Rebirth of the internet boss

Chapter 390 One Year Later (continued)

Acquisitions continue...

Then, in June 2005, Fengrui acquired South Korea's Smile Gate company with a value of 6 million US dollars, and handed it over to Fengrui Korea Branch for management.
By the way, I forgot to mention that the DNF (Dungeon and Fighter) of Neople, a subsidiary of Fengrui Korea Branch, has begun public beta testing in Korea. Feng will not spend so much money, especially the quality of the picture is really different every day. The quality of the first version in this life can match the picture of the latest version in the previous life.

And for the promotion of DNF this time, Li Feng also specially invested an additional 100 million US dollars in the Korean branch of the DNF game alone. This is the future rooster that lays eggs, and there must be no mistakes.

Let’s talk about the newly acquired South Korean company Smile Gate. The reason why Li Feng is optimistic about this newly established small Korean company is because this Smile Gate company, which likes to make games by copying and borrowing, is making a game called "Crossing FireWire" No.1 shooting game,
This "Cross Fire" is a magic weapon for the rise of previous Tencent games, and it is also the "China IP Value List-Top 10 Game List". Proving to the industry that he is the leader of the current FPS online game industry with constantly refreshing records time and time again,
Now that Fengrui has replaced Tengxun in this life, the good things of Tengxun in the previous life must be preserved, and must be 100% retained.
However, this "Cross Fire" also analyzes the advantages of many popular FPS including "Counter-Strike", and also provides a No.1 shooting game after absorbing the content of various gun games loved by many players.

In order to avoid copyright infringement and avoid any trouble in the future, Li Feng also asked Liu Zhiping to buy a Valve company in the United States, but the founder of this company directly rejected Feng Rui's kindness, and Li Feng even lowered the purchase price from The $1500 million was raised to $3000 million, but he also flatly refused,
Because he didn’t want to lose control of the company and eventually become a sharp weapon of capital, and he also said to his colleagues: “You know what will happen, if Valve is acquired by capital, then it will completely disintegrate the next day, Rather than doing this, it’s better to simply disband on the spot!”

And the name of this American-style fat house with high-number glasses, a bloated figure, and a rough appearance is Gabrogan Newell. It's a mouthful to pronounce, isn't it?

It doesn't matter, he also has another world-renowned nickname: G Fat!There is no one of the most powerful game producers in the world.

Fat G was obsessed with games since he was a child, and he was in poor health and almost lost his sight. As a result, he was able to get into Harvard. His tough life needs no explanation!
As a result, he made an "unreliable" decision in the first two years-dropping out of school (Why the fuck are all the awesome people dropouts? It turns out that I am not awesome because I didn't drop out of school!)

If it is someone else, of course you have to study hard and make progress every day.

And he actually wanted to give up his studies - if he was in China, his parents might not recognize this son.

What do you do after quitting school?The answer is: to go to Microsoft to be a programmer, perhaps because of his idol and senior - Bill Gates also dropped out of school,

Fatty G has always believed that quitting school is a wise choice. He once said: "I learned more in three months at Microsoft than I learned in three years at Harvard."

At that time, Microsoft gave Fatty G a very high salary. After working for 13 years, he saved millions of dollars, but Fatty G always felt that games were his "life".
So in 1996, he made another "unreliable" decision-leaving from Microsoft to start a business and make games.

It is said that when Fatty G proposed to leave, Bill Gates personally persuaded him to stay.

If it was someone else, he would have stayed honestly for a long time, but he ignored the high salary and Bill Gates's retention! ?
If it was changed to China, his parents might deny this son again.

After starting a business, Fatty G named the company "Valve"——Valve. The connotation is: to open the valve of thinking.

The most important thing in starting a business is talent, and when it comes to recruiting people, G Fat is also "unreliable".

The way ordinary companies recruit people is usually: posting recruitment information, receiving resumes, interviewing, and hiring.

And G Fat’s recruiting method is actually like this——

A university teacher used a game as an example in his lectures. Fatty G was impressed and recruited!

An economist published a paper, Fatty G thought it was good after reading it, so I hired it!

In short, among the first batch of employees recruited by G Fatty, there are teachers, food delivery staff, biscuit shop owners, dentists... and even homeless singers.

Except G Fat, no one knows what the reason for recruiting is—maybe he can't even explain himself.

In short, in the eyes of others, the newly established Valve is a company composed of a group of "rabble".

Almost no one was optimistic about them, but they never expected that this group of "rabble" would be particularly competitive!
In 1997, Fatty G brought his first game "Half-Life" to great popularity. Who has experienced such a powerful game!

G Fat and Valve became famous in this battle, and "Half-Life" has become one of the most memorable works in the history of games!

Since then, Valve has successively launched works such as "Team Fortress" and "Half-Life 2", all of which were bought by players, and gave birth to world-famous MODs such as "Counter-Strike" (CS), and Valve started from a The little-known start-up company successfully counterattacked and became a top manufacturer with the same reputation as Blizzard and EA!
If you switch to 99% of game companies, they will only do one thing after success: launch new games step by step.

But Fatty G is different, he is still unreliable, he wants to try something new.

As a diehard fan of games, Fatty G felt that the players at that time were really hard-pressed: if you want to buy games, you have to travel all the way to physical stores to buy discs, and sometimes you have to wait in long lines. Was told: sorry, sold out!
As the owner of a game company, Fatty G felt that the manufacturers at that time were also very hard-pressed: every game had to find a publisher, it was very troublesome to ship, and the physical disc was particularly afraid of piracy.

G Fat's idea is: why not make an online game store?

Manufacturers can directly upload, players can pay for download directly, games can be updated online, and anti-piracy can also be prevented through the Internet.

Isn't this the best of both worlds! ?But the game circle at the time didn't see it that way, because no one had heard of or even thought about the "online game store" model at the time.

G Fat approached giants such as Microsoft and Yahoo, hoping to develop together, but the reply G Fat received was only two words, "Get out!"

If so, make it yourself!
So, under G Fatty's "willing to go his own way", Steam was born.

It is said that G Fat named the platform "Steam" (Steam), hoping that the download speed of the platform can be as fast as the steam that is ejected.

In order to achieve this goal and allow players to download the game as quickly as possible, Fatty G hired an "old driver" to help.

Yes, it is indeed "Old Driver", or the most awesome "Old Driver", his name is Bram Cohen!
do not know?Then tell you his other nickname: this man is the father of BT seeds!If it weren't for him, we all wouldn't see so many action movies at all!

So in 2003, Steam was bundled with CS 1.6, a famous game history.

In addition to downloading CS 1.6 through Steam, players can also update the game online and play against each other online.

From that day on, the days when you can only go to the store to queue up to buy games are gone forever.

In addition to Valve's own games, more and more third-party developers have also joined Steam, especially independent game companies. They no longer have to struggle to find publishers. They can easily handle everything by uploading games to Steam. !
It can be said that the emergence of Steam is a disruptive innovation for the game industry.

In front of Steam, Apple's App Store, Google's Google Play and even Tencent's WeGame all have to call it "Dad"!
Today, Steam users have spread all over the world, even Antarctica has their players, and the best place for G fat is not to launch an online store,
Rather, he is well aware of the consumer psychology of players, and created DLC, discount seasons, box openings, etc. that allow you to spend money to buy, buy, buy, and buy!
If it is said that countless women are frantically chopping their hands for Jack Ma, then there are also countless men frantically chopping their hands for G fat.

With the support of the majority of players, Fatty G's assets have reached 370 billion yuan, ranking among the top 100 richest people in the United States.

What is the concept of 370 billion?Let me do the math for you: You win 500 million a day, and it will take 20 years to save this amount.

Looking back at G Fat’s entrepreneurial story, you will find that if it wasn’t for G Fatty’s bold innovation attempts, Valve would at most be a major game manufacturer in a game circle full of strong players, and would not be able to become a game empire.

It is precisely because of Fatty G's "unreliability" that Valve, Steam, and himself have been achieved.Of course, there is also a price, that is, the player's wallet is poor!
Although Fatty G rejected Fengrui's acquisition, when Fatty G learned about Fengrui's basic situation, he wanted to invite Li Feng to become a shareholder. In fact, Valve's funds are relatively tight now, especially in the past two years. The extremely complicated lawsuits related to its publisher Sierra Entertainment (later acquired by Vivendi Universal (VUG) game company), and part of the source code of "Half-Life 2" was also leaked by hackers, and now Valve is indeed " Adding insult to injury".

Even if Valve is a taboo for G fat, Li Feng is inconvenient to force it, but Li Feng is very interested in Valve's Steam platform, as long as it can become a platform, Li Feng is interested,
At this time, Steam was just fledgling, not yet a third-party game download platform, and even apart from Valve, there was no second company to promote games on it.

However, the future of Steam is promising, and Fatty G is not reluctant to sell it. Regardless of Fatty G’s reluctance, as long as it is money, it doesn’t matter. Fat G still compromised in front of money,
And for this acquisition, Li Feng also specially asked someone to create an exquisite knife. Like many players, Fatty G also has a hobby of collecting, but his collection is quite special. He likes small knives, um...the ones in CS That kind of small knife, it is said that he now has more than 600 small knives from all over the world, and for this reason he has set aside a warehouse to store them,

最终李锋的用心也收到了回报，历时4个月两者终于在2005年7月1日建军节这天也达成了协议，锋锐以1000万美金入股Valve40%的股份，
At the same time, Fengrui bought the Steam platform with 1000 million US dollars. Of course, Li Feng still has requirements for such a high purchase price for Steam, that is, G Fat must be responsible for the future operation of the Steam platform.

There are not many companies actually acquired in this "International Big Acquisition Plan", namely YouTube, Blog China, Steam and South Korea's Smile Gate Company, and most of the rest are shareholders. After all, foreign countries are not like domestic companies. Rui has not had such a big influence.

If it is considered an acquisition, Fengrui also "half-acquired" Japan's Mixi for 2005 million US dollars in August 8. The total price of US dollars was a strong acquisition of Mixi, and its founder Kenji Kasahara was directly driven out of the company.
The reason why Li Feng insisted on acquiring this Mixi website is that Li Feng wanted to build a branch of Fengrui in Japan, and the best product of Fengrui’s Japanese branch is the global promotion of Renren.com.
Now Li Feng does not want Renren.com and Facebook to conquer the ocean (Pacific Ocean). If Li Feng wants Renren.com to go overseas, he not only wants to occupy his own East Asian cultural circle, but also the Western Latin cultural circle. It doesn't matter if you don't succeed, since you can't make Facebook feel good anyway, in front of your own child (Renren) and adopted child (Facebook), of course Li Feng chose his own son!

And this Mixi website is the largest social networking site in Japan, and even this Mixi social networking site was established earlier than Fengrui's Renren.com, making it a perfect outpost for Renren.com,

It’s just that the wish is beautiful, and the ideal is realistic. Kenji Kasahara, the founder of Mixi, directly rejected Fengrui’s acquisition, and even refused to give Li Feng the opportunity to negotiate, because now Mixi is developing well, still has a little money, and also has a lot of money. Investors want to buy shares, so why sell it!
And Li Feng has always had some opinions on Japan, so he directly adopted the most lucrative method to get Japan's Softbank to buy Mixi forcefully, and expelled the stubborn Kasahara Kenji from his own company!
Who is the largest Internet company in Japan?That must be Yahoo Japan, and the boss of Yahoo Japan is SoftBank Group, not to mention that SoftBank Group itself is Japan's giant.

Sun Zhengyi, as the godfather of the Internet in Japan, took down all the shareholders behind Mixi with only a little trick, so the acquisition was completed in less than a month.

Although the acquisition was completed, Li Feng also paid a very high price to let Sun Zhengyi take action. Li Feng just made a phone call, but favors are the most difficult thing to pay back...

Especially for people at Li Feng's level, favors are priceless. For this reason, Li Feng also sold half of Mixi's shares to Softbank after the acquisition. Anyway, if he wants to work in Japan, he can't do without a good relationship with Softbank.

In addition to these, it is also for the layout of the future mobile era, so that all Fengrui products can go overseas. Renren is nothing, if it is WeChat!

(End of this chapter)