Firestone Shuts Down Kingsoft's "Shui Hu Q Zhuan" Servers
Sina Tech, 12/03/09
The operations team for the game Shui Hu Q Zhuan, operated by Chinese gaming company Kingsoft (3888.HK), released an announcement today saying that malicious "suicide code" embedded in the game by developer Firestone has led to server shutdowns and user data loss for the game.
Firestone CEO Wu Xisang replied that his company had embedded code in Shui Hu Q Zhuan to shut down the servers, and explained that Firestone considers Kingsoft's continued operation of the game after the November 30 expiration of the two companies' licensing agreement to be the equivalent of unlicensed private server operations.
Wu revealed that Firestone had arranged talks between Kingsoft and the new operator of the game, Sohu (Nasdaq: SOHU) gaming subsidiary Changyou (Nasdaq: CYOU), on October 28. One of the subjects of the talks was user data migration. Wu said the companies were unable to arrive at an agreement after "Kingsoft named a price slightly less than RMB 100 mln" to migrate user data.
Operating revenues for Shui Hu Q Zhuan over the past year of operations totaled about RMB 100 mln.
Wu said that Kingsoft still owes Firestone a final payment of more than RMB 1 mln. Firestone proposed waiving the last payment in exchange for user data, but was rebuffed by Kingsoft.
Keywords: online gaming licensed game Changyou Firestone Shui Hu Q Zhuan Kingsoft Internet CYOU Wu Xisang 3888.HK
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