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A piece of news about equity freeze once again pushed Shi Yuzhu, who had been back for a year, to the forefront.
Tianyancha APP shows that Giant Investment recently added a piece of equity freezing information. The person subject to execution is Shi Yuzhu. The frozen equity amount is 114 million yuan. The freezing period is three years. The execution court is the Beijing Financial Court.
Giant Group responded urgently, stating that the equity freeze was caused by Shi Yuzhu’s guarantee for a “friend” and would be handled appropriately.
Involved in Zhao Wei’s contract dispute case,
The amount involved is 1.8 billion yuan
In fact, this is the third time that Giant Investment has experienced the embarrassment of having its equity frozen. In August 2021 and December 2021, Giant Investment's equity was frozen twice, with the target price of 114 million yuan each.
The equity freeze in August 2021 not only involves Giant Investment, but also includes Shi Yuzhu’s Zhuhai Giant, Zhuhai Gentleman, Hangzhou Yunxi, and Ningxia Giant, with a total frozen scale of nearly 200 million yuan. Shi Yuzhu once cheated on himself and made friends accidentally, resulting in heavy losses.
Among Shi Yuzhu's "friends", one is Lu Zhiqiang, the leader of the Taishan Society, and the other is Zhao Wei and Huang Youlong, who have a huge influence on Shi Yuzhu. His association with Lu Zhiqiang made Shi Yuzhu involved in a dispute over the financial loan contract between Minsheng Trust and Hongtai Investment, and the equity of his subsidiary companies was repeatedly frozen. His association with Zhao Wei and Huang Youlong caused Shi Yuzhu to be involved in the Guarantee Contract Dispute Case between Minsheng Trust and Zhao Wei, Huang Youlong and Shi Yuzhu, involving a total amount of 1.8 billion yuan.
It is said that Giant Network CEO Liu Wei once advised Shi Yuzhu, "You are always causing losses outside, so come play games and make fewer friends this way."
Under Liu Wei's persuasion, Shi Yuzhu returned to the gaming industry and became a grand event in the gaming industry in 2022. In the domestic game industry, Shi Yuzhu is the first generation of entrepreneurs, who single-handedly created the glory of "Zhengtu".
"Journey" past and present life,
An IP supports a company
In 2006, in the era of card payment for playing games, the online game "Zhengtu" introduced a free + item payment model for the first time. The next year, it set a record of millions of players online at the same time. Since its launch, "Zhengtu" has gone through seventeen years and has generated a cumulative revenue of 20 billion yuan. It is no exaggeration to say that one "Zhengtu" IP supports the entire giant network of listed companies.
In 2007, Giant Network was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and its market value once exceeded US$4 billion. In 2013, Shi Yuzhu announced on Weibo that he would resign as CEO of Giant Network, retire completely, and bid farewell to the world. The next year, Giant Network completed the privatization at a cost of US$3 billion and returned to A-shares through the backdoor of Century Cruises. In 2017, Giant Network entered its heyday, with its stock price rising to as high as 76 yuan per share, corresponding to a market value of 150 billion yuan.
However, at the critical juncture of the transformation from PC games to mobile games, Giant Network failed to seize the opportunity. Instead, it turned its attention to Internet finance and Internet medical care, only to fetch water from a bamboo basket and fail.
Financial data shows that from 2017 to 2022, Giant Network achieved revenue of 2.91 billion yuan, 3.78 billion yuan, 2.57 billion yuan, 2.22 billion yuan, 2.12 billion yuan, and 2.04 billion yuan respectively, and the corresponding net profits were 1.29 billion yuan, 1.08 billion yuan, 820 million yuan, 1.03 billion yuan, 1.00 billion yuan, 1.02 billion yuan, entering a long bottleneck period. In terms of stock price in the secondary market, Giant Network once fell by 90% from its historical peak.
Shi Yuzhu comes back,
Personally create "Original Journey"
The reason why Shi Yuzhu retired calmly was because of the well-organized team, the best of which included Liu Wei and Wu Meng, who later served as co-CEO. Wu Meng, who joined Giant Network in 2012, released "Ball Battle" three years later, which became another hit after "Zhengtu".
In January 2020, Wu Meng served as co-CEO, fully responsible for daily operations, and launched the new product "Walnut Diary". In June 2021, Wu Meng announced his resignation, which became a major loss to Giant Network.
At the most critical turning stage of Giant Network, Shi Yuzhu stood on the front desk and made a comeback. In July 2022, Shi Yuzhu, who had not appeared in public for more than three years, appeared at the Giant Group's annual IP ceremony and announced that the "Journey" IP and Golden Sauce Wine had reached a comprehensive strategic cooperation. Two months later, Shi Yuzhu officially announced his comeback on Weibo.
After his comeback, Shi Yuzhu personally took on the role of supervising the production of the new mobile game "Original Journey". Since then, Shi Yuzhu has made frequent public appearances to support "Original Journey". In March 2023, "Original Journey" was officially launched for public beta. The sales in the first month exceeded 300 million yuan, and the cumulative sales exceeded 1 billion. The semi-annual report shows that Giant Network achieved revenue of 1.44 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.7%; net profit attributable to the parent company was 660 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 33.0%, and it has entered the fast growth line.
Shi Yuzhu strongly recommended,
Games + AI become strategic focus
As the first generation of programmers in China, Shi Yuzhu has a keen sense of trends in technological development. After returning to the game industry, Shi Yuzhu promoted game + AI and became one of the core strategies of Giant Network. At an internal meeting of Giant Group, Shi Yuzhu said that the combination of games + AI is the general trend and a key direction of Giant Group.
In July 2023, Giant Network and Alibaba Cloud reached a comprehensive cooperation to jointly build a game + AI intelligent computing platform and apply large models to game development.
Driven by Shi Yuzhu, Giant Network established an AI innovation laboratory, which is responsible for building AIGC-related capabilities and promoting the popularization and implementation of AIGC tools in business scenarios. According to Shi Yuzhu, all Giant Network projects, including "Original Journey", are being developed using AI tools.
In addition to developing a large number of application AI tools in the backend, Giant Network also attempts to use AI technology to create new AI gameplay in the front-end gameplay. Giant Network announced that the company has built preliminary platform capabilities in AI-assisted art industrialization, customized training of large language models, and language generation.
Riding on the AIGC express train, Giant Network has reached its daily limit in the secondary market many times and has become one of the most popular concept stocks. After Shi Yuzhu returned, Giant Network also returned.
Text: Bugle-X / Data Ape
