Script-murder venues hit 45,000 in China — funding then fell 97% in two years

Script-murder parlors (剧本杀) — small groups working through a printed murder-mystery script over several hours — and escape rooms (密室逃脱) boomed together in China from 2019. The script-murder market reached ¥11.74 billion in 2020 and was projected to exceed ¥15 billion in 2021 with over 9 million visits; escape rooms had already reached roughly ¥10 billion and over 10,000 stores by 2019. Venue counts kept climbing even as growth slowed elsewhere: script-murder stores alone reached about 45,000 by April 2021, up from 12,000 just two years earlier.

The boom drew heavy venture capital — an estimated ¥8.67 billion across 34 deals in 2019 — but content quality varied wildly, with unlicensed venues in apartments and scripts leaning on violent, horror or sexually suggestive material to stand out. On November 17, 2021, Shanghai's Culture and Tourism Bureau released draft rules requiring content filing for every script, banning pornography, gambling, drug crime, incitement to crime and 'feudal superstition,' with a blacklist of banned scripts to follow. China's fire authority separately issued fire-safety guidance for these venues.

Financing collapsed alongside the new compliance burden: total sector funding fell to roughly ¥236 million across 47 deals in 2021, a drop of more than 97% in total capital even as deal count rose — smaller, more cautious checks replacing the earlier funding rush. New company registrations in the escape-room sector also slowed sharply, from 584 founded in 2020 to just 68 in 2021.