Last year, Blizzard Entertainment released a wildly popular product and even reached a partnership with Nintendo, pushing profits to a new high of over $60 million.

This figure wasn't stable; there was no guarantee that every product would sell so well.

Even with an optimistic estimate of twenty times the price-to-earnings ratio, the total value would only be around $1.3 billion. Vivendi's people were asking for at least $3 billion, completely shattering Su Yehao's hopes.

He didn't directly hire a headhunting firm to help. Instead, he chose to go through Valve Corporation, asking them to find a way to contact Blizzard Entertainment and try to attract more talent back.

The real spring for online games was about to arrive. As an important channel for monetizing traffic, Su Yehao certainly didn't want to miss out.

However, considering the excessively high cost of developing large-scale games in the United States, where to locate the development project specifically needed further research.

Similarly, which company to develop the new project through also needed consideration.

For example, Valve Corporation. He had casually invested in them back then and hadn't paid any attention to them. Later, they gradually grew stronger, and their importance increased.

He currently only held 60% of the shares in Valve Corporation. The remaining shares were held by the founder and other shareholders. If all new projects were handed over to them, Su Yehao would definitely be at a disadvantage.

On one hand, he'd have to give up more than a third of the profits, and on the other hand, he'd have to provide new development funds. It was like providing both the ideas and the money, letting others take advantage.

Therefore, Su Yehao decided to have Yanwenzi Group and Google each contribute capital to integrate their existing game departments. He himself would also put up some funds. The three parties would jointly create a completely new, large-scale online game development company, operating independently.

After all, the company wouldn't be entirely his. Conducting business fairly was important. Once this portion of resources was re-integrated, it could directly drive traffic through Yanwenzi Group and Google in the future, which would be very beneficial for the performance growth of these two companies and the new game company, achieving a win-win situation for all three.

Valve Corporation made money, but that was all it did.

For a publicly listed company like Yanwenzi Group, occupying a certain market share in the game business would be very good for the stock price. For Google, it could be directly reflected in its valuation.

As their major shareholder, Su Yehao was able to maximize profits, which was far more cost-effective than supporting Valve Corporation alone.

He spent some time dealing with game-related matters.

Su Yehao accompanied Jiang Yu to Santa Monica Beach, strolling around while the weather warmed up.

He also hired a few locals to help investigate who owned the film adaptation rights to comics like *Iron Man*, *Thor*, *Captain America*, and so on.

Directly investing in Marvel was not only troublesome but also expensive.

Taking advantage of the fact that the *Spider-Man* movie hadn't been released yet, acquiring the character rights of some superheroes as soon as possible was the most economical and practical option.

First, he would acquire these important copyrights at a low price, to avoid being held at ransom in the future. Then, when he had more money in a few years, he could turn around and find a way to swallow Marvel Comics, taking down the film adaptation rights to numerous characters. In this way, Sweet Fish Entertainment could thrive both domestically and internationally.

Jiang Yu complained about this, feeling that it would be better to invest in existing film projects like *Spider-Man*.

This girl had some vision occasionally, but it didn't seem to be much…

——————————

Yanwenzi Group's CEO, according to Su Yehao's intentions, publicly declared that they might file a lawsuit.

It was rare for him to seriously deal with a strong enemy.

By chance, he had picked out two projects: Netflix and PayPal.

PayPal didn't need much explanation. It was somewhat similar to Su Yehao's Credit Treasure, allowing online payments to be made by linking accounts to email addresses.

Netflix was currently the best-performing online movie rental service provider, where users placed orders online and had movie discs delivered to their homes. Last year, they also launched an online movie library website, with relatively rapid development momentum.

These two companies were currently considered niche startups. Even if Yanwenzi Group made an acquisition, it wouldn't provoke hostility from their Silicon Valley peers.

From the perspective of "Yanwenzi being suppressed by Microsoft," other peers would easily understand its approach to self-help. The joint venture to establish a large-scale online game development company was the same; the game business was previously one of its sub-businesses, and now it was simply being reorganized.

Moreover, both Netflix and PayPal were still very "cheap" right now, and Yanwenzi Group's own funds could afford them.

Even if it acquired these two companies, others would only see it as Yanwenzi Group choosing to take action to save itself and increase investor confidence in the face of competition from Microsoft. This wouldn't affect its position as a third-party service platform.

Without further ado, Su Yehao had someone come to Los Angeles to help handle the acquisition of Marvel character copyrights.

He himself took a plane back to Silicon Valley, personally taking Yanwenzi Group's John Zhou to pay a visit to the headquarters of the payment tool PayPal in advance, announcing his willingness to provide financing and discuss cooperation.

The so-called headquarters was just a single floor of an office building in San Jose, in the Bay Area.

PayPal was formed by the merger of two companies. The vast majority of shares were in the hands of venture capital firms. The CEO was none other than Elon Musk, who would later invest in Tesla and become the world's richest man.

After Su Yehao completed a brief inspection and arrived in the conference room,

He took a check out of his pocket and said with a smile:

"We're currently in an economic recession. You can't expect to get suitable financing every time. As far as I know, you're burning through $10 million every month and are in a very difficult situation."

"Today, I'm giving you two options. One is for me to provide a round of financing, but it's likely to run out before the end of the year. The second is to negotiate a price and sell all the shares directly to Yanwenzi Group."

"Of course, if anyone doesn't want to sell their shares, they can choose to keep them and continue as a PayPal shareholder…"