Rebirth of the Internet: Starting from Games

Chapter 546: Vivendi, the cancer in the industry

"Vivendi" is a giant French media multinational group with a long history.

Why is it called a media multinational group? Because it has acquired six media companies from various countries.

These include French local advertising company Havas, New York-based Cendant Software, Morocco's Maroc Telecom, and Europe's large pay-TV operator NetHold, which then merged with the French EMI film company Pathé, which was a global film company in the early 20th century. The leader of the industry!

Later Vivendi also created what is now the world's largest record company: Universal Music.

At that time, Universal's share of the music market exceeded the upper limit stipulated by local antitrust laws. It was strangled by the European Commission and ordered to stop, and it had to reflect and make rectifications. Even so, it still accounts for a quarter of the global market share.

For example, the world's three top tenors Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, well-known American singers Lady Gaga, Swifty Swift, Black Eyed Peas, Eminem, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, etc., domestic Jacky Cheung, Lin Yilian, Eason Chan, etc. , Stefanie Sun, Leung Jingru, Luo Zhixiang, etc., this huge lineup is undoubtedly their stars.

Even when people watch Hollywood blockbusters in theaters, the "UNIVERSAL" logo that appears in the title is also owned by Universal Pictures.

It can be seen that he is wealthy.

Vivendi's acquisition behavior can basically be summarized by the process of "acquisition, reorganization, value extraction, and sale", making it infamous in the industry.

It is even more notorious in the gaming circle and is known as the crusher of gaming companies. Any game company that is acquired means completely giving up the corporate culture developed because of games, and the corporate culture of a game company often represents the production style and quality of the game.

Its board of directors and a large number of employees may have chosen to voluntarily resign or lay off employees because they could not tolerate the various krypton gold elements in the games they spent so much effort to create. This also caused Vivendi to squeeze out bit by bit the reputation of the games it had finally accumulated. Do it, then throw it away, without exception.

As early as 1998, Havas, a well-known French publishing and media group, acquired Shanden. Soon after, Havas was fully acquired by the French giant Vivendi.

Since then, Vivendi has acquired two game companies, Sierra and the famous Blizzard.

You may be a little unfamiliar with this Snow Mountain company, but when it comes to "Half-Life" produced by Valve, you may have heard of it. They were responsible for sales. The release of "Half-Life" achieved huge success that year. Commercially successful, some media even reported that Sierra will surpass EA in an all-round way.

At first, Xueleshan didn't see Vivendi's true face clearly, and was complacent in thinking that he was married to Wu Song. Unexpectedly, after the wedding, he found out that this guy was Ximen Qing.

The next year, Vivendi showed its fangs of capital, and Vivendi carried out drastic reforms on Xueleshan, ordering Xueleshan to focus on distribution and sales and become a pure distribution company. After all, it is enough to have Blizzard for R&D.

A considerable number of Xueleshan's employees were laid off, and all R&D studios were forced to close. This was equivalent to draining a large factory dry.

Killing Xue Leshan was not enough. They set their next target on Blizzard, which made many players and Blizzard fans sweat for Blizzard.

Their worries were right. Later, the media broke out that due to differences in game creation concepts, a large number of core employees of Blizzard North left, including the four giants who developed the globally popular "Diablo 2".

In fact, the Big Four of Diablo didn't really want to leave, but wanted to use their resignation as a bargaining chip to gain a say in the production of "Diablo 3". At this time, "Diablo 3" had already begun to be developed. Who knew that Vivendi had already treated them? Dissatisfied.

<divclass="contentadv">After its crazy expansion in 2002, Vivendi fell into a serious financial crisis and credit crisis. In order to get rid of US$310 billion in debt as soon as possible, it released a signal to sell its game business.

In the first half of 2003, Vivendi suffered a loss of US$7.23 million, while its gaming business lost nearly US$6000 million.

In this context, after the Big Four proposed to resign, Vivendi directly agreed to the other party's request. Since then, the Northern Blizzard team has been destroyed by Vivendi.

Subsequently, the four giants set up their own business and launched the dark game "Torchlight" series.

In the end, "Diablo 3" only met the majority of players 2 years after the release of "Diablo 12".

Then, with the release of Blizzard's Warcraft expansion pack Chaos and the Frozen Throne, sales exceeded 400 million, and players' expectations for World of Warcraft made Vivendi see the market's financial prospects and canceled the plan to sell Blizzard.

Then we saw the emergence of "World of Martial Arts" produced by Century Interactive Entertainment, and "World of Warcraft" produced by Blizzard, which was able to compete with it in the global market. It was very rich and powerful, which exposed Vivendi's businessman nature.

It has successively stopped "StarCraft: Ghost", disbanded the Blizzard North department, terminated the research and development of the Diablo 3 project, and all research and development resources have been invested in World of Warcraft.

Even the budgets for other game projects are stuck, and Blizzard president Mike Mohan is helpless.

In 07, Activision saw the vitality of World of Warcraft and planned to acquire Vivendi's game department. However, Vivendi, which only has two game companies, Blizzard and Sierra, wanted to counter-acquire 25 game companies. Activision of the company.

Activision boss Bobby Caldick, who also only reads financial reports and does not play games, was furious when he heard it. I want to be your son-in-law, but you want me to step in. There has never been such a person in my family named Bao.

This laid the foundation for the feud between Activision, Vivendi, and Blizzard.

By the 08 financial crisis, the behemoth Vivendi Group was severely weakened, and it once again had the idea of ​​selling off its game department. At this time, it no longer attempted to acquire Activision, but only wanted to sell Blizzard, which owned World of Warcraft, well. Price.

As a result, the sale price of US$150 billion was much higher than Activision's valuation. In addition, Blizzard's Mike Mohan uncharacteristically demanded independent control, which made Vivendi's senior management somewhat embarrassed and also made Bobby Cordick take action.

Moreover, the global economy is sluggish, and all investment giants have adopted conservative strategies. Even though Blizzard is famous, no one except Activision dares to take over.

Originally, according to history, Activision took the initiative to recognize the thieves as their father and Vivendi as their godfather. Then under the leadership of the godfather, they became brothers with Blizzard and merged to form Activision Blizzard.

Caudick took the initiative to express his loyalty to Vivendi, "Dad, don't worry, Brother Xue and I will make money by performing well. Of course, it's not impossible to sell ourselves as long as we have money."

There was a deep brotherhood with Blizzard, "Brother Xue, don't worry, you will be the boss and I will be the younger brother. You have the final say on the game. I will take care of other logistical work. You can just lead the younger brother forward."

As a result, Blizzard, who was stupid and naive, believed it, and it has indeed been a good few years. Hearthstone, Diablo 3, World of Warcraft, and StarCraft are advancing hand in hand, and the game business is booming.