Offside game

Su Yi went to Lechang Network, located on the fifteenth floor of Century Building, and saw that the company's renovation was almost complete. The main aspects were finished, and only some details remained to be finished.

Upon seeing Su Yi arrive, Li Lishan, who was arranging office supplies for the staff, came over to greet him and told him that Liu Jun was also in the office.

Su Yi went over to find Liu Jun. Upon seeing Su Yi, Liu Jun talked to him about the company's recent situation.

Recruitment is basically complete, and customer service will be operational once the equipment arrives. Network maintenance technicians are already working in the server room. Currently, customer service and administrative staff are helping Li Lishan with company renovations and office supply procurement.

Wu Guoqiang brought several of his comrades to form the company's security department, and they have already started working. Meanwhile, Han Xue has been negotiating with the people from the Yanjing State-owned Materials Storage Company about purchasing Warehouse Area No. 2, and a result is expected soon.

However, there are some issues with Lianzhong. An investigation revealed that Lianzhong's three founders sold 79% of their shares to Zhonggong.com two years ago for a low price of 5 million yuan. The three founders, Bao Yue, Jian Jing, and Wang Jianhua, each hold 7% of Lianzhong's shares. In May of this year, Haihong Holdings acquired 66.7% of Zhonggong.com's Lianzhong shares, now owning 79% and becoming Lianzhong's largest shareholder. If they want to acquire Lianzhong, they cannot avoid Haihong Holdings, but obtaining Lianzhong's shares from Haihong Holdings will be a difficult task.

Upon hearing this news, Su Yi thought for a moment and said, "Let's try contacting these people first. If we really can't complete the acquisition, then we'll have to make these casual games ourselves. That's not too difficult, after all, we already have so many games from Lianzhong as examples."

Liu Jun agreed. However, seeing Su Yi's furrowed brow, he comforted him, "Actually, as you said, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, even if we could acquire Lianzhong now, the cost would be no less than 5000 million, which isn't exactly a bargain. We can now use Lechang Liaoliao's user base to carve out this market. You know, Lechang Liaoliao's registered users have far exceeded Lechang's 2000 million, reaching an astonishing 5000 million, and this number is still growing rapidly. Tencent, on the other hand, just changed its OICQ to QQ due to an infringement lawsuit from AOL, the owner of ICQ, and its business growth has been impacted, but it's recovering. Given our current momentum, it's entirely possible that we can surpass QQ's registered users by the end of the year. Having such a huge user base will be very beneficial for all our future business development. However, Tencent's biggest headache right now is the server purchase costs brought about by user growth. Although we have unique data compression technology, the explosive growth of users is starting to put significant pressure on our servers. I'm planning to purchase another batch of servers from IBM."

“Brother Liu, you can make those decisions. But that’s not what’s giving me a headache right now. You know, we’ve already acquired Yubi International’s HppyPlay game platform. I plan to make this European company our overseas branch, responsible for promoting the Lechang game platform in overseas regions, but we don’t have a good candidate for the branch manager yet.”

Upon hearing Su Yi's words, Liu Jun seemed to have thought of something, but hesitated to speak. Su Yi noticed this expression and asked, "Brother Liu, do you have any thoughts? Just say it directly; I want your advice right now."

Liu Jun hesitated for a moment, then said, "I have a classmate named Chen Yi. He went to the United States to study after graduating from university and has been in Silicon Valley ever since. He only recently returned to China. I heard that Sohu contacted him. I wonder what the outcome has been."

"How capable is he?" Su Yi asked.

“I’ve met him a few times; he’s a very capable and insightful person.”

"Could you contact him, Brother Liu, and discuss this matter?"

"Okay, if you agree, I'll contact him and try to persuade him to join."

"Alright, Brother Liu, contact him as soon as possible. If he agrees, I'll make time to meet him. Also, the acquisition of Warehouse Area No. 2 needs to be expedited. The sooner we buy that land, the sooner we can start construction." Su Yi also knew that the evolution of the Kosei was a recent event, so he was quite eager to get to it.

Next, Liu Jun contacted Haihong Holdings again, proposing to acquire their shares in Lianzhong Games, but was rejected. As a result, they could only begin recruiting technical personnel to try and develop their own point systems for games and casual games.

After Liu Jun contacted him, Chen Yi agreed to meet with Su Yi. Accompanied by Liu Jun, Su Yi and Chen Yi met. It was clear that Chen Yi was a very confident person, possessing an undeniable charisma. The three exchanged views on the current state of the domestic IT industry and the development direction of the Lechang gaming platform. Ultimately, all were very satisfied with the meeting, and Chen Yi agreed to join Lechang Networks to reorganize HppyPlay gaming company in Europe, making it Lechang Networks' overseas branch.

The next day, after getting a general understanding of the relevant information, Chen Yi flew to Germany to Berlin to accept the HappyPlay game interaction platform and complete the integration with the Lechang battle platform.

Su Yi then cracked Lianzhong's games, remade several classic card and board games into game versions, and prepared to put them into the Lechang gaming platform.

A week later, on October 25th, Lechang Networks held a grand press conference in Yanjing.

At the press conference, Liu Jun, representing Lechang Network, first announced the launch of the international version of the Lechang gaming platform and its main functions.

First, the number of online multiplayer games has increased. Thanks to the acquisition of the HappyPlay gaming platform, the HappyPlay gaming platform now supports online multiplayer games such as Diablo II, Warcraft, and Age of Empires, adding as many as six new games.

Secondly, regarding the game "Evolution of History", CD key binding for legitimate users outside of Asia has been enabled. Starting today, players all over the world can enjoy the online multiplayer fun of this game.

Thirdly, the HappyPlay gaming platform will be integrated into the international version of the LeChang gaming platform. Existing HappyPlay users in Europe and America can choose to link their original accounts to their new LeChang accounts, retaining all their original data. All casual games from the original HappyPlay gaming platform will be retained, but these games will initially only be available on European and American servers.

Fourthly, we've added more casual games, including board and card games, giving users more game options. The number of casual games will continue to increase with each update.

On the same day, Chen Yi's overseas branch also held a press conference in Berlin, Germany, to launch the international version of the Lechang gaming platform and announce news related to European and American players.

Following this announcement, the European and American servers on the HappyPlay gaming platform quickly became crowded, with the "Evolution of History" game section being the most populated. Statistics released a month later showed that 85% of HappyPlay users had linked new accounts, and nearly 600 million European and American players registered during that month, with over 400 million of them linking their official CD keys.

According to the information provided to Su Yi by Yu Bi, "Evolution of History" sold 3.8 million copies in Europe in its first month of release, breaking the sales record set by "Diablo II" a year earlier.

At this point, Yubi International had already transferred the first month's sales profit share to Su Yi's Swiss bank account. The release price of *Historic Evolution* outside of Asia was $39. After deducting 45% for disc and promotion costs, as well as distributor profits, the net profit from 3.8 million copies of the game was $8151 million. Su Yi's share of the after-tax profit was $3912 million. Of this, $10 million was used to pay for HappyPlay's acquisition of the game platform by Lechang Network. Therefore, Su Yi's final share was $2912 million, equivalent to approximately 240 million RMB.

At this point, with Su Yi's approval, Han Xue had reached an agreement with Yanjing State-owned Materials Warehousing Company. Lechang Network would purchase their 40000-square-meter Warehouse Area No. 2, located next to the Science and Technology Park, for 120 million yuan in cash. The 120 million yuan would be paid in three installments over three years. Upon signing the agreement, Lechang Network would immediately pay Yanjing State-owned Materials Warehousing Company 60 million yuan, with an additional 20 million yuan annually thereafter. With this capital injection, Yanjing State-owned Materials Warehousing Company could complete its restructuring and be revitalized, which was exactly what the government wanted. With this land, Lechang Network could also begin constructing their future company headquarters.

Su Yi injected another 200 million yuan into Lechang Network, of which 60 million yuan was used to pay Yanjing State-owned Materials Warehousing Company, and the remainder was used for the first phase of construction of Lechang Network's headquarters. From the day the agreement was signed, a large number of demolition teams entered the original Warehouse No. 2 area and began demolishing all the warehouses.

Liu Jun also obtained the complete set of design drawings for Lechang Network's future headquarters from Su Yi, including the various buildings, venues, and landscaping plans. He then began searching for a suitable engineering company to begin the first phase of construction for the future headquarters.