In July 2004, Yao Xiaoguang, as the representative of the gaming business group
, paid 20 million USD to acquire the distribution rights of Blizzard World of Warcraft from Nine Cities.
Among them, 10 million USD was Blizzard's compensation to Ninetowns for breach of contract, and the remaining 10 million USD was the agency fee for World of Warcraft for four years.
After a series of negotiations, the final share was reduced from 22% to 18%.
This was because Blizzard's CEO, Alan Adhan, had sent people to the flower shop to investigate and
found out that Yuanhang Technology was the new overlord of the flower shop's instant messaging system. Just one model had more than 300 million users in the flower shop.
Considering the player base of MMO games like World of Warcraft,
it was obvious that this was extremely beneficial for the promotion of the game.
Therefore, Aren Adhan agreed to reduce the percentage.
However, they had to promote World of Warcraft.
Yao Xiaoguang, who was in charge of negotiating with Blizzard, naturally wouldn't disagree.
Therefore, both parties signed an agency contract.
However, when the news reached the country.
The chairman of Shanghai's Nine Cities, Zhu Jun, was so angry that he almost flipped the table.
After all, Ninetowns had reached an agreement with Blizzard in February and signed the contract in April.
Nine Cities was the most well-prepared of all the agents.
For example, game planning, development, and so on. Ninetowns had considered every aspect.
However, less than three months later, Blizzard suddenly changed its mind.
Although Ninetowns received a $10 million penalty from Blizzard, Jun Zhu wasn't happy at all.
Instead, he was fuming with anger.
He even directly shouted in the media that Yuanhang Technology's interception was immoral and shameful.
Old Zhu even started a campaign to boycott condoms.
Of course, the effect was minimal.
However, to the players.
Yuanhang Technology snatching the rights to World of Warcraft from Ninetowns was probably a blessing.
After all, thinking about how Ninetowns would operate World of Warcraft in the future, they would occasionally come to the server and not be able to find customer service. They would often come for more than five hours of full-service maintenance and so on.
With Yuanhang Technology acting as the agent, they believed that the players would not have to fight with the operators anymore.
In fact, apart from distributing foreign games, Yuanhang Technology was also trying to make their own games.
Ever since a Mini games like TT Farm became wildly popular on the internet,
Yuanhang Technology had started a new game production.
After all, everyone could see the profit of the game.
It could bring Yuanhang Technology more than 100 million yuan in revenue every month.
As of early July, through games, advertisements, pets, TV shows, Crown Royals, etc.
Yuanhang Technology had earned a total of 586 million Chinese dollars in three months.
Although compared to the 1 billion that Lin Xuan had burned back then, Yuanhang's actual loss was still more than 800 million (including operating costs)
, everyone could see that MT had already become a chicken that laid golden eggs.
During this period, investment banks such as Sequoia, goldman sachs, and Mao Xiong's DST all came to look for them, hoping to invest in Yuanhang Technology.
The highest value, Mao Xiong DST, even offered a valuation of 800 million USD, which was
much higher than Penguin's valuation.
However, these were all rejected by Lin Xuan because he did not lack money.
The future of Yuanhang Technology was not something that could be measured with just 800 million USD.
From July onwards, the G-line of the game began to be split apart.
They were divided into teams that developed casual games such as parking lot snatching,
teams that developed board games, and teams that developed bubble houses and bubble go-karts.
Actually, Yuanhang Technology was planning to buy the chess and card industry.
Unfortunately, Bao Yueqiao offered 100 million USD to buy 50% of Lianzhong's shares while retaining the existing operations team.
Lin Xuan decisively rejected this.
After all, although he was rich, money did not come easily.
In particular, Penguin had launched its own tabletop game platform in 2003, and now its market share was on par with Lianzhong.
Under such circumstances, Lin Xuan, Pang Shengdong, and the other company CEOs had a meeting.
Everyone agreed that there was no need to buy Lianzhong at a valuation of 200 million USD.
According to Yao Xiaoguang, who was in charge of the gaming business group, he
didn't need 200 million USD. In just two weeks, he could make a tabletop platform similar to Lianzhong.
Moreover, QQ was able to compete with Lianzhong in just a year with its huge number of registered users, so
it was no problem for TT to have the same user base as QQ.
Therefore, in the end, the acquisition was left unsettled.
However, even though Lianzhong's acquisition failed, Yao Xiaoguang, the president of the gaming business group, went to Taiwan in early July.
His main purpose was to inspect Di Quan International.
Perhaps very few people knew about this company on the island, but most people believed that they had played the 3D "Meteor Butterfly Swords.net" made by Wu Quan International
. Wu Quan International had six people at the beginning and used six months to complete this godly work.
Unfortunately, because the game was too well made, there were too many pirated versions of Meteor Butterfly Sword. net in the country. All the major game manufacturers wanted a piece of the pie,
causing Di Quan International to suffer heavy losses.
Yao Xiaoguang went to Treasure Island this time because he wanted to buy Di Quan International and
obtain the research and development team of Meteor Butterfly Sword.net, as well as the 3D game development of Di Quan International.
Meteor Butterfly Sword's 3D engine was definitely quite advanced at that time.
It was not inferior to the Unreal 2 engine of the Korean company's "Paradise 2".
After all, the Paradise series had always been known for its excellent graphics.
If Yuanhang Technology could acquire Di Quan International.
Then, the shortcomings of the engine in 3D games would be supplemented.
Especially in Beauty Country, Elizabeth Kelly, who was in charge of Polaris's investment, even poached some members of Northern Storm to Lin Xuan.
For example, the famous member of Blizzard North Storm, David Brevik, etc.
David Brevik had participated in the development of Diablo 2, StarCraft, Diablo 3, Dragon, and other games.
Unfortunately, in the end, he resigned because of the conflict with Blizzard's parent company, Vivendi Group.
This time, after accepting Lin Xuan's commission, Elizabeth Kelly easily took in David Brevik and the other 15 core members of Northern Storm.
These people would have to go through the procedures to join Yuanhang Technology by August at the latest.
In addition, Yuanhang also poached some members of Perfect World's Ancestral Dragon Studio and Golden Mountain's West Mountain Residence with a high salary.
By spending money everywhere, Yuanhang Technology had made up for its shortcomings in game development.
(P.S.: New book, flowers, review tickets, your support is the author's motivation)
This book comes from：m.funovel.com。