Restart life

Chapter 550, 0538: [It still requires Old Ancestor Chen to take action personally.]

Before the CJ expo even ended, and before he could even watch the NPL (Oracle Era Professional League) summer season, Chen Guiliang flew away with the CEO of the North American subsidiary.

In the first-class cabin of the plane, John Yokoyama glanced at Chen Guiliang, who was dozing off, and felt that he could not understand his boss's madness at all.

Because League of Legends is so deeply rooted in North America, Oracle Era is completely unable to compete, so Chen Guiliang is finally going to pull off some crazy moves this time.

This crazy idea is something John Yokoyama could never have come up with in his wildest dreams!

The plane landed at Seattle's international airport, and then we took a car to Bellevue, across Lake Washington.

I checked into a hotel that night and communicated with Valve.

Two days later, Chen Guiliang personally led his team to Valve's headquarters.

"Is there anything I can help you with?"

"We are from Game Science, a Chinese company, and we made an appointment with your chairman two weeks in advance. We called two days ago to inform you that your chairman had arranged to meet today."

"plz follow me."

Valve is similar to GamerSky; it has never gone public and doesn't even accept venture capital.

Chen Guiliang tried to invest in Valve or Steam multiple times, but was always flatly rejected, no matter how much money he offered.

He wasn't there to discuss an acquisition, of course; he wanted to collaborate with Steam and, incidentally, pay a visit to its founder, Gabe Newell.

There were two founders, both former Microsoft employees. One of them has left, and the remaining one is Gabe Newell, also known as Gabe Newell.

After shaking hands with Chen Guiliang and his group, Newell carefully looked Chen Guiliang over and said, "Please sit down. You are younger than I expected."

Chen Guiliang said, "Your beard is quite handsome. I didn't see it in your photos before."

Newell stroked his beard with great pride and said, "Men should grow beards as they get older. I suggest you give it a try."

"As you said, I'm still very young. Maybe I'll try it in ten years," Chen Guiliang said with a smile.

Newell chatted for a few minutes before getting to the point: "I read through the GameKing materials you sent me a few days ago very carefully. I was particularly surprised; GameKing is much larger than I imagined. Several of your games are selling quite well on Steam."

Chen Guiliang said, "Youke can engage in comprehensive cooperation with Steam."

“That’s great, I’d love to hear that,” Newell said, “but you don’t need to lead the team here to discuss this, do you?”

Chen Guiliang smiled and said, "I've come here by chance to pay you a visit. I'd like to make friends with you. Don't you think our company is quite similar? We don't accept venture capital, nor do we seek to go public. We just focus on making games."

“It really does look very similar; there aren’t many companies like that anymore,” Newell said.

Chen Guiliang said, "By the way, let's talk about an interesting collaboration."

Newell asked, "What's interesting?"

Chen Guiliang asked, "You know League of Legends, right?"

Newell nodded: "Of course."

Chen Guiliang said, "I have a game called 'OE' that has already defeated 'LOL' in the Chinese, European, and Korean markets. It is also on par with 'LOL' in the Southeast Asian market. I want to enter the North American market and take over 'LOL's' home turf."

Newell said, "It's difficult. There are game companies in North America that have released similar games, but none of them can compete with League of Legends."

Chen Guiliang said, "I want to make OE available for free download on Steam."

Newell was completely bewildered: "Steam makes money by charging a 30% cut of downloads. How do we make money if it's free to download?"

Chen Guiliang said, “If the downloads of ‘OE’ are less than 500 million, I will pay you $0.5 for each download. If the downloads are between 500 million and 2000 million, I will pay you $0.8 for each download. If the downloads are more than 2000 million, I will pay you $1.2 for each download. If it is the same account, repeated downloads will only be counted once.”

Newell was stunned: "If the downloads reach 2000 million, then you'll have to pay me over 2000 million dollars."

Chen Guiliang said, "Of course I understand. Steam can even hold events to attract users to download my game ineffectively. Ineffective downloads are downloads that are not played. I agree with all of this, and I'm willing to pay for it! Even if only one out of 100 downloads is actually played, I still think it's worth it."

Newell shifted his obese body and said with a laugh, "You're the craziest guy I've ever met. But very funny."

Chen Guiliang said, "I can also further collaborate with Steam. You can select some less popular games, and after obtaining permission from the developers, users who download and play 'OE' and complete the corresponding tasks can download those games for a limited time. I will pay them extra!"

Newell already understood Chen Guiliang's thoughts: this Chinese man wanted to spend millions, or even tens of millions of dollars, to force OE into the North American market.

Tens of millions of dollars is enough to acquire many game companies, and this is only a part of the promotion cost of "OE" in North America!

John Yokoyama sat silently beside him. As the CEO of Youke's North American subsidiary, he couldn't understand Chen Guiliang's behavior at all.

This is absolutely outrageous. Not only did Yokoyama John find it incomprehensible, but Qu Guohao, Dong Qianqiu, and others also strongly opposed it.

Tens of millions of dollars are thrown in; if it succeeds, great, but if it fails, the loss is too great. Moreover, the probability of failure is extremely high.

Almost all of the top management at Youke opposed it, but Chen Guiliang insisted on going his own way.

If Oracle can't beat League of Legends in North America, it will never be a global game!

"Are you willing to cooperate?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Newell shrugged: "Why wouldn't I want to make money, especially if it's a sure thing?"

Chen Guiliang stood up and shook hands: "It's a pleasure to cooperate with you."

"Pleasant to work with."

"Interested in attending the China Game Industry Annual Conference in six months? There will be many Chinese game companies there, and they don't know much about Steam. If you go, you can sign quite a few contracts."

"Of course, I would love to visit China. I would also like to visit your company."

“Very welcome.”

Chen Guiliang left the negotiation team behind to discuss contract details with Steam.

When he and John Yokoyama returned to the subsidiary, the marketing operations team from the China headquarters had already arrived.

Chen Guiliang immediately convened a meeting with the Chinese and American teams, pointing to the PowerPoint presentation and saying, "For the past few months, I've been researching data on the US gaming market. Hundreds of pages of data, I spent over two hundred thousand US dollars on consulting fees, and then over a month analyzing it..."

"Many people know that game live streaming is becoming increasingly popular, and game companies are paying more and more attention to it. But what I want to say is that everyone is still not paying enough attention! Especially the promotional funds invested in this area are far from sufficient..."

"The two most popular game streaming platforms in North America are Own3D.tv and Twitch.tv. About 60% of League of Legends streamers stream on Own3D.tv, and about 30% stream on Twitch.tv..."

"Own3D.tv started earlier and signed a large number of veteran top-tier League of Legends streamers with generous contracts. However, the platform suffers from delayed broadcasts, poor video quality, and instability. Moreover, it has begun to delay or even default on streamers' payments! This platform will collapse sooner or later!"

"The rise of Twitch.tv was inevitable, and it just so happens that most of the top League of Legends streamers are not on this platform. This is a great opportunity for us. We invested money to cooperate with Twitch.tv to cultivate Oracle Era streamers to promote the game."

"Also, because Own3D.tv is in arrears with its streamers' salaries, I estimate that many top streamers want to terminate their contracts. Bring a lawyer, sign cooperation agreements with popular streamers, and get them to switch to Twitch.tv to promote 'Oracle Era'..."

"Don't try to save money. Develop performance incentive programs for the streamers and use generous rewards to attract them to promote our game! Don't just hire one or two; hire a whole bunch to create the illusion that 'Oracle Era' is incredibly popular. The illusion will eventually become the truth!"

"We also need to pay attention to YouTube. Although YouTube doesn't have a dedicated gaming app, its traffic is enormous. We need to build professional teams to edit clips of the streamers we work with and upload them to YouTube."

"Develop a video marketing plan, create high-quality tutorial videos, funny compilations, hero story videos... and generate buzz on YouTube! Provide information to partner video creators so they can promote our game, which has already beaten League of Legends in multiple markets worldwide!"

"And Facebook and Twitter..."

Chen Guiliang was very dissatisfied with the team at the US subsidiary. This time, he personally studied the US game market, personally formulated a promotion and publicity plan, and even came to give a lecture to the newly formed team.

Fearing that these guys might not understand something, Chen Guiliang talked for more than two hours, until his throat was hoarse.

The subsidiary executives who listened to the lecture throughout didn't even dare to look Chen Guiliang in the eye, for fear that their boss would give them a severe scolding.

After Chen Guiliang finished speaking, he said, "This method can be replicated for promoting other games in the future, with minor modifications made according to specific circumstances."

Chen Guiliang flew back to China the next day. He had already explained it in such detail that if the US side still made a mistake in its implementation, then they could all be fired!

Riot Games was completely unaware of this and had no idea that a massive publicity campaign was about to launch against them.

Because League of Legends was completely crushed in the Chinese, European and South Korean markets, and was evenly matched with Oracle in the Southeast Asian market, coupled with Tencent's lack of further large-scale investment, Riot Games currently has limited funds available.

Although they also pay attention to new media such as live streaming, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, their total marketing budget in North America this year is only $600 million.

There's a huge difference in scale compared to the tens of millions of dollars Chen Guiliang has spent!
Moreover, it's the same old problem: League of Legends' art style is too ugly—ugly in every way, from the heroes to the map.

Riot Games finally started paying attention this year, and so far they've only made one champion look better. That champion is Riot's darling, Ezreal.

Everything else remains the same, or rather, is changing.

It's not as simple as just changing a skin; it requires completely remodeling the hero!

As for why Riot Games didn't follow Tencent's example and implement texture mapping and skinning, but instead opted for the less efficient but more permanent method of remodeling, that's a matter of decision-making by Riot's top management; they probably didn't want to be misled.

Currently, Oracle Era has already amassed a loyal player base in the North American market. Player surveys revealed that over 80% of them started playing because of the game's attractive graphics and characters.

The competing games are all so ugly!
Chen Guiliang returned to Beijing and waited patiently for the results of the battle in North America.

(End of this chapter)