Villefort has indeed been in trouble recently, which is what Yu Wenfei said, a dispute with Xuele Mountain.

Speaking of which, Villefort and Xuele Mountain, the two used to be close and good comrades-in-arms, and had a long "honeymoon period".

But in the end, it was because of the interests that turned the other cheek.

This matter has to start from the beginning of the establishment of Villefort, and if it was not for the help of Xuele Mountain, there may not be the current Villefort.

Villefort was founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Harrington, and at the beginning of the company's creation, G Fat wanted to develop their own engine, but after seeing Carmack's Quake1 engine, they were shocked and felt that this was the game engine of their dreams. So I decided to ask ID for permission to develop the game based on it.

At that time, as their introducer, it was Abel Rush, who had asked Bill Gates to keep him personally, but still jumped to ID. Abrash has a very good relationship with ID boss Carmack, both of whom are big names in the field of computer graphics, so Newell and Harrington met Carmack without incident. The process of getting the engine license was also quite smooth, but the owners of the ID were not very optimistic about both of their companies.

One problem was solved, and there was another one: what about the name of the company? Gabe Newell and Harrington pondered and tried to find a name that would make an impression but not have a negative impact. Valve! Villefort was finally born and began his own legendary journey.

In those days, game publishing was a big problem, and no matter how good a game was, if you didn't have a strong publisher, players wouldn't have access to your game.

Gabe Newell personally invited John Guthrie and Steve Bond, who were delivering food at the university at the time, and both subsequently dropped out of school. After the company was basically formed, they began to poach people everywhere, and Microsoft did not escape their search.

Once fully staffed, the choice of publisher once again gave Newell a headache. But the blessed don't worry, Xueleshan, who was ready to buy ID for 2.5 million US dollars in stock (but was rejected by ID because they wanted cash), extended an olive branch, it can be said that the Williams of Xueleshan do have a pair of discerning eyes, and the two choices are quite accurate. Not only did Cherlot Hill take on the distribution of Villefort, but also provided them with a lot of money for the development of the game.

With the talent, funding, and distribution issues of Villefort solved, the next step was to work at full speed to develop the game.

But things didn't go so smoothly, because the investor Xue Leshan was very demanding and surpassed Quake!

That's Mjolnir!

An epoch-making game that makes the game leap from 2D to 3D!

Relying solely on game graphics technology and karmack?

Even if G Fat and Harrington are genius programmers, they are very aware that they are not qualified to compare with Carmack in terms of image technology, which is tantamount to mantis arm blocking cars.

So Valve decided to work on the game's background and plot, as well as the player's sense of involvement. id's Do and Quake pursue a sense of speed and gameplay, so Carmack said: "The background of a shooter game is like the plot in a small movie, although it must be there, but it is not the most important." This sentence has also become a classic, and has been talked about by people in the game industry for many years......

But Valve tried to break that blockade. G Fat spent a lot of money and commissioned the famous writer Marc Laidw to write the script for his game, so there were the later famous protagonists "Gordon Freeman" and "Half-Life".

By the second half of 1997, after nearly a year of hard work, Villefort had released screenshots of the game, which made a big splash at that year's E3 exhibition. A lot of people praise Half-Life. E3 that year brought Villefort a good reputation, but many people, including Carmack, were not optimistic about the licensee and gave Villefort a lot of advice.

In August, G-Fat and Harrington decided to rewrite the game's AI and levels because they weren't happy with it themselves.

So, everything had to be torn down and started all over again.

Another year has passed, and '98 has been quite an exciting year for Valve. The game's development work was well underway, and the revised Half-Life was once again a great hit at E3, causing an immediate earthquake after the first beta version was released in September.

Half-Life has earned numerous accolades, and Villefort has since established itself as a game development player!

But in 2000, Harrington, one of the company's founders, quit his job and went on a trip around the world with his wife. It's similar to id, two talented programmers, both creating great games, but both falling apart.

Happy Harrington went on vacation, leaving the lonely Fat G alone to stick to the company.

After two years of hard work, no new works have been released during this time, and the development of Half-Life 2 has not gone well.

Because when Harrington left, in order to buy back his shares, G Fat gave him almost all the company's cash! After Harrington left, in order to reduce expenses, Villefort even carried out layoffs, which is very rare in this company.

In 2002, when Villefort had not yet recovered from his strength, the relationship with Xuele Mountain began to deteriorate again.

G Fat discovers that Xuele Mountain is illegally distributing copies of Villefort's game!

In other words, they secretly sold the game, but did not give Villefort a corresponding share.

It is no wonder that Half-Life has become popular all over the world in recent years, but the Villefort company has not received as much money as imagined.

G Fat was furious and took Xue Leshan to court. Later, after Xuele Mountain was acquired by VUG, he in turn sued Villefort for not working hard to make games, deliberately delaying time, and wasting investors' money! The lawsuit between the two companies has not been resolved.

............

Hearing Yu Wenfei mention Xuele Mountain, G's fat face naturally became difficult to look at.

"It's a little troublesome, but I think it'll be solved, it's not a big problem......," he muttered.

"However, what is the strength of VUG's side, you also know very well, the lawsuit will either be lost by you, or it will drag on forever, and Villefort will not be able to fight the opponent. If this continues, can you still focus on game development? Half-Life II, players around the world have been waiting for several years, and to tell you the truth, I'm a CS enthusiast. Yu Wenfei said with a smile.

Talking about half a life two, G Fat is also embarrassed, "In the second half of this year, we should be able to launch mature products, this is indeed our problem, so everyone has been waiting for a long time." ”

Effie changed the topic again, "Mr. Gabe Newell, Facebook Games has strong strength, the Facebook Battle Network we launched on the mainland, the perfect ranking points and rank division system, these can bring a better game experience to Half-Life players." If we work together, then Villefort can also put all of its energy into making better games, and these services and promotions, I think Facebook Games is better at it! It's all about the players, isn't that good?"

"It's all about the ...... of the players," G Fat repeated in a low voice, indeed, although he also likes money, his love for games has always come first.

Effie's words make a lot of sense, Facebook games are indeed powerful, of course, if the strength is not enough, how can even Blizzard buy it!

Facebook Battle.net, G Fat also personally registered to experience it, and the game experience on it really amazed him.

However, he also knew that it would require a large number of data centers and a huge server farm, all of which Villefort could not afford for the time being.

That's why he didn't borrow Facebook's ranking system in the United States, because he couldn't afford to build so many data centers, and sometimes things weren't complicated, but you just couldn't do it, because of poverty......

"Or ...... Let's do it, I can give Half-Life global network promotion rights to Facebook Games, which means that you can set up data centers in the United States or Europe to provide Battle.net services to players around the world. Plus, this authorization is free, and Villefort doesn't charge a penny!" said G-fat generously.

Of course, Yu Wenfei and Effie will not be moved by his "generosity".

This is not nonsense, Facebook Battle.net has no charging items at all, and the slogan is to provide a better gaming experience for genuine players.

Providing Battle.net services in the United States or Europe requires a large investment in data centers, and there is no profit from it! Villefort is of course embarrassed to ask for any licensing fees.

"We'll talk about this later, but I heard that Villefort is planning to launch a new project called STEAM?" Yu Wenfei said with a smile.

This matter is not a trade secret, G Fat nodded calmly, "Yes, because of the lesson of Xuele Mountain, we are preparing to build our own online distribution channels, and the current network can also support players to download the game from the Internet." With the advancement of Internet hardware technology, the network bandwidth will become larger and faster, and the network speed will become faster and faster. In my opinion, in the future, selling games through the Internet will definitely be the general trend, just like Amazon is now. ”

G Fat is really scared of Xuele Mountain!

He also realized that if he didn't have his own sales channels, his life would have been controlled by publishers.

If the game you worked so hard to develop is not popular, it will be returned, and even if it is really popular, then the majority of the profits will be taken by the publisher.

They can give themselves as much as they want, because it's too easy to do something with the data.

And it is basically impossible to go to so many countries around the world to collect evidence and count how many games have been sold.