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Two days ago, my friend was fascinated by the 4399 mini game. During those days, she played it until early morning every day.

Not only her, many people on Weibo are playing.

From junior high school students to adults, from ordinary users to entertainment stars.

Lao Tomato, a top UP host with over 10 million fans on Bilibili, plays 4399 mini-games with himself every Chinese Valentine’s Day, and he does it consistently, with millions of people watching every year.

(Picture source: Station B)

Only then did I discover that the person who entered the computer classroom wearing blue shoe covers in elementary school and prevented the teacher from quietly opening the website during class, and then disappeared, made me think that he had disappeared. Collective childhood memories of the 1980s and 1990s – 4399 children The game is still alive? !

So I quickly checked the information and found that not only were they alive, but they were living quite well…

Now when we hear about the 4399 flash mini-games on the PC, compared with those popular large-scale mobile games, perhaps they are already at the “bottom” of the gaming industry.

But even if we go back seven or eight years, the name "4399" is still a "giant" that dominates the entire gaming industry and even wanted to go public for a time.

4399 mini-game is almost a memory of a generation.

Back then, with the two games "Moore Manor" and "Cell No.", 4399 became famous, and it has been almost at the top of the site for 10 years.

Although with the development of the times, the PC terminal was gradually replaced by more intelligent mobile terminals, 4399 began to decline in China. But what is surprising is that not only has 4399 not disappeared in recent years, but it has also found a new way to go abroad and become popular in South Korea?

In August 2018, the 4399 vertical version of the 3D game "Miracle Sword" was launched and became the No. 1 revenue-generating Chinese mobile game in South Korea.

In this year's list of the top ten overseas revenue-generating action role-playing games in mainland China, "Miracle Sword" surpassed well-known game publishers such as Sanqi Interactive Entertainment and Tencent to rank first.

(Picture source: 4399 Game Weibo)

On October 30, the Internet Society of China released a list of the top 100 Internet companies, ranking 32nd with 4399.

Although few people mention it anymore, it can be seen that 4399 has survived the ups and downs in the waves of the Internet.

So what has 4399 gone through in these years, why haven’t you heard anyone mention it? Moreover, why is it that there is no movement in China, but it ranks first on the list abroad?

01

I still clearly remember that in the primary school computer class, the teacher gave an impassioned lecture in the front, and the students in the audience covered each other. When the teacher was not paying attention, they raced against time to open the 4399 website and open up the world of games.

At that time, everyone didn't know what a wage earner was, but they started working in "Gold Miner" one after another.

(Image source: "Gold Miner")

When you come here, you become that old man with a white beard, and you can only keep mining in order to complete the KPI in the upper left corner.

But the cruel thing is that after you complete the designated goal, the money is not yours. In order to win more money and pass more levels, every time you win a game, someone will push you from behind and tell you that you need to use your balance to purchase corresponding products. Items to help you level up better.

(Image source: "Gold Miner")

Work to make money – improve combat effectiveness – fight monsters and upgrade. Think about it carefully, isn't this endless battle for KPIs the situation of every adult social animal?

It turns out that we have been taught a hard lesson at such a young age!

There was also the hit "Miracle Nuannuan" in the past two years, which made domestic female netizens fall in love with dress-up games. Little did they know that the dress-up games on the 4399 website had already trained our matching skills in the seedling stage.

You can choose whatever outfit and identity you want, including manicures and hairstyling, whatever looks good. You can also adopt pets online, stimulating the pink bubbles in little girls’ hearts in minutes.

(Picture source: "Pika Hall")

When it comes to 4399, there are countless popular games that can’t be summarized in a short while. In short, each one carries the childhood memories of many people.

Two people fight against the AI. The more props they eat, the more powerful they will be. They need to be on guard at all times, avoid bombs and blow up their own "Q Version Bubble Hall";

All kinds of racing, fighting, and even the "love enlightenment" of some primary and middle school students are all realized in 4399's flash games~

(Picture source: "Q Version Bubble Hall")

The 40 minutes of each computer class are the happiest moments of the whole day for the students.

Except for the students who had to sit under the teacher's nose because they were late, they could only listen to the teacher's lectures honestly, with ten thousand XXX passing by in their hearts…

(Picture source: 4399 website)

Of course, 4399 is not “all the rage” for no reason.

It is better to catch up early than to catch up late. At the beginning of the 21st century, China was in the second wave of the Internet, and the game market was crowded with players.

By the end of 2003, the number of domestic online game users had risen to 80 million. A large number of companies flocked to start making games, so 2004 naturally became a critical period for competition for capital in the game market.

The 4399 website happened to be born in such a critical year. In 2004, Li Xingping used the simplest code to create a game collection website, quickly catching the needs of grassroots netizens and breaking into the public eye.

How exactly did you break in? Don't rush yet.

Before mentioning 4399, we have to mention the website first. After all, the vast majority of primary and secondary school students are attracted by this series of mysterious numbers. To a large extent, they start from opening this "not Chinese" website. Website – the beginning.

(Image source: website)

The founder of 4399 and the website is the same person – Li Xingping.

Li Xingping was born in Xingning, Guangdong in 1979. His family has been farmers for generations. In order to work to support his family, Li Xingping dropped out of school early after graduating from the second grade of junior high school at the age of 15 to make money.

In 1999, when the Internet became popular across the country, large and small Internet cafes opened in the streets and alleys of Xingning. Li Xingping also became a member of the "Internet Addiction Army".

In order to find a job where he could be exposed to computers every day, 20-year-old Li Xingping became a network administrator in 1999.

In order to keep his job, Li Xingping spent time in online forums to learn network configuration, computer hardware and other knowledge, and earn some extra money through this.

At that time, the Internet still had a lot of bugs. If you wanted to check something on the Internet, you had to type it in letter by letter.

People who don't remember the website address often ask Li Xingping.

So in order to improve efficiency at the beginning, Li Xingping memorized the top 5,000 domestic websites by heart. But over and over again, Li Xingping was asked for inspiration.

He found that the market was in urgent need of a large collection of navigation websites that could include a large number of commonly used websites and allow you to enter the page with just one click without having to enter the URL yourself.

In this way, Li Xingping became a pioneer. He spent several months searching for information in the library, doing tests while self-study, and launched the website in 2000 using the stupidest and simplest programming methods.

Once it went online, it was deeply loved by the majority of netizens.

As the website gained traffic, many website managers began to send emails to Li Xingping, hoping to list their websites on the website and pay a certain fee.

Since then, Li Xingping has been able to get thousands or even tens of thousands of advertising fees every month, and has done so to the point where he has almost no rivals.

No matter who is on the homepage of any website, it will generate huge traffic.

Regarding this, there is also a rumor on the Internet: Sohu once made a deal with Li Xingping, Sohu provided technical support to "", and Li Xingping wanted to rank "Sohu News" before "Sina News" on "". As a result, the number of views on "Sohu News" tripled the next day!

Soon, it became the number one Internet navigation website in China and attracted Robin Li’s attention.

In 2004, Baidu purchased Li Xingping directly for RMB 50 million and some Baidu shares. Its own traffic also contributed to Baidu's revenue of at least RMB 400 million every year, which directly contributed to Baidu's successful listing in 2005.

02

After selling, Li Xingping did not stop.

One day, Li Xingping went to an Internet cafe to play games. He found that most of the people playing games now were primary and middle school students, and their age was gradually getting younger.

Li Xingping thought, then why not continue the concept and make a game website that collects various small games and is suitable for students to play.

So within a few days, the 4399 website was born. Two links were established for 4399. Backed by huge traffic, 4399 received millions of views every day.

In addition, when Li Xingping was a network administrator, he was very familiar with network operations and maintenance. Therefore, even if other game websites experienced freezes or hacks at that time, 4399 never happened.

(Image source: 4399 game website)

In 2008, with the maturity of domestic programming technology, web games gradually began to become popular. Li Xingping once again refined the field, focusing on light and casual flash games and web games (web games).

At this time, 4399, which was already doing well, was favored by Internet giants.

In the same year, Cai Wensheng, the father of Meitu, approached Li Xingping and hoped to cooperate with him.

Cai Wensheng has his own achievements. Compared with Li Xingping, Cai Wensheng is known as the "king of domain name investment profits" and can be regarded as an "old man". Moreover, his advantages in marketing and promotion are exactly Li Xingping's disadvantages.

In the end, Cai Wensheng said, "We can make the best page game and the largest game platform in the country by working together." The two hit it off.

After that, Cai Wensheng became the chairman of 4399, and Li Xingping was responsible for product technology and operations, conducting tests day and night. The two of them joined forces.

They know very well that the gaming industry cannot afford to wait. If they want to have a chance to make a hit, time must be guaranteed.

So 4399 stepped up its game and launched "Three Kingdoms" half a year later. This game alone brought them an average monthly income of 500,000 yuan. And a year later, "Gods and Demons Cover the Sky" once again achieved an astonishing record, with a turnover of 20 million every month.

"Moore Manor", "Ser", "Gold Miner", "Fire Elite"…

In 2011, 4399 achieved a net profit of over 100 million thanks to a number of popular games. In the second year, its revenue directly exceeded 1 billion, with the highest number of daily visits being 18 million.

Ranked 19th on the Internet Top 100 list, it beats well-known companies such as Autohome, Xunlei, Tongcheng, Tianya and other well-known companies, becoming the well-deserved largest game website in the country.

As the saying goes: "A soldier who doesn't want to be a general is not a good soldier."

What's more, 4399 is no longer a soldier, but a budding new commander.

Going public was undoubtedly what Li Xingping and Cai Wensheng wanted to do most during the peak period of 4399.

But life is often like this. If you are given a basket of sweet dates, you will definitely be hit hard again. How can it be so easy to go public?

First, in March 2015, the IPO review of 4399 was suspended by the China Securities Regulatory Commission due to incomplete application documents;

Then, in 2017, 4399 was suddenly reported by two investors of Shanghai Dinglin Equity Investment Fund Partnership, saying that the prospectus concealed major matters and was issued fraudulently.

In fact, at this time, the hearing time of 4399 is approaching. At this time, 4399 is ranked 25th on the Shenzhen GEM, and the previous 21 companies have all passed the issuance review meeting. However, because of this report, 4399’s road to listing has been was completely stopped.

After 4399 was reported, journalists immediately launched an investigation and found that the situation was true. In addition, 4399 also had inconsistencies in its IPO prospectus.

In the 2014 version of the IPO prospectus, the purchase amount of 4399 from the top five suppliers in the previous year was 160 million yuan, accounting for 50.65% of the total purchase amount that year. But in the 2016 version, the proportion became 51.75%.

4399 is not the only example of such inconsistency.

According to the IPO disclosure requirements of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the issuer should explain in detail the most realistic formation and changes of the company’s share capital since its establishment, but there is still a big gap in meeting this requirement.

Not to mention that 4399 personally cut off the road to listing, 4399 has also been involved in lawsuits in recent years.

With the development of the times, public preference has gradually shifted from PC to mobile. Due to the emergence of popular mobile games such as "Honor of Kings" and "Onmyoji", 4399 began to gradually lose its name in the gaming circle.

In recent years, in order to maintain traffic and quickly attract fans and make money, 4399, which is eager for quick success and instant profits, finally ran into problems.

Legal disputes related to 4399 began in 2013 and reached their peak in 2015.

There were 21 cases in 2015 alone, and another 17 cases in 2016. Among them, the biggest commotion was undoubtedly the alleged plagiarism of "Dungeon Fighter" and "Overwatch", which was jointly sued by their agents Tencent, Blizzard, and NetEase.

Both cases ended in defeat, with a total compensation of nearly 9 million yuan, and there was even news of bankruptcy in 2019.

03

Perhaps it is because 4399 has not been living a peaceful life in recent years. Now, 4399 has placed its main battlefield abroad and began to focus on mobile games.

But I have to say, this is a smart choice.

In August 2018, the 4399 vertical 3D game "Miracle Sword" was launched. As of this year, Q3's estimated total revenue is nearly 120 million US dollars, ranking first in the Chinese game list in South Korea.

Even if it competes with local Korean games on the same stage, "Miracle Sword" can still rank eighth.

(Image source: "The Sword of Miracles")

On October 22, App Anine released a list of the top ten overseas revenue-generating action role-playing games in mainland China in the third quarter of 2020.

It can be seen that two games, "Miracle Sword" and "Tianji Story", published and participated in the publication by 4399, are both on the list.

(Image source: App Anine)

Moreover, the new game "Tale" released by 4399 in September this year has ranked 17th on the Korean best-selling list in a short period of time. The next step is to enter the Japanese market simultaneously with "Miracle Sword".

Anyway, judging from the current situation, the Korean market of 4399 can be said to be bright, and according to statistics, the revenue of 4399’s mobile game projects in overseas markets has exceeded 2 billion yuan.

So this makes us curious, why does 4399 not work in China, but does it work abroad?

As mentioned before, the success of 4399 was rooted in the domestic network environment at that time.

At that time, computers were very ordinary and it was difficult to stably run games with high configuration and high network speed requirements. 4399 happened to have a collection of many small web games that did not require installation and ran extremely fast.

And what many people don’t know is that 4399 actually has a professional team that cracks genuine games, commonly known as the “game hacking” team. They can copy the hottest new games as quickly as possible and put them online quickly.

In the early 21st century, Chinese people have a weak awareness of copyright. Compared with other teams that spend time and energy researching a game, rapid copying will inevitably make it easier for 4399 to obtain traffic.

Therefore, the "quick copy" business model has been 4399's core competitiveness for a long time. And this model has also driven the entire game market.

The 7k7k mini-game founded in 2003 and the 2214 mini-game in 2006 all started by imitating 4399.

(Image source: 7k7k small game)

But later, in the years when 4399 was in turmoil, the golden age of the Chinese game market also declined.

Basically, all the popular games on the domestic market are dominated by Tencent and NetEase mobile games. The combined revenue of the two accounts for 76% of the entire mobile game market. For other game companies, there is less and less room to play.

Then in March 2018, the former State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television issued the "Important Matters for Game Application and Approval": Due to institutional reforms, version numbers could not be issued, and game version number approval was suspended until December.

In the past, it was crushed by big manufacturers, and later in the game version number policy reform. Faced with dwindling domestic opportunities, domestic game companies have to accelerate their overseas expansion and look for new opportunities overseas.

However, although emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Brazil, and Russia are in a period of growth and dividends, users are not willing to pay due to limited economic conditions. Relatively speaking, in the Japanese and Korean game markets, users are often more willing to actively pay for games.

Therefore, most domestic game companies have set their sights on Japan and South Korea.

(Picture source: "China Game Industry Report from January to June 2018")

As for 4399’s overseas success, 4399 was actually established in South Korea as early as April 2012, and released its first martial arts-themed card game the following year. But because they didn't find the right method, no matter how many games 4399 developed, they couldn't catch the eyes of Koreans, and the response was mediocre.

But this time, 4399 learned from previous experiences and lessons. With the development of the times, they discovered that only if their products match the needs of local players can they have a place overseas.

As a result, 4399 set its sights on Koreans’ favorite MMO (massively multiplayer online game), and the 4399 magical MMO mobile game “Miracle Sword” was born.

After "Miracle Sword" was launched, it not only satisfied Koreans' love for MMOs, but also made improvements on this basis. It adopted the vertical screen MMO gameplay. Players can automatically hang up and fight monsters offline, bringing players an easier experience. The game experience is therefore different from previous MMO games in Japan and South Korea.

After opening up the Korean market with MMO games, starting in April this year, 4399 continued its efforts and launched an attack on Japan. "Legend of the Sword" and the Japanese version of "Miracle Sword" were officially released in Japan. After being launched, they both ranked in the top 40 of Japan's IOS best-selling list. The future is bright.

end

With the great success of mobile games overseas, 4399 also ranked first among Fujian Internet companies in 2020.

However, 4399's Flash game encountered a fatal blow.

On December 31, 2020, Adobe stopped supporting Flash;

On January 13, 2021, Adobe went a step further and completely blocked Flash content.

As we all know, 4399 website games are generally produced through Flash software, so they are also collectively referred to as Flash games, and rely on the high installed capacity of Flash and the massive game library.

Therefore, Flash actually plays a key role in the success of 4399.

Today, it is another big challenge for 4399, which has always relied on Flash and has a small market share.

However, if you think carefully about the development history of 4399 over the years, it is not difficult to find that perhaps even if there was no Flash problem, the disappearance of the 4399 website would be inevitable sooner or later.

Just like downloading the 4399 game collection from the mobile app store now, it seems that nothing has changed, but once you open the software, it is no longer the feeling we were familiar with when we were children.

(Picture source: 4399 Game Box APP)

Childhood memories have turned into game forums, and the game groups are more like a hodgepodge, with no trace of old online games at all…

(Picture source: 4399 Game Box APP)

So if we say that the previous "disappearance" of 4399 is because as we grow older, we are no longer its audience.

This time, with Adobe terminating support for Flash services and the prospect of 4399 continuing to develop new games in the general context, the game website we once remembered that had to be opened without eating or studying may really "disappear" .

The memory of the era belonging to domestic players has come to an end;

However, 4399 will start again and spread its wings in Japan and South Korea in the form of mobile games.

Organized and edited by Coldplay Lab

First published on WeChat public account: Coldplay Lab (ID: )

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references

21st Century Business Review, "Entrepreneurship Story: The Story of 4399"

21st Century Business Herald, "A verdict of 5 million yuan in compensation!" Tencent v. 4399 Copyright Dispute Case First Instance Judgment"

Wang Xiangle and Chen Weifeng watched the news, "4399 was accused!" Two games "reskinned" "Overwatch" constituted infringement and were ordered to pay nearly 4 million yuan.

Beijing News, "4399 was reported before listing: Prospectus storage problem, facing multiple lawsuits"

Zhang Jiaqi, Huxiu.com, "The mobile game that makes Japanese and Korean players crazy about spending money and money, actually comes from 4399?" 》

Anyone who has played 4399, raise your hand and let me see