The younger generation, starting from where the wind blows...

Chapter 20 Penguins vs. Kangaroos
The two mini-games about cows and sheep became wildly popular even earlier than Yang Muye had anticipated.

After two working days of advertising and viral marketing on the 28th and 29th, the number of users for both games exploded over the weekend.

On Friday night, the first day of the event, "Niu Le Ge Niu" surpassed 300 million registered users, with daily active users exceeding 200 million.

On Saturday, "Sheep" experienced a surge in popularity, with both registered and active users exceeding 300 million.

By Sunday evening, the 31st, "Sheep's Goat" had surpassed 500 million registered users and had 350 million daily active users.

Backed by the massive number of college students on Renren.com, "Niu Le Ge Niu" had already registered nearly 800 million users on Saturday, with 500 million daily active users.

Over the weekend alone, the daily revenue of "Niu Le Ge Niu" paid value-added services exceeded one million.

"Sheep" gets over 700,000 views every day.

After entering September, the user growth rate of the two games slowed down slightly, but their popularity continued to surge.

"Niu Le Ge Niu" has surpassed 150 million yuan in daily revenue.

"Sheep's Goat" has surpassed 100 million RMB in daily revenue.

On Mop and Tianya, where ads were heavily promoted, posts began to emerge exposing the inside story of how the two games made profits.

"Ten million in ten days, the wildly popular game is actually a knock-off!"

"A game company that makes tens of millions with a cost of less than 100,000 is just a makeshift operation!"

"These two games are money-printing machines; the game company is working overtime to rush out 'Ma Le Ge Ma'!"

"The secret to getting rich through mini-games is actually copying yourself!"

Posts like these are constantly emerging.

Major portal websites have successively reported on these two wildly popular games, and they didn't even bother to change the news headlines, directly copying these posts.

This wave of concentrated media exposure has directly brought Ma Qiushan, CEO and legal representative of Shanye Technology, to the forefront.

In just a few days, Ma Qiushan was interviewed by several media outlets and received invitations to meet with several venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital.

For a time, they enjoyed unparalleled glory.

In his own words, it was like "Riding a swift horse in the spring breeze, I can see all the flowers of Chang'an in a single day."

The most sensational thing Ma Qiushan did during this period was posting a status update on his school's intranet homepage.

What was originally just an announcement about "Niu Le Ge Niu" withdrawing from the Renren.com programming competition unexpectedly became a hot topic because of one of its lines.

"When you see this status, we have just made a very difficult decision. Due to the relevant regulations of the Renren.com Programming Contest, 'Niu Le Ge Niu' has to regretfully withdraw from the competition and will no longer participate in the subsequent award selection. We sincerely apologize to the users who love and support this game."

Within half a day of posting the status, there were already over 50,000 replies.

The most popular reply was:

"This announcement made me feel like I'd lost hundreds of millions by withdrawing from the competition, but when I checked the competition's homepage, damn it, the first prize was only 100,000!"

The subsequent replies all began to use the phrase "an incredibly difficult decision" in neat, orderly fashion to create sentences.

Yang Muyi didn't expect that before the 3Q War even started, Ma Qiushan would make this statement go viral.

At first, Ma Qiushan himself couldn't quite accept this kind of satirical online popularity, thinking it was too low-class.

I even considered deleting that status update.

Yang Muye persuaded him to stop.

Just like Lei Jun's future line, "Are you OK?"

This isn't some dark history, but rather the path you came from.

Ma Qiushan was overjoyed and immediately posted the sentence as a status update on the school's intranet, once again thanking everyone for their encouragement and motivation.

Then this phrase became popular.

The entire internet is praising it! Even Wang Xing, the founder of Renren.com and the future kangaroo king, came to ride the wave of popularity, digging out his Renren.com account that he hadn't logged into for many years and leaving a comment under Ma Qiushan's status.

This thrilled Ma Qiushan, and he exchanged phone numbers with Wang Xing via internal messaging.

After a phone conversation, Ma Qiushan realized that Wang Xing wasn't there for him, but for the two mini-games involving cows and sheep.

After selling Xiaonei.com to Qianxiang, Wang Xing started his second business last year, creating Fanfou.com, which imitated Twitter overseas and became the first microblogging-like internet product in China.

After several months, progress has been slow.

Wang Xing lost patience, so he created HaiNei.com, a social networking site for white-collar workers, which was launched around the same time as Kaixin.com.

As a result, Kaixin001 became popular because of its mini-games, while HaiNei.com's user base continued to grow slowly.

Wang Xing had no choice but to join in the mini-games.

However, due to the lack of a blockbuster product, they have been unable to gain traction for a long time.

Seeing the explosive popularity of "Niu Le Ge Niu" and "Yang Le Ge Yang", Wang Xing believed that HaiNei.com's opportunity had finally arrived.

On the evening of September 3, Ma Qiushan rushed to Fairfield Inn and personally acted as Wang Xing's "persuader".

All they had to do was copy a nesting doll game similar to the cow/sheep game and post it on HaiNei.com, and Wang Xing promised the platform wouldn't take any cut.

The conditions are undeniably favorable.

No matter how much Ma Qiushan pleaded, Yang Muye's attitude remained unchanged.

Wang Xing's HaiNei.com was indeed very sincere in its cooperation, but Yang Muye still chose Tencent.

As early as September 1st, Penguin had already contacted Maqiushan.

They were very interested in the "Goose, Goose" project and offered 100 million yuan to buy out all of "Goose, Goose's" revenue on QQ Space.

At that time, Niu/Yang earned more than a million yuan a day on the two platforms, Renren and Kaixin.com (after deducting the platform's share). Ma Qiushan didn't even bother to respond to Penguin's offer.

Afterwards, news broke on Mop and Tianya that the revenue from cattle/sheep exceeded 10 million yuan, and Tencent raised its second offer to 3 million yuan.

This time, Ma Qiushan had a serious discussion with Yang Muye. Yang Muye's idea was to let things cool down first and wait until Penguin raised its offer to 500 million before selling.

Similarly, if Wang Xing is now willing to spend 500 million to buy out all the product's revenue from all channels on HaiNei.com, Yang Muye certainly has no reason to turn down the money.

To put it bluntly, Yang Muyi simply doesn't value the small number of users on the overseas intranet.

Although copying a matryoshka doll game wouldn't cost much, Yang Muye still didn't want the Kangaroo King to get it for free.

Seeing that Ma Qiushan still had some resentment in his eyes, Yang Muye decided to back down.

"After 'Goose, Goose' is sold to Penguin, you can talk to Wang Xing again. As long as he is willing to give one-tenth of Penguin's money, we will make HaiNei.com another copy of the Matryoshka game."

Yang Muye had even thought of a name for it: "A Rat in a Bag".

If this deal goes through, Wang Xing might even have to thank Yang Muye for the idea when he launches Kangaroo Delivery.

But Ma Qiushan still felt that 500,000 was a bit too little.

If we were to share profits with HaiNei.com, we might earn more in just a few days than that.

Yang Muye knew that Maqiushan was currently in a very high position, so he didn't argue with him.

"If you're so keen on trying a profit-sharing arrangement, that's fine, but we need to make a bet. If you earn less than 500,000 from HaiNei.com, you have to make up the difference out of your own pocket. If you earn more than 500,000, the extra money is all yours. How about it?"

Ma Qiushan looked at Yang Muye with a smile: "Trying to provoke me, huh? Fine, I'll bet with you."

"Let me add one more thing: if you lose this time, you'll have to do whatever I say from now on."

"Okay!"

(End of this chapter)