Statement |This article does not include commercial co-authors |Yefeng reported on January 1 that Giant Network confirmed today that Liu Wei applied to the company's board of directors to resign as CEO for personal reasons, and the company hired Zhang Dong as the company's CEO. Prior to that, Zhang Dong served as executive director and marketing director of Shanghai.com for many years, responsible for the operation of NetEase**'s Blizzard Family Bucket in China. In November 2022, when the cooperation between NetEase and Blizzard was about to end, Zhang Dong was transferred to NetEase Cloud**, and replaced Zhu Yiwen, who left the company, as senior vice president in March last year. But he voluntarily resigned after only 8 months in NetEase Cloud**, and it was reported that the boss did not stay. Zhang Dong's subsequent dynamics have attracted much attention. At that time, it was rumored that after Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft, NetEase would return to charge the operation of Blizzard games in China, and Zhang Dong resigned from NetEase Cloud ** to prepare for this. With Zhang Dong going to Giant Network as CEO, the rumors were self-defeating. On the other hand, now that his new movements are announced, it is also very reminiscent of the whereabouts of Blizzard's entire family bucket power. But the two things may not really be that closely related. A person close to Giant Network said that Zhang Dong came by himself and had nothing to do with Blizzard；However, Zhang Dong chose Giant Network among many game companies, which should be related to the fact that Giant Network had earlier incorporated many of the departed employees of NetEase. In fact, Zhang Dong has long had a relationship with Giant Network before. The game industry veteran, who has nearly 20 years of experience, previously worked as a product manager at Tencent Interactive Entertainment. In 2005, he joined Giant Network and successively served as the product director of many projects such as "Journey 2", "Dragon Soul" and "Xiantu" until May 2013, when he moved to Shanghai NetEase and was responsible for the operation of Blizzard's family bucket. At that time, he said that Giant Network belonged to a good company, allowing him to experience and accumulate rich experience. After Blizzard games were suspended, NetEase was also cancelled, and Zhang Dong's choice to return to Giant Network seemed to be a natural choice. On the other hand, being able to add this general also has some urgent meaning for Giant Network. In January 2020, Wu Meng, the producer of "Ball Battle", was appointed as the co-CEO, mainly responsible for the development and operation of the game, while the other co-CEO Liu Wei was responsible for the company's investment, the group's public functions, strategic arrangements, etc. Wu Meng is the first post-85 executive of Giant Network, which is regarded as part of the company's younger management. Since then, the company has also started the model of dual CEOs. However, since Wu Meng's departure in June 2022, there have been no new personnel appointments to the position. In addition, although the founder Shi Yuzhu returned to the front line of research and development in 2016, in addition to participating in the production of "Original Journey" in recent years, he has actually retreated into the background. Shi Yuzhu's protégé Ji Xuefeng left as early as 2017. In October last year, "The End of the Dragon and the World" was cut due to poor results, and its producer Liu Yifeng also left the company to start his own business. Now the company's game business is suffering from the lack of a backbone to lead, and Zhang Dong can just fill this vacancy. The company's current game business still needs to be further activated. After going around for a few years, now its pillars are still only the Journey IP, as well as "Ball Battle". The national war MMORPG "Primal Journey", which was launched in March last year, collected 300 million turnover in the first month. Today, although its iOS best-selling list has slipped somewhat, it is still stable, roughly remaining around 40th. This is one of the good news. 
Another piece of good news is that the casual io game "Ball Ball Battle" is steadily improving. From around August last year to now, the game has intensively launched a number of new season activities and new gameplay. Originally, it had been stable at around the top 100 on the iOS best-selling list, but now it has gradually risen to within 100, and sometimes even enters the top 50. 
In September last year, the company also launched Jelly Bean, a community app for players called "Ball Ball Wars", which focuses on social features outside of the game, and it may have had an impact on revenue. It's just that the overseas version of "Ball Battle", which has been mentioned since the 2017 financial report, has not yet been launched. 
Jelly Bean The party game Super SUS (formerly known as Space Action) is popular in both mainland and Southeast Asia, reaching 200 million users worldwide in July last year, but it is still in a state of cradle. Taking the mainland market as an example, although the iOS free list can remain around 100, the best-selling list has never entered the 200 list. The project team of the card battle game "Full Moon Night" absorbed the core operation team of Hearthstone in China, and then launched an online PVP mode, which has the potential to seize this blank market. However, perhaps because the new model is still in the exploration stage of the payment system, it is still rarely in the top 200 of the iOS best-selling list. The two-dimensional idle RPG game "Dragons and the End of the World", which was launched on the mainland market in September last year, had dismal results, and the project was axed a month later. In August 2022, the company also cut a TPS mobile game "Ring of Osiri" under development, which had nearly 2 million pre-orders at that time. So far, of the four games that were listed as key projects by the company, "Ring of Osiri", "Space Kill", "Dragon and the End of the World" and "Primordial Journey", only one of the "Primordial Journey" has achieved good results. Perhaps in order to find new growth points, the company has plans to further deploy overseas business in the past one or two years, and also established an overseas publishing brand Ztimes last year, testing SLG "War of the Giant" and MMORPG "Lord's Throne" two games, but there are no officially launched products yet. On the other hand, around the IP of "Journey", there is also a vertical version of the idle game "King's Journey" in development. The company is also trying to tap more possibilities of this old IP with a more popular and youthful style. Game News learned that the Giant Network now has about 1,300 people. This size of a company may also be a challenge for Zhang Dong, who once ran NetEasy. Perhaps the arrival of Zhang Dong can bring new growth ideas to Giant Network.