Chapter 1233 – Developing World of Warcraft
To be honest, Paul Allen’s dance is awful, but Kirilenko loves it. It’s not the dance he is interested in. It is the dancer, although it is a man.
After watching the dance and rejecting Kirilenko’s invitation to party in Vegas, Feng Yu flew to California to check on Wind and Rain Games’ subsidiary, Blizzard. They had just released <Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos>.
At Blizzard, Feng Yu is satisfied with their performance after looking at their sales report.
These few years, Blizzard had released a series of games, and after being bought over by Wind and Rain Games, they have more funds and can hire more developers.
Last year, Blizzard released <Diablo II: Lord of Destruction> and sold more than 3 million copies. With Wind and Rain Games’ help, they successfully enter the Chinese market.
In the past, the biggest PC games market is not in Japan but in South Korea. Just Starcraft alone, Blizzard sold more than 1 million copies there. This is more than North America, and Korea has the strongest Esports team in Feng Yu’s previous life.
In Feng Yu’s previous life, China has lesser PC users and do not have enough copyright protection. Most of the Chinese gamers are playing on pirated versions of the games. That’s why PC games are not selling well in China.
But in this life, Feng Yu had increased the pressure on piracy. He issued high monetary rewards to people reporting factories that produce and sell pirated games and raise awareness that pirated disk often comes with Trojan horses that threaten PC safety.
Also, Feng Yu’s games are often packaged with Lenovo PCs. Although the prices are lower than overseas, there are profits, and people slowly got used to buying genuine products.
Using pirated or original products is only a habit. Many people can afford to buy original products, but their thinking is, ‘Other people are using cheaper pirated products. Why should I spend more on the original version?’
When Half-life was introduced in China, the original disk sells much better than Feng Yu’s previous life. In his past life, China can be considered gaming companies’ nightmare.
The Chinese market is much bigger than the North American market. Still, the original games’ sales are less than 30% of North America’s sales. The Chinese do not play PC games?
Of course not! They are just buying the ‘cracked version’ of the games outside of the PC malls or bridges! China is the best at cracking others’ technical protection.
Many companies had announced that if any software’s technical protection features cannot be crack by the Chinese, it will be the best software in the market. After all, even Microsoft cannot do that.
Feng Yu thought about how to prevent people from cracking his games. Simple. Just prevent those who cracked his software from making any money and letting them know they must face the law!
When people can get profits of ten times their cost, they will dare to take the risk. The cost of a disk is 2 RMB, and they can sell it for 20 RMB.
But if the cost is increased to 5 RMB, and the original version is only selling for 30 RMB, their profits will be lowered significantly. These people will hesitate, especially they will be slapped with hefty fines if they are caught.
Those piracy factories can no longer give their software engineers high bonuses for cracking these games. They will not be motivated. Most of these engineers are highly educated, and they know what they are doing is illegal.
Of course, some of them are still willing to take the risk as high profits are earned. But it is only a small number of them. Some websites that promoted illegal downloads of pirated software are all shut down because of Feng Yu’s intervention.
I don’t care whether you are doing this for profits or not. Promoting piracy is wrong. I will give you a chance. Just delete all the software and pay the fines.
You don’t want to pay the fines? Then your website will be shut down. Why are the authorities helping Feng Yu to do this? It’s because of money.
China’s internet monitoring department equipment is mostly donated by Feng Yu. The department only needs to pay its workers’ salaries, and not the bulk of the cost. More importantly, the higher-ups are happy to have a department like this.
So, piracy development in China has been slowed down compared to Feng Yu’s previous life. The leaders in this life have not encountered the crazy piracy era, but he knows what he did was effective.
As more people choose originals, many of China’s software development companies can survive. Even if they developed good software, they could not sell it as people will buy the pirated version.
But now, at least these companies can make money from selling their software. Also, China’s biggest software distributor is Lenovo Kingsoft, and they are also the biggest software developer in China.
Their anti-virus and office software is the best in China and Asia. They are one of the best in the world, and their other software is also doing well. They had also acquired a few smaller software companies because these companies had developed good software.
Lenovo’s current development strategy is the same as Microsoft’s in the past. If they can develop software, they will do it themselves. If they cannot do it, they will get someone else to do it for them. But if someone else had already developed it, they will acquire that company.
All those smaller companies are overjoyed to be acquired by Lenovo Kingsoft. Running their own companies has uncertainties, and they might as well sell it to get more money now. Furthermore, the owners will also get some of Lenovo Kingsoft shares, and the dividends are very high.
Feng Yu is satisfied with Lenovo Kingsoft’s progress, except for their PC’s operating system development. Currently, they had the first version, and Feng Yu had tested it. It is slightly better than Win XP, but it is a far cry from Win 7.
This operating software’s compatibility is also not good enough. If it is not compatible with other software, how will it snatch Microsoft’s market share? Users will get used to a certain system. In Feng Yu’s previous life, Apple’s PC sales are doing well. Their software and operating systems played a major role in it.
Suppose Feng Yu’s operating system is compatible with the Win system. In that case, this system will be selling well when it is released. That is when Lenovo Kingsoft start to rise to the top.
Qiu Bojun and Lei Jun want to get listed and make money. With more funds, they can invest in their product development. But Feng Yu rejected this idea. He told them that since they can wait for so many years, why not wait for another two years?
The world will be shocked when this operating system is released, and their current products are not good enough.
Feng Yu smiled as he imagined the shock Microsoft will get when his operating system is released. It’s time for a Chinese company to be the best software company in the world!
“Adham, what’s that report at the back?”
“It is the development plan for a new game. We are going to name it as <World of Warcraft>!”
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
