My rebirth is different

Chapter 555 Everything Is For The Players

Villefort has indeed encountered trouble recently, which is what Yu Wenfei said, the dispute with Xue Leshan.

Speaking of which, Villefort and Sierra were once close comrades-in-arms and had a "honeymoon period" for a long time.

But in the end, they turned their faces because of interests.

This matter should be discussed from the very beginning of Villefort’s establishment. If there was no help from Sierra, Villefort might not have the present Villefort.

Villefort was founded by Gabe Newell and Harrington in 1996. At the beginning of the company's establishment, G Fat and the others wanted to develop their own engine, but after seeing Carmack's Quake1 engine, they were immediately shocked. This is the game engine of my dreams.So I decided to ask for authorization from id and develop the game based on it.

At that time, their referrer was Abrash, who had been retained by Bill Gates himself but still switched to ID.Abrash has a very good relationship with ID boss Carmack, both of whom are experts in computer graphics, so Newell and Harrington met Carmack smoothly.The process of getting the engine license was also quite smooth, but the owners of ID were not very optimistic about their companies.

One problem solved, here's another: What about the company's name?Gabe Newell and Harrington thought hard, trying to find a name that was impressive but wouldn't have a negative impact. Valve!That's it!Villefort was finally born and began his own legendary experience.

Everything is ready, only the talents and publishers are responsible. In those days, game distribution was a big trouble. If there is no powerful publisher for a good game, then players will have no chance to get in touch with your game.

Gabe Newell personally invited John Guthrie and Steve Bond, who were delivering food at the university at the time, both dropped out of school.After the company was basically formed, they began to poach people everywhere, and Microsoft did not escape their search.

Once fully staffed, the selection of publishers once again gave Newell a headache.But those who are blessed don’t have to worry, Xue Leshan, who had planned to buy id with 250 million US dollars in stock (but was rejected by id because they wanted cash), offered an olive branch. It can be said that the Williams couple of Xue Leshan did have a pair Huiyan, the two choices are quite accurate.Sierra not only undertook Villefort's publishing work, but also provided them with a lot of money for game development.

Valve's talent, funding, and distribution issues have all been resolved, and the next step is to develop the game at full capacity.

But things didn't go so smoothly, because the investor Sierra Mountain's requirements were very demanding, surpassing Quake!

That's Thor's Hammer!
An epoch-making work that makes the game leap from 2D to 3D!

Relying solely on game graphics technology and Carmack?

That is absolutely a dream, even if Fatty G and Harrington are genius programmers, they clearly know that they are not qualified to compare with Carmack in terms of image technology.

So Valve decided to work hard on the game background and plot, as well as the player's sense of integration. id's Doom and Quake pursue a sense of speed and game play, so Carmack said: "The background of shooting games is like the plot in a small movie. Although it is necessary, it is not the most important." This sentence has also become a sentence. A classic, it has been talked about by people in the game industry for many years...

But Valve is trying to break out of this shackle. G fat spent a lot of money and commissioned the famous novelist Marc Laidlaw to write scripts for his games, so there were the famous protagonists "Gordon Freeman" and "Half-Life".

In the second half of 1997, after nearly a year of hard work, Villefort released screenshots of the game and made a splash at the E3 exhibition that year.Many people have praised Half-Life.That year's E3 brought Villefort a good reputation, but many people, including Carmack, were still not optimistic about the licensee and gave Villefort a lot of advice.

In August, Fatty G and Harrington made up their minds and decided to rewrite all the AI ​​and levels of the game, because they themselves were not satisfied.

So, everything has to be overthrown and started again.

Another year has passed, and 98 was quite an exciting year for Valve.The game development work is proceeding in an orderly manner, and the modified Half-Life once again shined at E3. After the first beta version was released in September, Half-Life immediately caused a major earthquake.

Half-Life has won numerous accolades, and Valve has since established itself in the game development world!
But in 2000, Harrington, one of the founders of the company, resigned and traveled around the world with his wife.This is quite similar to id, both are two talented programmers, both created great games, but both fell apart.

The happy Harrington went on vacation, leaving the lonely fat G to stick to the company alone.

After struggling for two years, during this period, Valverde has not released any new works, and the development of Half-Life 2 has not been smooth.

Because when Harrington left, Fatty G gave him almost all the company's cash in order to repurchase his shares!After Harrington left, in order to reduce expenses, Villefort even made layoffs, which is very rare in this company.

Blessings and misfortunes never come singly. In 2002, when Villefort was still recovering, the relationship with Sierra Mountain began to deteriorate again.

G Fat found that Sierra was illegally distributing copies of Villefort's games!
In other words, they secretly sold the game, but did not give Villefort a corresponding share.

No wonder Half-Life has become popular all over the world in the past few years, but Valve Corporation has not received as much money as imagined.

In a rage, Fatty G took Xue Leshan to court.After Xueleshan was acquired by VUG, they in turn sued Valverde for not working hard to make games, deliberately delaying time and wasting investors' money!The lawsuit between the two has never been resolved.

…………

Hearing Yu Wenfei mention Xuele Mountain, Fatty G's face naturally became ugly.

"Although it's a little troublesome, I think it will be resolved. It's not a big problem..." he muttered.

"However, you also understand the strength of VUG. Either you will lose the lawsuit, or it will continue to drag on. Villefort is no match for the opponent in the fight for financial resources. If this continues, you can still focus on it. Are you coming to game development? Half-Life [-], global players have been waiting for several years, to tell you the truth, I am a CS lover." Yu Wenfei said with a smile.

Talking about Half-Life [-], Fatty G also sighed, "In the second half of this year, we should be able to launch mature products. This is indeed our problem, and everyone has been waiting for a long time."

Effie turned the topic back again, "Mr. Gabe Newell, the Facebook game has great strength, the Facebook Battle.net we launched on the mainland, the perfect ranking points and rank division system, all of which can give half a Bring better gaming experience to players. If we work together, then Valve can devote all its energy to making better games. I think Facebook Games is better at these services and promotions! Everything It's for the players, isn't that bad?"

"Everything is for the players..." Fatty G repeated this sentence in a low voice. Indeed, although he also likes money, his love for games has always come first.

Effie's words are very reasonable. The Facebook game is indeed powerful. Of course, if the strength is not enough, how could even Blizzard buy it!
Fatty G also registered on Facebook Battle.net, and the game experience on it really surprised him.

However, with his vicious vision, he also knows that it needs numerous data centers and huge server farms to support it, and all of these are temporarily unbearable for Villefort.

That's why he didn't learn from Facebook's Battle.net ranking system in the United States, because it's impossible to build so many data centers. Sometimes things are not complicated, but you just can't do it, because of poverty...

"How about... Let's do this, I can authorize Half-Life's global network promotion rights to Facebook games, that is to say, you can set up data centers in the United States or Europe to provide Battle.net services for players around the world. In addition, This authorization is free, and Villefort does not charge a penny!" Fatty G said generously.

Of course, Yu Wenfei and Effie will not be moved by his "generosity".

Isn’t this nonsense, Facebook Battle.net has no charging items at all, and the slogan it puts out is to provide genuine players with a better gaming experience.

Providing Battle.net services in the United States or Europe requires a large investment of money to build a data center, and there is no profit!Of course Villefort was embarrassed to ask for any licensing fee.

"We'll discuss this issue later, but I heard that Villefort is planning to launch a new project called STEAM?" Yu Wenfei said with a smile.

This matter is not considered a commercial secret anymore, Fatty G nodded calmly, "Yes, because of the lessons learned from Xuele Mountain, we are preparing to build our own online distribution channel, and the current network can also support players to download games from the Internet Ontology. With the advancement of Internet hardware technology, the network bandwidth will become larger and faster, and the network speed will also become faster. In my opinion, selling games through the Internet in the future must be the general trend, just like Amazon now. "

Fatty G is really scared by Xueleshan!

He also realized that if he did not have his own sales channels, his life would always be controlled by publishers.

If the game that I have worked so hard to develop is not popular, it is fine. Even if it is really popular, most of the profits will be taken by the publisher.

They give themselves as much as they want, because it's so easy to play with the data.

As for myself, it is basically impossible to go to so many countries around the world to collect evidence and count how many games have been sold.

(End of this chapter)