Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Author's note:

Fitzgerald wrote in the Great Gatsby that we rowed desperately and struggled with the waves, only to be swept back to our old days. Chen Tianqiao, Shanda's boss, also said something similar: "I walked thousands of miles in my dream, but I woke up in bed."

Many years ago, around the World of Warcraft proxy struggle, Nine cities and Shanda fought each other, and finally Nine cities became a partner of "sharing life and death" in Blizzard's mouth. Later, Blizzard transferred World of Warcraft to NetEase, life and death suddenly turned into a court. Blizzard NetEase's cooperation expired not long ago. NetEase, who once said that cooperation with Blizzard was "like getting married", launched "Blizzard Green Tea" in his own coffee shop.

At this moment, just as at that time.

Nine cities and NetEase, both were Blizzard's carefully selected partners, both helped Blizzard reap real money in China's online gaming market and achieved their respective leading positions in China's online gaming industry. But the fireworks will fade and the music will stop, but the end of the story does not sound good. A World of Warcraft has changed the fate of several online game companies, including "as high as the sun and moon, close and distant husband and wife"; and "good wind by virtue of strength to send me to the green clouds"; but in the end, "eat all the birds and throw into the forest, end up with a vast expanse of white land that is really clean."

Looking back on the years of Blizzard in China with this article, I hope the stories of the past will not become a prophecy in the future.

On March 3, 2003, Blizzard Vice President Bill Ropa held a meeting in China at Shanghai Xintiandi Dongying Integrated Entertainment Center.

This is Blizzard's first visit to China, and Bill Ropa alone has been there more than three times in South Korea next door. The reason is that South Korea is the sales center of Blizzard games, especially StarCraft. As for China, according to Chen Dong, deputy general manager of Ogilvy Electronics Shanghai Branch, Blizzard's agent in China, due to the impact of piracy, China's market share of Blizzard's global market is not high.

"although the share is not high, the potential of the Chinese market is very large", which directly affects the attitude of Blizzard executives towards the Chinese market. According to Blizzard's original plan, Bill Ropa and his entourage originally planned to make an inspection trip to Taiwan, but eventually the plan changed, and the mainland became the primary destination for the trip. "this is also Blizzard's highest-calibrated market event in the Chinese market in history."

Blizzard attaches importance to the Chinese market, and the Chinese market also returns the favor.

At that time, Sina Game commented on Blizzard's high-level visit to China, "this is an affirmation of the achievements of all colleagues in the Chinese game industry who care about and make efforts. I believe that this event is a milestone for the domestic game industry." At the meeting site, Sun Baiying, president of Home computer and Games magazine, took the stage to welcome Blizzard to China. Wang Dai, editor-in-chief of popular Software magazine, presented Blizzard 2002 most popular Game Merchant Award to Blizzard on behalf of Chinese game media.

It was a time when print media carried a lot of weight.

On the day of the meeting, Bill Ropa, dressed in a black Tang suit and embroidered with a red dragon pattern, opened a couplet on a steel bridge five meters above the ground, saying, "I am in China, I love China." Blizzard players at the scene cheered. At that time, Blizzard only opened a quota of 20 players for the meeting, while more than 1300 people signed up. What makes the players on the scene more excited is that Blizzard brought Warcraft 3 data films to promote the frozen throne and World of Warcraft.

At that time, the World of Warcraft mainland agency dispute is in full swing, Blizzard is also looking forward to through World of Warcraft to pry open the mainland game market. As early as in the early days of World of Warcraft development, Blizzard developed a charging system specifically for the Chinese market, "which has never existed before."

▲ picture source network about the World of Warcraft agency, Ogilvy once thought it was a winner.

The sales channel of Ogilvy is relatively mature, with a history of management cooperation with branch markets across the country for more than three years; the ability to organize the market is outstanding, and it has close contacts with Internet cafes, telecommunications and professional media; most of the sales and marketing personnel of Ogilvy are senior players of Blizzard, with rich market experience, correct information feedback, and the team can be on its own after long-term running-in.

In the words of the media at that time, Ogilvy was characterized by "relatively solid foundation,"relatively average strength," and "no obvious weaknesses."

More importantly, before World of Warcraft, Blizzard Warcraft series of mainland agents are Ogilvy. So Zhang Shubo, CEO of Ogilvy Electronics, once said that no one in the mainland market knows Blizzard better than Ogilvy. Prior to the formal meeting of Bill Ropa's visit to China, Blizzard held an Asia-Pacific bidding meeting in Shanghai on February 14. Zhang Shuguang believed that if Blizzard's Asia-Pacific bid was counted as a full mark, with the previous six years of cooperation between the two sides, "at least one point for Ogilvy."

Zhang Shubo is very confident, but he did not expect that at the bidding meeting, there were 51 manufacturers interested in competing for the agency of World of Warcraft. In the words of Zhang Shubo, many companies have "never heard of it in the past." some companies come from overseas and "suddenly came out of the ground and suddenly participated in the bidding." It is rumored in the industry that among the unknown companies with tenders at that time, the least experienced companies were only registered for less than three weeks.

What surprises Zhang Shubo even more is that many companies are not famous, but they are rich and powerful. They "talk about money as soon as they come up" and often target tens of millions of dollars, "without hesitation at all." But Zhang Shubo also knows

"online game bidding is a game based on experience, talking about cooperation, and relying on the wisdom and concerted efforts of both sides. It is not more money than anyone, and it is meaningless to have more money. Who can run the game best, the most successful, let the market, players, consumers are most satisfied, he is the winning bidder. Blizzard is very clear about this, and we know very well."

In other words, Blizzard wants to earn not only agents' money, but also players' money. Blizzard will cooperate with anyone who can make the market cake bigger. After a round of screening, there are still more than a dozen manufacturers left. Blizzard communicated with each manufacturer, not about the price, but about the ideas, ideas and ideas of running World of Warcraft.

"each company should come up with a plan for a Proposal or Presentation. In the plan, Blizzard will be introduced to the Chinese market, why the company can do World of Warcraft, why it can do it well, what unique competitive advantages it has, and so on."

In addition to the above standards, there is another standard that Blizzard has not stated. At that time, the agency rights in the Asia-Pacific region, except Japan, China, South Korea and other places had not yet been decided. The Japanese agent selected by Blizzard, "is a small and medium-sized operator, small businesses respond quickly, communication is convenient, and it is not easy to friction with Blizzard and Vivendi."

How do you understand Zhang Shubo's sentence? At that time, it was rumored that Blizzard wanted to have some control over the operator, which was also verified in the later story. According to Zhang Shubo, after the Asia-Pacific bidding meeting, there are three finalists, namely Ogilvy, Nine cities and Shanda. Among them, Shanda sits firmly at the top of the domestic game industry by acting for the legend of South Korean online games. In 2002, Shanda's income accounted for 60% of the total scale of more than 900 million yuan in China's online game market.

Chen Tianqiao, the founder of Shanda, attached great importance to World of Warcraft, and he once told his men, "Don't say anything about Warcraft, the company hasn't said yet." Although the company has not yet said so, it has already done so. On the second day of Bill Parrow's visit to China, Shanda received an investment of US $40 million from Softbank Corp. Asia, which was also the venture capital with the largest single financing amount and the least shares sold among Chinese Internet companies at that time.

In addition to money and the market, Shanda has also established a "sales system with local Internet cafes as vertical lines and local distributors and distributors as horizontal lines." In addition, Blizzard values the level of service, Shanda can also come up with, Shanda's customer service center has won the "Best call Center in China" award for four years in a row.

If you want users to have users, cash flow to have cash flow, channel merchants to have channel vendors, and services to have services, apart from being close to Blizzard, Chen Tianqiao has no reason why he can't win the World of Warcraft agency. And also rely on the agent of South Korean online games families to get rich, the miracle of the nine cities next door in the number of online and revenue, are not as good as the grand legend. Until 2004, Chen Tianqiao did not pay attention to the nine cities, because "the profits of the nine cities in the first three quarters are not as good as 1/10 of the profits in the first quarter of Shanda."

Nine cities, which are short of everything, can only write a blank check to Blizzard. At the scene of the negotiation, Zhu Jun, the boss of Nine cities, asked every employee of Nine cities to put on a T-shirt and write the number 500000 on it, according to Southern people Weekly. The highest number of simultaneous online users was astronomical in 2003. This is equivalent to a military writ for Blizzard, which means, give me a chance and give you a miracle. But "in fact, people in Blizzard didn't believe this figure at all."

However, for Blizzard, compared with the nine cities full of shortcomings, Ogilvy and Shanda each have big defects, and their defects are related to Koreans.

In 2002, Ogilvy won the agency operation of the South Korean online game Peacock King with a signing bonus of US $700000.

On the one hand, Peacock King is adapted from Japanese comics, and there are more than 100000 registered users in South Korea within two months, and popular style bookings; on the other hand, Ogilvy Electronics wants to accumulate operational experience by acting Peacock King to increase the leverage for future competition in World of Warcraft.

Ogilvy wants to be fine, but it's a pity that the partner pulled the hip.

On October 25, 2002, Peacock King started a public test on the mainland at 7: 00. at 06:00, South Korea gave Ogilvy a new version of the game, but the time was limited. Not only that, the new version could not cover all servers. Not only that, the new version was also bug. "We thought it was Perfect Version, and we didn't have time or possibility to organize internal tests, but we made a big mistake. We were too credulous in Korean technology and suffered a big loss."

After the public hip test, Ogilvy invited South Korean technicians to come to China to repair the bug, but "Korean technicians have done it for a long time, but it has not been completely done", and the subsequent version update has also become an illusion. The performance during the public test seriously affected the follow-up revenue of the game. Ogilvy lost at least 10 million in the Peacock King project, and the resulting market arrears almost destroyed Ogilvy's goodwill for many years.

In May 2002, Ogilvy announced the suspension of the Peacock King project, which became the first officially acknowledged failure of the game in the Chinese market. Reviewing the failure of Peacock King, Ogilvy concluded that "local operators should be careful in choosing Korean partners." In this regard, the grand Chen Tianqiao should have a sense of sorrow, he also suffered great losses in South Korea.

In 2001, Shanda won the legendary Chinese operation right of South Korean online games with an entry fee of US $300000 and a share of 27%.

▲ photo source: hot Blood Legend in the legendary operation process, because the technology is Korean, Shanda wants to modify the game bug, must turn to Koreans for help, and Koreans often do not cooperate, resulting in inefficient players complaining. In 2002, due to poor supervision by South Korea, the legendary source code was leaked on a large scale, and players could download pirated games freely, causing tens of millions of losses to Shanda every month.

In this regard, Chen Tianqiao believes that South Korea should be responsible for this, he asked South Koreans to reduce the percentage when renewing the contract, and apologize to Shanda. In order to sanction South Korea, Shanda also unilaterally stopped payment sharing on the grounds that technical support was not in place. The problem is that Koreans are not vegetarians. They propose that if Shanda wants to renew the contract, the score will be raised to 30%. As for apology, it is impossible.

Chen Tianqiao, who could not swallow this breath, once went to the Singapore International Court of Justice for arbitration and said, "We should reason with the Koreans and make it clear who is right and who is wrong." Not only that, the first legendary world of online games developed by Shanda was considered by South Korea to be suspected of plagiarizing Legend 2 and Legend 3, and the two sides also brought the case to the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate people's Court.

Although Shanda finally shook hands and made peace with South Korea, the two sides announced that they held a press conference and had a big war of words. Chen Tianqiao's tough posture in the process was enough to persuade Blizzard to retreat. As for Ogilvy, the failure of the Peacock King project is also very difficult for Blizzard to deliver World of Warcraft. After all, Blizzard changed the game three times to develop World of Warcraft.

"after finishing the game for the first time, I secretly went to Japan and South Korea to organize player tests, but found that the development direction was wrong and all of them were knocked down and started all over again. After the second game, I came to Asia-Pacific for testing again, but only a few scenes were retained. The third time it finally took shape." Blizzard spends a lot of manpower and resources, and naturally doesn't want World of Warcraft to be the next peacock king.

Compared with Shanda and Ogilvy, nine cities are softer, and there are miraculous success stories at hand. although miracle revenue is not as good as legend, the highest number of online users has exceeded 300000 at the same time.

Huang Lingdong, now vice president of Tencent Games and head of League of Legends China, was a vice president of Nine cities at that time. Zhu Jun, the boss of Nine cities, was very popular among game developers in South Korea and the United States, he said in an interview. In addition, Zhu Jun has been in the United States, fluent in English and better understand international rules, which is incomparable to Chen Tianqiao and others. All aspects meet the requirements, and the founder's posture is very low, so Blizzard appointed: nine cities, World of Warcraft to you to do.

However, according to Chen Tianqiao, it is not that Shanda is defeated by the nine cities, but Shanda chooses to give up the competition in the final quotation stage. Because "the multimillion-dollar agency fee for this game is worth it, but it's not right at 10 million dollars."

Chen Tianqiao used an analogy to Shanda's giving up Warcraft.

"it's like you have a good tie, and then you have to buy a new shirt and spend all your money in the end. We know when to brake and say, 'Sorry, we don't want it'. And users have such high expectations for a game, which is not a good thing. If the expectation is too high, there will be disappointment. If you make him feel bad and come back again, it will be a very sad day. Slow games are the best. "

In April 2004, the official of Nine cities announced that he had won the agency of World of Warcraft with an authorization fee of US $3 million. According to the agreement, nine cities will have to spend another $6.8 million on certain marketing activities before the game is officially charged; after that, nine cities will also pay developers a 22% share of sales and a four-year tax, totaling about $51.3 million.

Comparing Ogilvy's $700,000 won by Peacock King with the legendary $300,000 won by Shanda, the $3 million license fee in Nine cities can be said to be the ceiling of the mainland's online gaming industry at that time. Besides money, Blizzard is also a benchmark for the industry in other ways:

Blizzard requires operators to use servers with eight CPU, and a set of servers costs $600000. Blizzard also requires operators to have independent telecom-grade computer rooms, which are not allowed to place servers for other games, and ensure that the servers have an average online load of 70 percent, in order to ensure a smooth gaming experience for players.

In addition, Blizzard has a high threshold for security restrictions, game operators cannot modify the database, the computer room is monitored by a webcam, and the system records every command. This is tantamount to making the operator in a completely passive state, because if the user has any related disputes or problems, the agent operator has no right to resolve it.

But it was such a harsh contract that Nine cities signed it. In an interview many years later, Zhu Jun said that the contract with Blizzard added up to more than a foot thick. "others only saw the horror of the contract, but did not see the details of the contract. I may not understand online games, but I understand commercial contracts, and I am not a fool! whether there are benefits or not, the contract can be seen."

Unlike Chen Tianqiao, a veteran player who has played online games for seven days and seven nights, Zhu Jun, the boss of Nine cities, does not play games. He only likes to play football. He was once the boss of Shanghai Shenhua.

On April 16, 2009, on the day that Jiucheng lost its World of Warcraft agency, Zhu Jun was playing with the Shanghai Shenhua reserve team at Shanghai Shenhua Kangqiao Base. A reporter asked Zhu Jun, World of Warcraft agency expires, Blizzard transferred to NetEase, how do you feel? Zhu Jun replied, "I also scored two goals in the afternoon game. What do you think of my mood? hehe."

A lot of fans came that day, and one fan exclaimed when he saw Zhu Jun on the court, "is he so free?" In fact, since the late night of the 15th, Zhu Jun has held a meeting for two days in a row, and the senior management of the nine cities have also cancelled all external entertainment. The content of the meeting is, of course, about the agency of World of Warcraft.

▲ picture source network won the agency of World of Warcraft in 2004, Zhu Jun is not easy. According to the employees of Nine cities who left at that time, "for the sake of Warcraft, Nine cities has invested a lot of human and financial resources, so it has appeared to be frugal within the company." Fortunately, World of Warcraft has brought rich rewards to the nine cities. In 2005, the net income of nine cities in the third quarter was 184.8 million yuan, an increase of 232% over the second quarter, of which the net income related to Warcraft reached 180.6 million yuan.

In the same year, Mr.Hack, president of Vivendi Entertainment, Blizzard's parent company, visited China. In an exclusive interview, Hack praised Nine City, "Why are we looking for the ninth city, because they are the only partners we have found that share the same values and ideas with us. We work very well together, and we should say it is a perfect match." Not only that, Hack even said

"our focus is on Blizzard and World of Warcraft, and in this respect we live and die with the nine cities."

Four years later, when Blizzard's World of Warcraft agency contract with Blizzard expired, Blizzard transferred to NetEase. At that time, NetEase CEO Ding Lei said in an interview that the cooperation between NetEase and Blizzard was based on mutual recognition of their ideas, which felt "like getting married." If NetEase and Blizzard are compared to getting married, then the divorce between Nine cities and Blizzard is not peaceful, or even torn face.

In fact, before the formal change of ownership of World of Warcraft agents in 2009, the relationship between Nine cities and Blizzard was quite tense.

Zhu Jun once revealed in an interview that in 2007, Blizzard insisted on refusing to modify some game details for the Chinese environment, causing the World of Warcraft expansion "Burning Crusade" to be launched on the mainland eight months later, causing players to protest strongly. "it is mainly due to different values, different understanding of the local environment, and the question of whether you are big or not, which is very obvious when conflicts of interest are involved."

In that interview, Zhu Jun said bluntly, "it is really difficult to cooperate with a strong developer, and it is even more difficult to persist for several years." He believes that Blizzard's thinking is not localized: China can make small innovations such as "point cards", but can never cooperate with each other in development and can only operate good games; while in operation, foreign companies update slowly, forcing Nine cities to do some web activities to maintain players' attention and popularity, but the other side is not very grateful.

Nine cities have their grievances, and Blizzard also has Blizzard's dissatisfaction. First of all, due to the limitation of nine cities' operating capacity, the income growth of World of Warcraft is lower than the annual growth rate of the whole Chinese online game industry, which directly affects the real money and silver that Blizzard can get; secondly, nine cities' publicity strategy failed to highlight Blizzard's brand image. Perhaps more importantly, in 2007, Nine cities reached a strategic partnership with Blizzard's competitor, American gaming giant EA, which bought a stake of US $167 million in Nine cities, which also won the exclusive mainland operation right of FIFA Online.

According to Nine cities, the reason for choosing to cooperate with EA is based on the strategy of Nine cities to further expand its game product line in China's online game market. For a long time, World of Warcraft accounts for more than 90% of the revenue in nine cities. Nine cities hope to change the revenue structure by introducing EA games, so as to reduce "Warcraft dependence." But for Blizzard, nine cities and EA hand in hand is obviously not a good thing.

When I mentioned Hack's visit to China in 2005, a reporter asked whether Blizzard would set up a Blizzard China subsidiary to operate other products in the future. Hack's answer is that Blizzard hasn't thought about it yet. Four years later, Blizzard had a new answer to this question, and this new answer foreshadowed the breakup between Blizzard and Nine cities.

On April 15, 2009, the day before NetEase Guan Xuan won Warcraft, Chen Xiaowei, president of Nine cities, sent an internal letter. Chen Xiaowei is a professional manager invited by Zhu Jun to negotiate the renewal of the World of Warcraft agency. In this internal letter, Chen Xiaowei not only implied that Blizzard was not ready to renew the contract with Nine cities after the expiration of the contract, but also broke a lot of news.

According to Chen Xiaowei, China's policy is to prohibit foreign companies from issuing games in the country in the form of sole proprietorship or joint ventures. However, in the process of negotiation, the competitors of Nine cities threw out the conditions of establishing a joint venture as the negotiation price, which made Nine cities fall into an unresolved negotiation situation.

The competitor referred to here is NetEase. In 2008, NetEase won the agency of StarCraft series and formed a joint venture with Blizzard. One of the conditions for Blizzard and Nine cities to renew the contract with World of Warcraft is to set up a joint venture company as with NetEase at the beginning. Zhu Jun once said in an interview that when Blizzard and Nine cities first discussed the issue of contract renewal, the other side asked to set up a joint venture company.

"but Nine cities consulted the legal affairs and competent authorities and was told that foreign investors are not allowed to enter the field of game operation, so we can't do it. Of course we want to renew the contract, but if this kind of contract renewal has legal risks, to be honest, I dare not, and I don't have the ability. If others can do it, Blizzard will find someone else, and I can't help it. I can only do what Nine cities should do."

Many years ago, Shanda gave up World of Warcraft, causing nine cities to catch up from behind. Chen Tianqiao admitted afterwards that "Shanda made a strategic mistake." After the expiration of the contract between Nine cities and Blizzard, Shanda intends to compete for World of Warcraft agency again, but like Nine cities, Shanda cannot accept the condition of establishing a joint venture company and is out. It was NetEase who finally accepted this condition.

As a result, Chen Xiaowei accused NetEase in her internal email, "what we cannot understand is that some domestic enterprises, especially the domestic game companies that once praised themselves as the flagship of domestic games and threatened never to act as agents, unexpectedly increased the interests of foreign companies and squeezed their domestic counterparts in a way explicitly prohibited by national laws and regulations."

Interestingly, there are allusions in the first half of Chen Xiaowei's words.

In 2002, NetEase introduced South Korean "Elf" for 1 million US dollars, which is the first 3DMMORPG game introduced from the mainland. Six days after the elf public test, there was a fire in the Lanji Speed Internet cafe, which dealt a huge blow to the domestic online game industry. Coupled with the rampant plug-ins, NetEase announced that the elf would stop operation two years later. In 2004, NetEase introduced the South Korean online game "Feifei", which also failed to achieve success. Two consecutive defeats let Ding Lei say that NetEase should adhere to the policy of "three noes": no free, no agent, no export.

This is the origin of what Chen Xiaowei said, "some domestic game companies that claim to be the flagship of domestic games and threaten to never act as agents." Perhaps Ding Lei himself did not expect that the dart would come so quickly, but to make money, it is not shabby. No matter how strong NetEase's self-research ability is, he won't delay Ding Lei's craving for World of Warcraft.

In the email, Chen Xiaowei also revealed that NetEase asked Nine cities to transfer "servers and other hardware equipment purchased with US $73 million to them at US $22 million, while all personnel running World of Warcraft, especially customer service personnel, were transferred to NetEase at US $1 million." The reason is that "there is no World of Warcraft, you machines and people will become pure costs."

Left-handed law, right-handed morality, Chen Xiaowei this email, put NetEase on the frenzy of public opinion. At that time, nine cities employees revealed that nine cities hope to shock each other through this email, leaving themselves more buffer time. Because "We didn't expect the result to come out so early, including our boss, that there would be a change in the coming period of time."

In 2000, NetEase CEO Ding Lei went to South Korea to talk about several online games, and the miracle was among them, but finally gave up because the other party asked too much. Immediately, Zhu Jun won the miracle and achieved the career foundation of Nine cities. Many years later, because of the World of Warcraft agency, NetEase and Nine cities each showed their powers, and the style and contacts of the founders of the two companies were also fully demonstrated in this process.

The fun has just begun.

There is a reason why Zhu Jun once thought that Blizzard would not transfer to NetEase. He once said that in China, no one can handle the examination and approval of World of Warcraft except for the nine cities. According to the regulations

"if the import online game changes the operating enterprise, the original import approval number shall be revoked automatically, and the new operating enterprise shall re-apply to the Ministry of Culture for examination; any imported online game works authorized by overseas copyright owners shall not provide publishing operation services in China without the examination and approval of the General Administration of Press and publication."

In other words, even if NetEase wins the agency of World of Warcraft, he can only be listed through the examination and approval of the Ministry of Culture and the General Administration of Press and publication. And more than one media has quoted industry insiders as saying that the nine cities GR relationship is handled very well, and the plate office has a good relationship.

Compared with Nine cities, NetEase is relatively Buddhist in public relations, and Ding Lei, an engineer, is not good at dealing with foreign countries.

According to a global entrepreneur, a former employee of NetEase said, "in NetEase's four or five years, I only saw Ding Lei officially visit the Department of Audio and Video, Electronics and online Publishing Management of the online gaming industry three times. Other times, it was NetEase's COO or marketing staff who went there, and these people always had to find various reasons to tell the plate office why Ding himself could not come."

Coupled with the difficulty of data transfer in World of Warcraft and the high cost of user migration, these factors make Blizzard make the judgment that Blizzard will not transfer the agency to others. In hindsight, nine cities obviously overestimated themselves. Zhu Jun once said in an interview

"at that time, Blizzard put a contract in front of me and made it clear to me that there were other companies that offered higher contract terms. If I didn't sign the contract, Blizzard would sign it with someone else in seven days. So, I didn't sign the contract, Blizzard and NetEase signed the contract, NetEase paid a higher price."

Watching Blizzard sign the contract with NetEase and strive for the fruitless nine cities to use the killer mace.

At the end of May, Nine cities filed two lawsuits against Blizzard, respectively taking the latter to court for property damage compensation and commercial defamation. The background of this incident is that in March, the General Administration of Press and publication said that it would introduce strict measures to crack down on the overlord clause of foreign online game companies. When there is a dispute between Chinese and foreign enterprises, once the foreign company is brought for arbitration and accepted, its products may be stopped by China for approval.

Originally, NetEase will have to go through a long period of examination and approval before he can be listed on the market after taking over Warcraft. Now nine cities sue Blizzard, which is likely to lead to the suspension of Warcraft's examination and approval, which is very disadvantageous to NetEase. At that time, the behavior of Nine cities was also seen as deliberate by industry insiders, intended to delay the service time of Warcraft. Because after winning the agency of Warcraft, Ding Lei promised to the players that Warcraft will be served on June 30 at the latest.

To this nine city president Chen Xiaowei clarified, "our lawsuit Blizzard is not to delay the game online, we have agreed that the examination and approval belongs to the examination and approval, the lawsuit belongs to the lawsuit." So why did Nine cities sue Blizzard? Zhu Jun said in an interview a year later, "litigation is actually a part of business, so why not do it if you can make more money through litigation? commercial litigation is a means to get more money, which is the rule of free trade and normal business behavior."

That's true, but obviously, the dispute between Nine cities and Blizzard has a negative impact on the examination and approval of Warcraft. Until July, NetEase did not get Warcraft's birth permit.

And Warcraft delayed the opening of service, NetEase's loss is not small. According to the original average online number of 700000 people, each person spent 10 yuan per day, NetEase's daily loss will reach 7 million yuan. This does not include the cost of maintaining data migration, purchasing servers, recruiters, and other preparatory work. It is reported that NetEase had lost more than 200 million at that time due to the delay in service launch.

In addition to money, a more serious problem for NetEase may be that the mentality of players has also been affected. On June 29, Warcraft player "Brother Cang Tian" posted a post calling on players to attack NetEase's Fantasy Journey to the West. That night, all seven servers of Fantasy Journey to the West were paralyzed. At the same time, the Eternal Tower of Shanda, a game designed to compete for high-end players in World of Warcraft, has reached 1 million people online, with some Warcraft players turning to Taiwan and private servers.

This is not difficult to understand, at that time NetEase World of Warcraft director Li Riqiang pointed out in the interview, "NetEase was set up by competitors."

It was not until July 21 that World of Warcraft was approved by the Ministry of Culture. On the same day, the copyright Administration approved the internal test of Warcraft, but still did not issue the game version number. The next day, the Seventh ChinaJoy was held. At the Summit Forum, Ding Lei was the first to speak on the stage. The theme of Ding Lei's speech that day was very interesting, "mutually beneficial and win-win to create a new situation in the Internet industry." In his speech, Ding Lei said

"at last year's chinajoy, some of our peers raised the issue of vicious competition in the industry. At that time, we were secretly pleased that we could be alone and talk about movies and philosophy. But this year, I feel that the vicious competition in the game industry is becoming more and more intense. For example, through public opinion to mislead the public, there may be short-term benefits, but long-term interests are lost, and consumers will suffer in the end."

The competitor Ding Lei said misled the public through public opinion, referring to the "NetEase Blizzard illegal establishment of a joint venture company" revealed by Chen Xiaowei, president of the nine cities. After Ding Lei finished her speech, Chen Xiaowei took the stage, and Chen Xiaowei's speech was also very interesting.

"I very much agree with Boss Ding that manipulating the media is a very bad thing. If the media say that today, whether Boss Ding or my speech will be spread word by word, I will begin to speak freely. The reason for this little request is that Nine cities has issued a notice on June 6 that we want to refund the balance of players' cards to players, but my colleagues told me that this refund announcement from Nine cities has been removed by several major websites. "

Chen Xiaowei's words implied that NetEase used his influence in the portal to make things difficult for the nine cities. Then Chen Xiaowei pointed out

Some time ago, someone in NetEase said that someone was plotting against NetEase. Nine cities make it very clear here that Blizzard, NetEase and Nine cities are all listed companies, and none of the accounts of listed enterprises can be calculated secretly, and they must be calculated clearly. Nine cities put forward a report to the government, this report we are public, is a signed report, and we also try very hard to send to the website, but repeatedly removed. "

Chen Xiaowei said that this report refers to the nine cities reported NetEase and Blizzard to establish a joint venture illegal. This is the first time that nine cities have disclosed that they have reported NetEase and "reported to more than one competent government department." Global entrepreneurs quoted a Wall Street analyst as saying that the plate office checked NetEase's accounts four times through NetEase's auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers, but did not come to any conclusion.

Ye Weilun, general manager of Blizzard China, also attended the chinajoy Summit Forum on the same day. He only stressed that Blizzard absolutely abides by Chinese laws, policies and regulations in China.

5 after Jiucheng won World of Warcraft, Shanda, in order to snipe its opponents, sternly told the agents of various provinces and cities: no distribution of World of Warcraft, no agency for Nine cities, otherwise its right of acting Shanda will be cancelled. Many years later, in the face of NetEase, who got World of Warcraft, Nine cities also did not go soft.

According to reports, a person close to Blizzard once revealed that there is a backup of World of Warcraft player data in the Blizzard database, but there is no latest month because of the lag, and Nine cities once wanted to use the transfer of player data to create trouble for NetEase. This point was also confirmed by NetEase World of Warcraft responsible person Li Riqiang, who vaguely expressed in the interview that NetEase encountered great resistance in the handover work such as the transfer of user data.

Compared with the data transfer, NetEase encountered the biggest resistance, or examination and approval. Until November 2009, when World of Warcraft had not been approved by the copyright Administration, NetEase published an article in which it was meaningfully recalled

"on February 27, 2004, Nine cities announced that they had won the mainland agency of World of Warcraft; on March 21, 2005, the game had been approved and officially tested. Considering that Nine cities still need to spend a lot of time on team formation, server installation and so on-the time delay caused by approval is basically negligible; at the same time, the General Administration of Publishing has not made any changes to the content of this newly introduced foreign game. "

The implication is clear. On February 12, 2010, the General Information Administration issued a notice approving NetEase to run World of Warcraft after examination and approval. To this day, we still do not know how NetEase finally persuaded the copyright Administration to pass the examination and approval of World of Warcraft. According to people familiar with the matter, Nine cities did not give up until the end of January 2010. However, with the release of the copyright Administration, Zhu Jun also followed the statement, "from the first day I signed Warcraft in 2004, I knew that there would be a lost day."

Back on April 17, 2009, the day after NetEase Guan announced that he had won the agency for Warcraft, Zhu Jun held another meeting, saying that he would introduce a series of pragmatic policy stabilization teams, including the distribution of options, and revealed that Warcraft may have a chance to turn around. Let's not give up until the last minute. It is also reported from the nine cities that Chen Xiaowei, president of the nine cities, is still in the United States recently, negotiating with Blizzard.

In hindsight, this is only the wishful thinking of the nine cities. The day before that, Chen Xiaowei, president of Nine cities, promised in an email that we would never lay off staff because of the renewal of a game. On April 24, the banner "Nine cities share weal and woe with you" was hung in the company building. On June 22, the nine cities began to lay off nearly a thousand people from the original Warcraft team.

An interesting detail is that while nine cities are laying off staff, NetEase began to recruit a large number of customer service for the operation of World of Warcraft. NetEase's Warcraft team is located in Building 7, 690 Bibo Road, Shanghai Zhangjiang Microelectronics Port, while the office in Nine City is located in Building 3, 690 Bibo Road, just a few buildings apart. Also in the same office park with them is Shanda, Building 1, 690 Bibo Road.

All three companies have represented or missed World of Warcraft, and their destinies are closely linked to the game.

Before Warcraft was listed, Shanda Legend occupied 80% of the market. After Warcraft was listed, Legend's market share was less than 10%. Shanda lost the top spot in the domestic online game market. Nine cities became Warcraft and lost Warcraft. After losing Warcraft, the total revenue of Nine cities in the third quarter of 2009 was $3.94 million, down 91.14% from the previous month and 93.79% from the same period last year, falling out of the top 10 of the online gaming industry. As for NetEase, after acting for World of Warcraft in 2010, the company's revenue grew by 50%, but now Blizzard games account for only 6% of NetEase's revenue.

▲ Photo Source: slow release-Sara recently announced that World of Warcraft will cease operation after its contract with NetEase expires. For NetEase today, it is a pity to lose World of Warcraft, but it is not fatal. Many years ago, global entrepreneurs made predictions:

NetEase may eventually get everything it wants from Warcraft: huge profits, millions of players, excellent brands, and improved government relations. But after winning, it should not forget that Blizzard chose to take the initiative to change ownership in the hope of getting more benefits in the Chinese market, which will also provide variables for its choice in three years' time. The tragic example of the nine cities is still in front of us, breaking through the plight of independent research and development of the game is a tough battle that NetEase really needs to win.

Three years later, Blizzard chose to renew his contract with NetEase again, but the feast always came to an end. Blizzard abandoned nine cities to sign NetEase, now Blizzard chose to break up with NetEase, "nothing more than hope to get greater benefits in the Chinese market."

According to people familiar with the matter, Blizzard offered a "sky-high price" for contract renewal. First, Blizzard requires a further increase in revenue and net profit of more than 50 per cent compared with the 2019-2022 contract period, and Blizzard game pricing will adopt a global synchronization strategy, while the previous national service pricing is generally about 20 per cent lower than in the rest of the world.

In addition, Blizzard also asked NetEase to follow the "Diablo: immortal" model, research and development of Blizzard other IP mobile games global release, but NetEase only enjoy the Chinese market revenue share. At the same time, Blizzard also requires NetEase to pay a huge deposit or prepaid fee to guarantee the completion of Article 2, otherwise he will be "punished".

It can only be said that NetEase is no longer the NetEase of that year, but Blizzard is still the Blizzard of that year. In 2009, the public relations of Nine cities revealed that the condition of Blizzard's contract renewal at that time was that if China's policy was relaxed in the future to allow foreign investors to operate games independently, Blizzard could unconditionally take back the right to operate World of Warcraft.

Nine cities, which could not accept this contract renewal condition, chose to break up with Blizzard. Zhu Jun said in an interview later that Ding Lei and I are not class enemies, nor are Blizzard and I class enemies. Everything is normal business behavior. It is rumored that Ding Lei and I should be irreconcilable, but in fact, although the relationship between me and Ding Lei is not very good, we will drink coffee together when we meet, and we are definitely not class enemies.

Also not class enemies are Zhu Jun and Chen Tianqiao. In 2010, the grand open platform, which has been researched and developed for 3 years, ushered in the first large-scale online game manufacturer and former competitor Nine cities. After the hot blood ball of the web game developed by Nine cities is connected to the grand open platform, it can share a series of services such as Shanda user resources, billing channels, call center, dividend promotion and so on.

At that time, the nine cities had already lost Warcraft, and the main direction of the grand attack also turned to the digital home entertainment development plan. Everyone laughed away the grudge, and the enemies and partners could sometimes be exchanged with each other. Just like Chen Xiaowei, who participated in the negotiations on behalf of the nine cities, once recalled

Blizzard CEO asked me, "if you gave Blizzard a piece of advice, what would it be?" I have only one word: Flexibility. Looking back on her years in Nine cities, Chen Xiaowei concluded that

"in the past two years, I have learned about the thrilling struggle for business interests and how to balance it. In fact, business negotiation requires both will and art, but the most important thing is the question of values. the line between shrewdness and greed is sometimes very unclear, or even without it. And greed is sometimes only one step away from stupidity."

This passage is suitable for Blizzard. END

Reference:

① Global Entrepreneurship Network is easy to rob: agency bottleneck Breakthrough R & D is the right way

② Beijing News-Zhu Jun arrogantly returned to the online gaming business and said that Warcraft will eventually lose

③ 17173? Zhu Jun: at this time, there is nothing to give up Warcraft.

④ Sadie net, Ogilvy details Blizzard Asia-Pacific bidding inside story: the Warcraft family is hard to find.

⑤ Global Entrepreneur, Jiucheng CEO Zhu Jun: we are really in no hurry to have abundant cash flow

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:manfangsd, by Wen Biniang.

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