December 27 news, today, Kaiying Network on its official WeChat public account announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Shangrao Shengying Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shangrao Shengying") invested in Shanghai Optical Particle Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Optical Particle Network"), accounting for 16.33% of the shares, as its largest institutional shareholder.
Kaiying Network revealed that this round of financing will be used for the expansion and operation of the R&D team of the optical particle network to help the optical particle network continue to make efforts in the research and development of high-quality games.
According to public information, Light Particle Network, founded in March 2018, is a research and development company focusing on science fiction SLG and two-dimensional simulation business games, with self-developed games "Endless Galaxy" and "Norfrlan Story". The former is a science fiction theme SLG game, which has been launched in May this year; the latter is a two-dimensional simulation business mobile game, released by Station B and launched in August this year.
Judging from the number of users and evaluations of TapTap and Haoyou Quick Explosion community, the performance of these two games is better. Among them, the game "Norfrant Story" has 236,000 followers in TapTap, with a rating of 7.4.
Or based on the research and development experience of the above two games, The Optical Particle Network is currently developing a game "Project S" that simulates the combination of management and SLG. It is reported that the game has entered the pre-research stage, and will take the recent future alien migration as the theme, deeply integrating simulated management and SLG core gameplay.
Kaiying Network revealed that Project S will enter the testing period in the fourth quarter of 2022 and be officially released in 2023.
From the perspective of product situation, optical particle network has a good record in the vertical field of games, which is very in line with the investment needs of Kaiying Network. As an investor, Kaiying Network has been increasing the investment of the game team in the past two years.
In the recent performance report, Kaiying Network has also said many times that it has established the path of "investment + IP". The two core businesses of R&D and distribution will be supported around the product. While providing assistance and support for self-developed products through IP introduction, we also lay out other important categories outside the self-developed product line in the form of strategic investment.
Based on this "investment + IP" strategy, Kaiying Network invested in game research and development teams such as Hangzhou Xinguang Liumei, Hangzhou Xingyue Interactive, and Shenzhen Ultimate Mirage in 2020, among which Xinguang Liumei performed quite well in the field of two-dimensional vertical games. Its two-dimensional game "High-skilled Hand Group" once exceeded 100 million in the three weeks before the public beta. In addition, Kaiying Network has also signed IP cooperation with Sheng Qu Games and Greedy Games.
In 2021, Kaiying Network has also invested in game developers who are outstanding in the vertical game field, such as Kuaima Interactive Entertainment, Qianqi Network, and Lejiu, and the research and development types of the target companies cover SLG, female orientation, simulation management, animation, etc.
In addition to consolidating its own strong game field, it is the top task of many game companies this year to close the game team through investment and mergers and acquisitions. In fact, not only Kaiying Network, this year, Tencent, NetEase, B Station, ByteDance and other investment methods are very aggressive. For example, Tencent has invested nearly 100 in games this year, an average of one investment in three days, while NetEase's investment this year has quadrupled compared with the previous two years.