complete real-name verification, which the privacy policy says collects a real name, identity document type and number, and facial-recognition features, and the same applies to withdrawing money. Moderation is published rather than merely promised: a named streamer rulebook with a graded penalty schedule, sanctions running from warnings and cut streams to permanent account bans and referral to the authorities, and a dress code written in centimetres. The operator also publishes enforcement counts, and in one campaign reported clearing 11,982 rule-breaking room listings, throttling 7,509 rooms and banning 248 before the campaign had formally begun. Privacy runs the other way: a viewer's nickname, avatar, gender and age are shown in the room, comments, danmaku, tips and gifts are shared with the streamer and the streamer's guild, and IP location is displayed down to the province.

A Chinese-reading audience interested in anime, comics and games, which the platform serves with a virtual streamer section as developed as its gaming one, and viewers who want to participate rather than watch — the interactive categories and the danmaku rail exist for that. Streamers get a desktop client, a phone app and guild representation if they want it, and the rulebook is detailed enough to plan around. Anyone outside mainland China is contemplated only at the payment layer, where PayPal and Google Pay appear for users on networks outside the country, while everything else — identity documents, tax, reporting — is shaped by Chinese law.

The most transparent rulebook in this batch and the least transparent price list, which is a strange pair to hold at once. The streamer rules are published, tiered, numeric, and backed by enforcement announcements that count the rooms cleared, throttled and banned, and the age rules for tipping are unusually explicit and written to favour the child. Against that, the cost of anything — a gift, a battery, a Grand Voyage tier — is nowhere published, refunds are excluded by contract, and the agreement reserves the right to decide them anyway. Streamers sign a document that bars them from criticising Bilibili in public after termination, obliges them to keep confidences indefinitely against liquidated damages of 100,000 yuan, and states that they are not employees, while they buy their own equipment and carry their own tax.