Game Emperor Xu Bo

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Xu Bo's crisis has just begun.

On August 19, Xu Bo, chairman of TOEIC, wrote a long article, exposing his family scandal - the company's former CEO Tang Yilu and his gang had embezzled hundreds of millions of yuan, condoned cheat users, and caused harm to the company and players.

The original text says, “Their gang deceived Toei into registering players’ cheat accounts in order to cover up deliberately fake advertisements, and condoned the cheats.”

Literally speaking, Tang Yilu embezzled advertising fees and deliberately failed to control plug-in users, creating the illusion that the number of users was increasing and the promotion was smooth.

This public relations release contains colloquial and emotional expressions such as "I will investigate thoroughly" and "I have faith in this conspiracy villain".

There is a reason for this. After the news of Tang Yilu's resignation came out, a "person involved" came out and broke the news, saying that Xu Bo fired 11 female members of the public relations department in one go because they were implicated in corruption incidents.

The strange thing is that the core figures of the company embezzled hundreds of millions, but they have not been discovered for many years. Is Duoyi rotten to the core and the internal self-examination completely failed, or Tang Yilu really staged a drama of Wu Zetian usurping the throne, and Xu Bo was Empty?

Xu Bo and Tang Yilu met at NetEase.

In 2001, NetEase experienced the impact of the Internet bubble and its stock price plummeted. Ding Lei planned to find a way to survive outside the portal. At that time, China's game industry was just getting started, and it was a vast blue ocean waiting to be explored.

At the end of this year, NetEase launched its first game "Westward Journey" and also recruited 22 customer service staff for the society. Xu Bo, who worked as a network administrator in an Internet cafe after dropping out of junior high school, was one of them.

The job of customer service is very boring. The main content of every day is to comfort angry players. If nothing else happens, Xu Bo will be trapped in the cubicle and continue to play an ordinary wage earner, but Lady Luck takes a nap.

Due to server and technical problems, the effect of "Westward Journey" did not meet expectations. NetEase began to expedite the development of "Westward Journey 2", and customer service Xu Bo was transferred to participate in internal testing.

Like every dropout, Xu Bo’s biggest pastime is playing games. He cherished the opportunity to play games with pay. After the experience, he even wrote more than 30 pages of opinions, which he had to give to the producer Zhan Zhonghui. in hand.

Zhan Zhonghui was very moved and then refused.

After "Westward Journey 2" was released, "Westward Journey" rushed to the market at the speed of light and became a tasteless waste that NetEase discarded. Xu Bo once again took the initiative to take over the mess and planned to change his destiny.

That year, 26-year-old Xu Bo seized the opportunity to take off that had passed him by in his life. On the basis of "Fantasy Westward Journey", he re-planned, wrote out the settings of the martial arts, skills and equipment in the game word by word, and changed the game style to the Q version style, constructing the prototype of "Fantasy Westward Journey" .

When the growth of "Fantasy Westward Journey 2" peaked, Ding Lei decided to give this half-way plan a try. Later, "Fantasy Westward Journey" started public beta, and NetEase opened 15 servers to barely be able to handle the surging traffic.

Xu Bo succeeded.

According to the routine of counterattack Internet articles, at this time, he should have finished the routine of "pretending to be cool and slapped in the face", and then walked away from the matter, but life is not a novel, and Xu Bo is not the protagonist in the story.

When I was at NetEase, the company organized an internal training. In addition to Xu Bo, other high-level bosses were present. The trainer asked them to play a bidding game together. Under the intrigue of the bosses, Xu Bo lost.

After the game was over, he was very angry and blocked the door and yelled: How dare you lie to me, how dare you lie to me!

When Ding Lei learned about this, he shook his head and said that Xu Bo was not suitable to be a boss.

Later, "Fantasy Westward Journey" earned NetEase more than one billion, and Xu Bo began to take the lead in forming a new team, intending to improve the overall treatment of the team. The plan was handed over to Ding Lei, who directly gave him a discount on the treatment.

This is where the cracks appear.

There is a rumor in the market that before Xu Bo ran away, Ding Lei once talked to him and said very directly: "I can give you the money, but don't think about the position."

Xu Bo liked Oda Nobunaga very much and compared himself with this historical figure more than once.

His understanding of Oda Nobunaga came from the Japanese Koei Company games "Nobunaga's Ambition" and "Taiko Retsuden" that he loved after dropping out of school. Nobunaga's father disliked his mother since he was a child, which resonated with Xu Bo.

In addition to his tragic childhood, Oda Nobunaga is more well-known for his cruelty and bellicosity - this tyrant of Japan's Warring States Period could make his opponents' skulls into wine glasses. Xu Bo took it as his belief and followed it for many years.

If Xu Bo puts down his games and reads "Tokugawa Ieyasu" left to him by his old colleagues, he will find that his idol's later life is miserable: old and fatuous, he is engaged in internal rectification, and famous generals and retainers are either exiled or rebelling, until he One of the "Four Heavenly Kings" under his command, Akechi Mitsuhide, was forced to raise troops, and eventually besieged Honnoji Temple, burned himself to death, and died.

But in the years when Nobunaga took action, everything went so smoothly.

In 2006, Xu Bo suddenly proposed to set up his own business. Dingdang, the soul of NetEase Games, came to him and tactfully offered to help find investors. At that time, Dingdang didn’t know that Xu Bo had already embraced Lei Jun. Everything was ready and all he needed was to find investors. The finishing touch.

This kick sent NetEase into chaos.

Xu Bo, the mastermind behind "Fantasy Westward Journey", made a big splash in the company, accusing NetEase of treating its heroes lightly and planning to leave en masse with his brothers. NetEase's executives almost went out en masse to hold symposiums to appease the team. Ding Lei was so angry that he shouted in the office, "Stabilize him (Xu Bo)!"

At that time, the choice faced by Xu Bo's brothers was very difficult. To leave with him would be to completely offend NetEase's bosses. If not to follow him, it would be disrespectful to brotherhood and would be a bad person.

Yunfeng, who is responsible for the "Westward Journey" client and wrote the "Wind Soul" engine for all NetEase's early games, did not take it seriously after hearing the news. He said that as long as Xu Bo does not kidnap Cheng Guo Wei, the client master of "Fantasy Westward Journey", he will Whether the new company can produce games is still a question.

At that time, Guo Wei still held a lot of NetEase stocks that had not been sold. No one thought that he would leave. Unexpectedly, Guo Wei eventually appeared in TOEIC as a vice president.

Tang Yilu, who was working in NetEase's game marketing department at the time, also resisted pressure and became one of the veterans of Xu Bo's entrepreneurial team.

Although in Xu Bo's later description of her, this girl who stood up in the most difficult time became a "little employee of a certain company" who was not worth mentioning.

There is another one of the three generals who pulled Duoyi into the company, who only joined after Duoyi was established - Tianhao.

Tianhao's growth path is highly similar to that of Xu Bo. He started from testing, became a monk and became a planner along the way, and single-handedly created the cash cow "Shenwu" series for Duoyi, laying the foundation of Duoyi's game empire.

In 2010, "Shenwu" was released, kicking off the free turn-based online games. With this pillar product, TOEIC's revenue exceeded 1 billion in 2015, and its net profit exceeded all A-share listed companies in the same year. In 2017, Xu Bo ranked 9th on the list of IT tycoons with a net worth of 28.5 billion, tied with Internet seniors such as Jack Ma and Ma Huateng.

According to the prospectus, the revenue from the "Shenwu" PC game and mobile game from 2015 to 2017 was 1.509 billion yuan, 1.428 billion yuan, and 1.754 billion yuan, accounting for 92.7%, 92.0%, and 90.7% of the company's revenue respectively.

Unlike old PC games, the empire of "Shenwu" is mainly built by purchases.

The so-called purchase volume refers to paying the cost to attract traffic to the game through advertising. Around 2010, in the early days of the volume-buying game, attracting users through advertising was considered the main way to acquire “high-quality” players.

At that time, the revenue model of online games was still mainly focused on ways for "big R" players to maintain servers and "small R" players to accumulate stable income. The so-called R here is the R in RMB.

In an era when there is a lack of sufficient game supply, players’ attention can easily be distracted by various advertisements. Purchases can build a lively false prosperity and satisfy the desire of the “big R” to show off. Coupled with mature operational guidance, As long as they are trapped in the game, players will inevitably spend a few 1-yuan and 6-yuan starter packs impulsively.

The most important thing about this gameplay is to control costs and use the lowest possible budget to include as many players as possible. Looking at the entire industry, the one that is most proficient in this style of play is Sanqi Interactive Entertainment. The phenomenal web game "Archangel's Sword" in 2013 earned 320 million yuan in sales in just 60 days after it was launched.

In Xu Bo's early entrepreneurial team, there was also a strong man who was equally good at handling buying volume, Tang Yilu.

According to Duoyi's prospectus, Tang Yilu has achieved Duoyi's gross profit margins of 98.05%, 98.02%, and 98.68% without going through channels, which are far higher than the industry average. Even game giants such as Tencent and NetEase They were all left behind.

It can be said that Tianhao, Guo Wei, and Tang Yilu are the three most important people who helped Xu Bo establish his empire. They opened up territory for Xu Bo in the three directions of planning, technology, and market respectively.

Ding Lei once joked that when Xu Bo joined NetEase, he was just a network administrator who could not make a living, but when he left NetEase, he became an executive with an annual salary of 400,000.

He didn't expect at that time that Xu Bo's appetite was far beyond what executives could satisfy, and he wanted to be the boss.

After making a fortune, Xu Bo bought a yellow Lamborghini. This car would often appear in front of NetEase. For a while, people at NetEase would smile knowingly when they saw the car, "Mr. Xu came to show off to Ding Lei again." .

In 2016, TOEIC reached its peak moment and submitted to the GEM with great ambition, intending to be listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Ding Lei, who was betrayed, showed his knife.

NetEase launched a lawsuit against Duoyi on the grounds that "Shenwu" plagiarized "Fantasy Westward Journey". The Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court subsequently issued a first-instance judgment and determined that the "Shenwu" PC game and mobile game constituted an infringement of NetEase's "Fantasy Westward Journey" copyright and unfair competition. , ordered the defendant to stop infringement and unfair competition, and compensate NetEase 15 million yuan.

I don’t know if it is related to this lawsuit, but TOEIC’s listing process was interrupted. When they voluntarily withdrew the IPO, they gave the reason that “the timing was not right.”

At that time, Doe had just completed a secret power change within the company.

Tianhao left Duoyi and joined Perfect World. Tang Yilu took over the important task and began to appear frequently on stage as a "beautiful CEO".

Ando Mamoru's territory was confiscated, and Akechi Mitsuhide was under great pressure.

After Tianhao left, some players said that the planning level of the "Shenwu" series had dropped significantly, but at that time, the purchased games were still riding the wave, and the decline in traffic was not obvious.

The winds of change are already blowing.

In June of this year, NetEase launched "Onmyoji", setting off a craze for card-drawing RPG games, while MiHoYo created "Beng 3" to demonstrate the competitiveness of the two-dimensional category to investors.

In the mobile game market, the trend of high-quality products is gradually emerging. The continued popularity of "Onmyoji" and "Beng 3", as well as the subsequent phenomenal overseas expansion and the production of derivative products, have given the game industry another possibility.

It is possible to make a lot of money without relying on buying volume.

In 2018, TOEIC, which has fallen from its peak, once again tried to hit the IPO, planning to enter the Hong Kong stock market, and big moves emerged one after another.

As an image representative, Tang Yilu came forward to launch the "Game Struggler" brand. At the press conference, she said that the concept of "Game Struggler" is reflected internally in the company's encouragement of employees to focus on the game industry, and at the same time, they also hope that they can become A stage for more gaming strivers to realize their life dreams.

In order to give an example to increase his persuasiveness, Tang Yilu brought Tianhao out and talked about his journey from being a player to Duoyi's game creation team, and finally becoming the head of the R&D department.

Just when Tang Yilu was saying these words, Tianhao had already returned to his real name, Chen Shaohao, and had taken up the role of project leader at Perfect World, polishing "Dream New Zhu Xian" and preparing to compete with his old employer in the market.

It's a pity that TOEIC's listing process has been interrupted again.

An article titled "A former NetEase executive with a net worth of 28 billion gave birth to 12 children, a real-life version of polygamy" became popular on the Internet. The author of the article pointed out that Xu Bo was the "Teacher Cook" who had six unmarried wives. " As soon as these remarks came out, the company's image was greatly affected. Xu Bo quickly came forward to explain, saying that he was not a "cooking teacher":

"I respect women, and the CEO of our company is a married woman."

Seeing that Xu Bo was surrounded by public opinion, old stories about him, Teacher Zhu and Fang Zhouzi were revealed again.

To put it simply, in order to support Fang Zhouzi’s crackdown on counterfeiting, Xu Bo gave him 3 million. Unexpectedly, Fang Zhouzi turned around and took Chai Jing’s fake money. Xu Bo thought Fang Zhouzi was stupid and asked him to return the money.

Of course there is no way to refund the money given out and the water thrown out.

Paradoxically, in the scolding battle, the person facing Fang Zhouzi gradually changed from Huang V Xu Bo to the "cooking elbow" who appeared out of nowhere - Fang Zhouzi has a nickname on Weibo, Square elbow.

The name later became "boiled elbow" and later became known as "boiled teacher".

The scolding war continued to escalate. Fang Zhouzi broke the news, saying that Xu Bo went to the United States for surrogacy and stayed at his home in the United States uninvited. In front of him and his wife, he showed off his surrogacy experience-" During one surrogacy, he took more than thirty eggs from his girlfriend, and Xu Bo even said that he would give birth to a hundred sons..."

Xu Bo responded directly, "So what about surrogacy? It's completely legal in the United States, and it's my personal privacy."

At that time, there was an additional reward in the games owned by TOEIC. As long as players opened the game interface, they would see a pop-up window: Chairman of TOEIC (Xu Bo) reported Fang Zhouzi with his real name, and the maximum bonus was one million yuan. All players who forward "Report Fang Zhouzi" on the blog will receive a gift bag reward worth 30 yuan (Rejuvenating Pill x40, Cultivation Pill x2, Refining Talisman x10).

It is equivalent to using players as his private soldiers in the online world.

Regarding his operation, Xu Bo did not hide his satisfaction at all, "Does King Fang not know that my profession is a planner who sets rules? I am one of the top planners in China's Internet industry and the creator of the virtual network world. Will I Do you know how to use the rules to attack and defend?”

After the "Cooking Teacher" incident fermented, NetEase added another insult, saying that Xu Bo was not a "former NetEase executive" and emphasized that any disregard for women's rights and the promotion of a "harem-style" lifestyle would be unacceptable to NetEase. Unrecognizable and unacceptable.

Of course, the focus is on the last sentence:

The Qing Dynasty fell in 1912, 106 years ago.

The Qing Dynasty died, but the Sin Ji Zhao did not.

On August 13, the "Shenwu 4" PC game released an announcement. A large number of users involved in cheating were sent to the "Penglai Fairy Island for Vacation". Their accounts needed to be blocked for 24 hours and cost 1,000 gold coins (100 yuan) before they could be re-unblocked.

This cheating incident is the beginning of this round of liquidation storm for TOEIC.

After banning a group of players, Xu Bo set up a Monument of Sinners at the entrance of the company, and also set up a Monument of Sinners NPCs in the game. Each player can post comments within 30 words to vent their emotions. The official also specifically promised: Monument NPC, relevant curses are available for players to browse, and user comments that do not violate the law but simply curse the chairman will never be deleted."

In order to reflect the intensity of this "thorough investigation", Xu Bo also offered a reward of tens of millions of yuan to collect clues and send Tang Yilu to prison.

This wave of operations is not impossible, but there are a few minor problems.

Tang Yilu followed Xu Bo to start a business for fourteen years. During these fourteen years, no trace of corruption was left. So he still needed to rely on prize collection to find clues?

You know, when Tianhao left and Tang Yilu established his authority, the main method he used was to check the accounts.

Besides, you can falsify your purchase volume once or twice. If you continue to falsify your purchase volume for more than ten years, you can still avoid being caught by the technical department, and you can stably create over a billion in annual revenue for TOEIC. This kind of counterfeiting technology, I'm afraid all the operators in the industry want to learn from it.

Allowing cheats to be tolerated is still barely tenable. Although Tang Yilu was born in the marketing department, he needs technology but no technical skills, and planning experience but no planning experience. He may not even be able to clearly explain what a cheat is, let alone take the crackdown on cheats seriously. But she is the CEO after all. If Xu Bo wants to correct her negligence, he can only bear the blame.

Unfortunately, players may not necessarily buy into this rhetoric. In the comment area under Xu Bo's "Edict to Sin", the mainstream voices are calling for "pay back the money" and "refund the money."

Among them, one user left a message, "The player has been walking too much. Are you panicking and thinking of finding someone to blame?"

Flustering is inevitable.

After the incident of issuing red envelopes in 2018 and taking the initiative to cut salaries in 2020, TOEIC's reputation in the human resources market is really not outstanding. The direct consequence is that TOEIC's R&D capabilities are insufficient and its revenue has long relied on "Shenwu". series as a backbone.

Unfortunately, ten years later, the core gameplay that drives "Shenwu" is still buying volume.

Nowadays, purchase volume is no longer the main source of "high-quality players". The volume purchased at a large price is likely to be a group of college students who have just gone on summer vacation, or a group of professional players who will soon switch to other games. To put it bluntly, the previous buying volume has turned into brushing volume.

Even though the cost of purchasing volume fluctuates, an obvious trend in the gaming industry is that the overall cost of volume acquisition has been rising. With the rapid development of the game industry, the diversification of channels and the increasing segmentation and enrichment of products have given players more choices and the time they can devote to games is always limited.

In other words, without fundamental adjustments to the product form, "Shenwu", which is full of marks of the times, is no longer enough to support Doei's huge body.

If the situation is so serious, someone must be responsible. Of course, you can write a guilty edict, but you can't expect the boss to really take the blame, right?

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