Zhongqingbao, "beating kissing and scolding love" is not unexpected

Image source @ Visual China

Wen | City Boundary, author 丨 Li Nan, editor 丨 Lei Yanpeng

Zhongqingbao, an online game company based in Shenzhen, has always been on the hot search in unexpected ways. And all this is related to its actual controller Li Ruijie.

During the May Day period, because of the mandatory overtime of employees, as well as Li Ruijie's remarks such as "want to blow up all of you" and "fire up immediately if you are not convinced", many netizens heard about the company for the first time.

According to the prospectus and annual report, Li Ruijie was born in 1967 in Jieyang City, Guangdong Province, and graduated from Nankai University with his wife Zhang Yunxia, who is two years older than him. Li Ruijie has been the chairman of Zhongqingbao for a long time, while Zhang Yunxia has been a director and general manager of the company.

In the history of China's game industry development, Zhongqingbao is an established game company with rich stories. Although it has not made a big hit game, it has the name of "the first share of China's online games" in A-share.

Looking back at the past of Zhongqingbao, Li Ruijie, the helmsman, and this company have given the outside world a bit of a different feeling.

01, "beat the kiss and scold love"

In the corporate culture of Zhongqingbao, it is clearly written that "beat relatives and scolds love"; among the company's six major values, one is "good person culture", which writes, "For the company and colleagues, it must be a good person".

Some people say that corporate culture is basically the culture of business leaders. This seems to be more concrete in the embodiment of Zhongqingbao.

"All the blowers! Buy a piece of tofu yourself and crash to death"; "May Day, all overtime." Do not add the HR description of the matter. If you don't believe it, fry it immediately."

In a screenshot of an internal group chat before May Day, Li Ruijie asked employees to work overtime on May Day.

Very blunt, very hot, very easy to cause public anger, and obviously in conflict with the law.

Lawyer Wang Xiaoyan, director of Beijing Yonger Law Firm, pointed out to the city that workers have the right to rest, and article 31 of the Labor Contract Law stipulates that "the employer shall strictly implement the labor quota standard and shall not force or covertly force the employee to work overtime..."

Overtime is not a statutory obligation of employees, let alone gratuitous, and the above requirements violate laws and regulations such as the Labor Law and the Labor Contract Law.

The so-called "beating relatives and scolding love" is more like a workplace PUA in the eyes of young people. People who are only familiar with Li Ruijie will not be surprised by this remark. Because he has more "explosive" remarks.

Li Ruijie was once a prominent figure in the game industry. Zhongqingbao, which he controls, is one of the earliest companies in China to engage in the integrated development, operation and distribution of online games, and landed on the ChiNext board in February 2010, becoming the first online game company listed on the A-share market.

Lei Jun said at the time that the number of online game companies that can be accommodated in the domestic capital market is about 10, and only 20 to 30 Zhongqingbao at the business level can be listed, so there will be more companies that believe that they also have the ability and opportunity to go public.

Li Ruijie's "explosive" remarks began in the second year of Zhongqingbao's listing.

In September 2011, according to Tencent Technology, Li Ruijie issued a declaration inside the send: "We must resolutely eliminate all money-losing goods in the department." He pointed out that we have three disciplines and eight points of attention, and the third is, "Whoever loses money please die." ”

"Those who don't make money now and don't have the confidence to make money in the future, please get out of the egg right away." The remarks in 2011 are the same as those made on May Day this year.

This made Zhongqingbao out of the circle for the first time.

When the heat of this incident did not dissipate, Li Ruijie had new remarks that aroused the attention of the outside world. According to the China Broadcasting Network, on the eve of the National Day in 2011, Li Ruijie posted on Weibo, "The company wants to build a special capable of fighting, and the closed military training of new employees is about to begin." ”

This has aroused the repercussions of suspected Zhongqingbao employees: public holidays are used to do this kind of military training, and there is no prior notice, so that the same thing that is ready to go home is unbearable.

Li Ruijie further said that if the new employees are not even willing to dedicate their holidays, then don't come, "If you are a Zhongqingbao employee, you have been fired." Please go find your holiday. ”

A few days later, Li Ruijie once again stunned the outside world.

According to The Speedway Network, on the evening of October 15, 2011, Li Ruijie announced that two former employees had issued a non-compete order, one was Xu Jian, the former project manager of "Liangjian", and the other was Wu Peng, the former president of Netfu and general manager of the overseas business department.

Non-compete restrictions in the same industry have now become the norm. The reason why Li Ruijie's non-compete restrictions at that time attracted people's attention was mainly his sharp words, for the two former employees, Li Ruijie let one of them "die", let the other "go home with his wife to have twins, help the child change diapers".

In November, Li Ruijie's beating of the female lawyer once again brought him to the cusp of the storm.

The two sides disagreed and clashed. Video footage from the scene showed Li Ruijie picking up a chair from Behind Liao Aimin and smashing it on her head.

It's hard to imagine that this is the style of a public company boss.

But just as the beating of the female lawyer was fermenting, Li Ruijie posted on Weibo on December 7 with a scenic picture: "Today the sun is shining in Shenzhen, the coastal avenue is full of greenery, and there is no feeling of winter at all." ”

He didn't seem to care about what the outside world was saying.

A year later, in January 2013, the news that "Li Ruijie beat Wu Peng, the former vice president of the company, to the head and injured him after drinking" plunged him into a storm of public opinion.

The Daily Economic News reported at the time that the conflict between the two sides occurred at the dinner of the China Game Industry Annual Conference on January 8, and Wu Peng was injured and called the police, which also caused netizens to watch.

02. A-share "first share of online games"

Li Ruijie, who is at the helm of Zhongqingbao, has the same personality as himself.

In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee presented his Proposal on Information Management to CERN, which propelled the Internet to ordinary people and thus became the "father of the World Wide Web".

In the same year, Li Ruijie graduated from Nankai University and came to Shenzhen, fired 3 bosses in 9 months, and then sold network cards, compatible machines and other equipment in Huaqiang North.

Later, Li Ruijie opened his own company and ventured into the server field. First the agent, then the self-production. The server business laid the foundation for his wealth and the seeds of his entry into the gaming industry.

"i dark horse" mentioned one thing, Ma Huateng and Chen Tianqiao both bought servers from Li Ruijie's Baode. After seeing the explosive growth of the online game industry, Li Ruijie moved his mind to make games.

If you recall the development of online games in the past, people often mention "Journey" and "Legend". Zhongqingbao took a road that few people took, made the War of Resistance into a game, and got the rare treatment of ordinary online games.

Giant Network's journey booth welcomed a large number of online game fans

Tao Hongkai, who declared war on Internet addiction, once criticized "Journey", "Audition", and "Legend": the tasks in the game can never be finished; players cannot leave the game, once they stop playing the game, others will surpass you and kill you.

He concluded that when pornography, violence and other factors are added to online games, and the flood becomes a bad internet culture, it is an incomparable spiritual drug.

Years later, Zhongqingbao's online game "Bright Sword 2" held a game tasting meeting in Shenzhen, and Tao Hongkai, who regarded bad online games as a "mental drug", praised this online game more. He said that "Bright Sword 2" reflects the War of Resistance, is also close to reality, can guide the patriotism of young people, and is beneficial to people's physical and mental health.

The hit tv series "Bright Sword" made Ping'an County and Italian cannon famous. The game "Bright Sword" also revolves around Li Yunlong's independent regiment and Chu Yunfei's 358th regiment.

The TV series "Bright Sword" is a red classic film and television drama, and the biggest signature of the Zhongqingbao game is the red online game.

Li Ruijie himself claimed that the nationalist plot was relatively heavy, and the Zhongqingbao Anti-War Game was appetite for such groups. He hopes that similar to his own big angry youth, small angry youth, and old angry youth, they can find happiness, friends and common ideas in his "red online game" series.

General online games mainly attract young people, while Zhongqingbao's red online games are more appetizing to middle-aged people. Some high-level people in Zhongqingbao once said that more than 80% of our players are post-60s and post-70s.

The prospectus shows that in the first half of 2009, nearly 60% of the paid players of the company's main game product "The Legend of the Heroes of the War of Resistance" came from users aged 30 and above.

Before the listing, Zhongqingbao also developed games such as "Warring States Hero" and "Heavenly Path", but the main profit still came from "The Legend of the Heroes of the War of Resistance".

Since April 2013, Zhongqingbao's stock price has continued to rise, reaching 90.48 yuan per share in September, compared with less than 11 yuan before the market started, up more than 7 times.

This is related to The business layout of Zhongqingbao itself.

In the explosive growth of mobile games that year, Zhongqingbao said that in terms of mobile games, "the initiative of active layout is particularly prominent", such as the launch of 50 mobile game products in the second half of the year, and the establishment of a mobile game research and transportation integration center.

As of the first half of 2013, the revenue of Zhongqingbao mobile game games was only 9.96 million yuan, accounting for less than 10% of the total revenue. The new layout gives Zhongqingbao a new imagination. In the whole year of 2013, the revenue of CYB mobile games reached 89.89 million yuan, accounting for more than 27% of the total revenue.

However, the outbreak of the mobile game business mainly depends on the acquisition of Shanghai Meifeng and Shenzhen Sumo Company. The two mainly focus on heavy mobile games and light leisure mobile games, respectively, and Zhongqingbao has rapidly expanded its share in the mobile game market.

By 2014, Zhongqingbao mobile games achieved revenue of 250 million yuan and operating profit of 170 million yuan. Unfortunately, since then, its mobile game business has not really risen.

By 2021, Zhongqingbao's mobile game business will achieve revenue of 139 million yuan, far less than the previous results in 2014. The MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) represented by "The Legend of the Heroes of the War of Resistance" has also shown a decline with the decline of the industry representative "World of Warcraft".

In 2021, Zhongqingbao achieved a total revenue of 355 million yuan, an increase of 21% year-on-year, but the net profit attributable to the shareholders of the parent company was -46.23 million yuan.

03, the meta-universe sells sauce wine

At 2:00 a.m. on January 3, 2022, Li Ruijie sent a Weibo post. On January 5, Zhongqingbao's stock price rose by 20CM.

Li Ruijie's Weibo content at that time was the progress of the game "Can't help spoilers" of the company's "Brewmaster".

This is a simulated business game that links virtual and real, players can run a winery according to their wishes in the game, or they can pick up wine offline.

However, CYB announced that it will launch Master Brewery on September 6, 2021, and it is still in the testing stage. Although the game pulled the stock price up, it did not actually contribute to the performance.

In the view of Internet industry analyst Zhang Shule, the game mode of "Brewmaster" is only a way to explore the online game experiential e-commerce, if there is a VR experience, and can participate in more links, it may be regarded as a metaverse concept game, but in terms of the deep immersion, infinite world, and open exploration of the real metaverse, it is far away.

Gao Dongxu, founder and chief analyst of China Entertainment Think Tank, also believes that combining with the physical liquor industry is more of a commercial marketing behavior, and how far it can go in the meta-universe track needs to continue to be observed.

At the same time, he pointed out that the meta-universe needs a lot of capital domestic investment and technology accumulation, which is more suitable for the layout of companies with strong capital reserves. Small and medium-sized enterprises have explored many actions in this regard, but the effect is not ideal.

Returning to the metaverse layout of Zhongqingbao, there are no obvious achievements at present.

Interestingly, the wine company cooperated by "Master Brewer" is Jinsha Ancient Wine Co., Ltd., a sauce liquor enterprise located in Jinsha County, Guizhou Province. According to the Tianyancha App, Jinsha Ancient Wine is actually controlled by Li Ruijie and Zhang Yunxia, who actually control 100% of the equity.

If "Master Brewery" is officially launched in the future, it may help Sands Ancient Wine increase sales. According to the Red Star Capital Bureau, in the beta version of the "Master Brewer" app, the highest price of a bottle of wine reached 8999 yuan.

Compared with the hazy concept of the metacosm, the business of selling wine is much more real.

Today, Zhongqingbao is still making efforts in the direction of cloud service business. This part of the business began with the acquisition of Proton Interconnection in 2017 and contributed more than half of the company's revenue in 2021. However, compared with the game business, the competition in the cloud service field is equally fierce, and the profitability is far less than that. The gross profit margin of the former is as high as 75.5%, and the latter is only 31.0%.

This means that Zhongqingbao still relies on the development of game-related businesses. But what it really needs, in addition to a blockbuster game, is a change in corporate governance and ethos.

After the Controversial Remarks on May Day were made public, a screenshot circulated on a social platform showed that one of the company's sales employees was angry that someone had leaked Li Ruijie's words. He said, "Give you food to eat and order your own face." ”

Key References:

"Li Ruijie, CEO of Zhongqingbao: Eliminate money-losing goods, do not earn money, employees get out of the egg", Tencent Technology, Lotte;

"Zhongqingbao National Day Organizes Military Training for New Employees and the Chairman Does Not Participate in the Cross-Ocean Inspection", China Broadcasting Network;

"Zhongqingbao Li Ruijie issued a ban on business: let the vice president go home to change diapers", Speedway.

"Red Online Game", i Dark Horse, Wang Genwang;

"Tao Hongkai: Endorsement of online games Bright and just, collecting 3.5 million is slander", Public Network, Ma Xin;

"Zhongqingbao "Bright Sword" A-share High Valuation Needs to Be Tested", Investor Report, Liu Xiuli;

"The Chairman of a Listed Company Smashes a Female Lawyer with a Chair", Yangcheng Evening News, Li Xiaoxu