Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 134 Serve the meal
What are Chu Chen's thoughts on Bilibili?
I don't really have any opinion.

However, Chu Chen values ​​Bilibili highly because it is a traffic portal, both now and in the future. It's just that the audience it covers is not as comprehensive as that of Douyin or QQ; it's more segmented.

But this isn't comprehensive; it's exactly what Chu Chen needs.

Even though many Bilibili users complained that Bilibili was losing its charm in their previous lives, it is undeniable that this continued until Chu Chen's transmigration.

Bilibili remains the website with the most ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) users in China.

As a company that intends to cultivate the ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) market, having a good cooperative relationship with Chen Rui and Bilibili is still necessary for him.

As for creating another Bilibili site, or acquiring the now-declining AcFun site to compete with Bilibili.

This was not something Chu Chen was considering.

If we go back two or three years, that would be fine.

But now, the snowball has started rolling, and its market size has been built up with real money. Moreover, Bilibili itself is actually following an "involution" model.

Given Bilibili's traffic model, unless it directly adds ads like YouTube, the more users it has, the higher the traffic costs will be, and the more money it will lose.

Even after Bilibili creators started accepting their own ads and Bilibili launched a Douyin-like traffic push, these profits still couldn't cover the expenses.

Bilibili has been profitable twice in its history, once thanks to "Fate/Grand Order" and once thanks to "Three Strategies". If it weren't for the "Three Strategies" game that Bilibili pulled in 25, it would have been very difficult for Bilibili to make a profit.

In some ways, this is the same strategy as "Starry Night Wallpapers"—it generates traffic, but it's very difficult to make money from that traffic source itself.

With Starry Sky's current financial resources, maintaining a "Starry Sky Wallpaper" site is a piece of cake, but it's really unnecessary to spend money competing with a video website and Bilibili.

Chu Chen didn't have that much energy, nor that much spare money.

However, this doesn't mean Chu Chen is giving up control over Bilibili. On the contrary, precisely because Bilibili isn't profitable, Chu Chen is even more determined to find ways to "grab" this traffic portal.
This was his core demand, and after a day of negotiations, Chu Chen and Bilibili finally reached a "win-win" agreement.

The contents of the contract are as follows.

One reason is the revenue sharing from the Chinese server operation of "FGO," with Starry Sky Games taking 30% of the revenue.
In the original contract between Bilibili and DEWORK, the developer's revenue share was 15%. It seems like it has only increased by 15%, but as mentioned before.
30% of revenue and 30% of profit are completely different things.

Taking a game with a revenue of 1000 million as an example, 30% goes to the developer, the distribution channel takes another 30%, and after deducting server costs and personnel costs, Bilibili might only get two or three million.

Of course, if the revenue is very high, then Bilibili's profits will be even higher, in addition to fixed costs.

But this ratio is clearly not acceptable to Chen Rui.

"Am I not going to work for you anymore??"

Although Chen Rui didn't say it explicitly, he conveyed a similar meaning.

"Hey, listen to this, there's a reason behind our ratio."

In simple terms, StarCraft's "statement" is a gamble: if FGO's monthly revenue in China falls below 5000 million, the original contract will be executed, and StarCraft Games will only take 15% of the revenue.

If the amount exceeds 50 million but is less than 100 million, Xingchen will take 25%; if it exceeds 100 million, Xingchen will take 30%.

In short, although I get a larger share, the premise of getting a larger share is that I earn a lot. It's reasonable to make the pie bigger before distributing the money.

Besides
"Whether it's 15% or 30% revenue sharing, we won't take a single penny for the first two years. What's Bilibili's valuation this year? I remember it was $17 billion, right? How about we convert that valuation into shares, which would be considered as StarCraft Games investing in us?"

When this condition was uttered, all the executives at Bilibili looked at each other in bewilderment.

Chen Rui also felt a sense of unease.

On the one hand, Chu Chen has been somewhat "aggressive" from the start of negotiations until now.

The claims that the FGO remake cost a lot of money, and that they don't mind re-releasing the remake under a different name, are all suffocating.

Now you're suddenly bringing this up.

For some inexplicable reason, I even felt a bit flattered, because the core logic behind Chu Chen's words was actually his optimism about Bilibili's future. If he didn't have confidence in Bilibili's future, believing that Bilibili's valuation would continue to rise, or even skyrocket, he wouldn't have made such a request in the first place.

After all, the monthly revenue share is real cash flow.

The importance of cash flow to a company is self-evident.

In addition, for Bilibili, apart from Apple requiring real channel fees, Bilibili itself is the largest channel on the Android side, considering that Android accounts for more than 80% of the mobile phone market share in China recently.

If it really could reach 100 million
Even if 30% is allocated and the operation and server allocation are arranged separately, Bilibili can still make a profit.

At this point, the atmosphere of the meeting began to change.

The tense atmosphere dissipated, and the two sides began to seriously discuss cooperation.

This is not surprising at all.

Even if Chen Rui were completely delusional, he couldn't have imagined that in just five years, Bilibili's valuation would skyrocket from its current $17 billion to $32 billion.
This information was known only to Chu Chen.

This is actually the reason why Chu Chen was still willing to cooperate with Bilibili after acquiring the copyright of "FGO" and remaking it.

Chu Chen needs an "opportunity" to buy shares in Bilibili.

Bilibili at this point is no longer the Bilibili of a few years ago, where you could buy shares as long as you paid money. Without some tricks, even if you just bring money, Bilibili, which has just raised capital, may not necessarily accept it.

Therefore, when Chu Chen acquired the copyright to "FGO", he had already begun to plan how to use FGO's revenue to exchange for Bilibili's shares.

For Starry Sky Games, there are several advantages to doing this.

First, there's Bilibili's return on investment.

As the core reason why Bilibili's valuation rose in his previous life, Chu Chen believes that the Starry Sky version of FGO is obviously more suitable for Chinese players, and its player base and revenue in the Chinese server should not be low.

This scale effect will continue to boost Bilibili's valuation.

The core of the conditions Chu Chen is offering is this share swap agreement, which is calculated based on the current valuation.

In other words, even if we take the most conservative estimate of FGO's monthly revenue as 1 million per month, StarCraft would be able to acquire at least 6% of Bilibili's shares over the next two years.

If monthly revenue exceeds expectations, such as in July or August, more swimsuit skins will be released.

For example, if we make the domestic heroes look more handsome and beautiful, add more characters, and improve the bond system, then the shareholding will be even greater.

For example, if the monthly revenue is 200 million, Chu Chen can get 12%.
Two years later, after Bilibili went public, its market value reached a peak of over $40 billion. This means that even if Chu Chen sold his shares two years later, his profit might be more than what Xingchen could make by operating its own Chinese version of FGO.

of course
Chu Chen acquired these shares not just for profit.

Two years later, if Xingchen can really acquire 6% or even 13% of the shares.

That shareholding percentage is already quite significant in Bilibili. In my previous life, up until Bilibili went public in 18, Chen Rui only held 21.5% of the shares, followed by Xu Yi with 13.1% and Tencent with 12%.

Furthermore, if FGO succeeds and drives Bilibili's IPO, Chu Chen, the developer of FGO, will have even greater influence over Bilibili during the FGO's explosive popularity.

The more popular FGO becomes, the greater its influence.

Finally, using the future profits of "FGO" to buy current shares can save Chu Chen a lot of money right now.

Chu Chen can use this money to invest in the future top internet celebrity.

TikTok was just emerging at that time.

Two years later, Starry Sky Games had Douyin in one hand, Bilibili in the other, and was still using Starry Sky Tap and Starry Sky wallpapers.
Only then could Chu Chen truly "eat at the table".

(End of this chapter)