Chapter 395 - 189: An Investment of 50 Million, a Total Return of 115 Million

Chapter 395: Chapter 189: An Investment of 50 Million, a Total Return of 115 Million

This game had little value to his company.

But the game’s players were immensely valuable to him.

What’s the most valuable thing these days?

Traffic!

Players!

People are what’s most valuable.

And which game has the most players right now?

Without a doubt, it’s this phenomenal, viral game.

He wanted to migrate the massive player base from this game over to the games his own company produced.

Of course, this migration would be difficult.

And not every player would make the switch to his company’s games.

But as long as he could convert a fraction of them, it would be a huge win for him.

Some of his company’s games were designed for heavy monetization.

Even if only a few people spent money, with such a massive player base, the revenue would be substantial.

As for how to do it, there were plenty of ways.

For instance, they could change the model from "watch an ad to get a chance to play" to "play our other games to get a chance to play."

Things like playing for a certain amount of time or unlocking specific achievements could award more attempts in the original game.

The idea was to use the explosive traffic from the viral sensation *Fruit Fruit* to funnel players to their company’s other games.

That was his plan.

Getting Pentagonal Game Company to agree to such a plan wouldn’t be easy.

It involved significant changes to the game’s design and systems, and the original developers would never go through all that trouble just to accommodate them.

So, the best solution was a direct acquisition.

Once they acquired the company, they could naturally do whatever they pleased.

Every single one of the game’s players was a target for migration. Even if they only managed to convert 10% of the player base to their own company’s games, it would be a massive win.

They were confident they could squeeze plenty of money out of that 10%.

And as it happened, Chen Mo’s company held a 50% stake in Pentagonal Game Company.

If they could secure that 50% stake, there would be no further obstacles.

That was why he had called Chen Mo to negotiate the purchase of his shares.

He and Chen Mo were friends, which was why he was making the call personally.

Otherwise, it would have been a formal, company-to-company matter, and his company would have sent representatives to Panshi Venture Capital to negotiate.

"Pentagonal Game Company has a lot of potential. I’m very optimistic about its future."

Hearing the purpose of Wu Zicong’s call, Chen Mo couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, replying with a smile.

’Whether it has potential or not, right now, it *has* to have potential.’

’Whether I’m optimistic or not, I have to say that I am.’

’After all, I’m the seller, and Wu Zicong is the buyer.’

’A seller has to talk up his own goods to get a better price, right?’

"The game company might have potential, but the game itself doesn’t."

"Chen Mo, you know as well as I do that this game has hit its peak. It’s about to start declining."

"It’ll fall just as fast as it rose. Now is the best time to sell."

Wu Zicong understood what Chen Mo was getting at and immediately got down to business.

Chen Mo just wanted to drive up the price, which was perfectly normal. He understood that.

Still, this told him that Chen Mo was willing to sell. Otherwise, he would have been rejected outright.

As long as Chen Mo was open to selling, it was just a matter of price.

And the price was always negotiable.

It would only be a problem if Chen Mo had no intention of selling at all.

"So for this 50% stake, how much is Brother Wu offering?"

Seeing that Wu Zicong understood him, Chen Mo stopped beating around the bush and asked the question that mattered most to him.

He was a venture capitalist. Now that one of his investments had succeeded, it was natural to start thinking about cashing out.

He knew everything Wu Zicong said was true.

The game had already reached its peak; its life cycle didn’t have much time left.

A decline in metrics was inevitable, and just as Wu Zicong said, it would fall just as quickly as it had risen.

This was indeed the best time to sell.

If he waited until the daily active user count started to plummet, the value of his shares would drop along with it.

As for why Wu Zicong still wanted to buy his shares despite knowing the game’s daily active users were about to decline, Chen Mo was well aware of the reason.

If Wu Zicong were in any other industry, this game would be worthless to him.

But as it happened, Wu Zicong was in the gaming industry, and to him, the game’s massive player base was a gold mine.

Who wouldn’t covet such a massive player base, aside from a few gaming giants?

Take last year’s Lunar New Year, for example, when Alipay ran its "Lucky Card Collection" event.

Part of the event involved playing mini-games to earn more Lucky Cards.

In their quest to collect the cards, many people stayed up all night playing the various mini-games the platform offered.

This funneled a terrifying number of players to those mini-games, and the game companies must have made an incredible amount of money from it.

Wu Zicong’s company had all sorts of games under its umbrella—large-scale games, small-scale games, paid games, free-to-play games—they had it all.

If they could successfully channel players from *Fruit Fruit*, they could offer them a huge variety of other games to choose from.

There was something for everyone.

So this was the real reason why Wu Zicong wanted to buy the shares, even knowing the game had peaked and was about to decline.

Because he wasn’t buying a game; he was buying traffic!

It wasn’t just gaming companies that coveted such massive traffic; giants in other industries wanted it just as badly.

Take e-commerce platforms, for example. To them, traffic is wealth.

No matter where the traffic comes from, they have ways to convert it into sales.