Dear Friends of Mochi,
Bob and I are thrilled to announce today that Mochi Media is joining the Shanda Games family. If you’re not familiar with Shanda Games, they are the leading online game developer, operator and publisher in the Chinese market. This partnership is a phenomenal step forward for us and I’m very excited to join forces with them as we continue building out Mochi products with additional resources and support from Shanda Games. In particular, there will be a tremendous opportunity and benefit from tapping into Shanda Games’ strength and expertise in monetizing China traffic as well as extending the reach of our platform and network to gamers all over the world. Our vision and product focus remains the same, and I’m pleased to say that the biggest change we’ll experience is the additional opportunities and resources now available to invest in our community of developers and publishers.
On behalf of the entire team here at Mochi Media, I want to extend a great big thank you to the Mochi community. We couldn’t have accomplished this milestone without you!
For more information on the merger please refer to the official announcement in our press section. I’ve also put together a quick Q&A to address any additional concerns about what this means. Please let me know if you have any questions, and stay tuned for more exciting news in the future.
Sincerely,
Jameson Hsu
Chief Mochi
Questions & Answers
Who is Shanda Games?
Shanda Games is the leading online game company in China in terms of the size and diversity of their 30+ title gaming portfolio. The online games business includes developing, operating and licensing massively multi-player online role-playing games, or MMORPGs, and advanced casual games. Their game player base consists of nearly 10 million active paying accounts, which is monetized through item-based or time-based sales of digital goods.
How does this affect Mochi as a company?
Mochi Media will continue to operate as we have in the past under the existing leadership and team, but now as subsidiary of Shanda Games. Bob and I as well as the entire company are sticking around and we’re really excited to continue working on bigger and better products for the community.
How does this affect Mochi developers and publishers?
All of the Mochi products and services you know and love will not change and will continue to operate as usual, so as far as your day-to-day usage nothing will change. Mochi Media is here to stay as a business and you can expect for us to be around for many happy years to come. In the short-term, we plan to work with Shanda Games on extending our presence in the Chinese market and finding ways to better monetize your Asian traffic in both ads and micro-transactions. In addition to this, the access to greater resources and scale will enable us to accelerate our development process and create even better tools and services for the community. I’m also particularly excited about future opportunities to help the Mochi community benefit from Shanda Games’ programs such as the “18 fund,” which is the first dedicated fund focused on the online gaming industry aimed at funding, developing and supporting the best gaming content and talent.
Why did Mochi choose Shanda Games as a partner?
We chose to work with Shanda Games in large part due to how well we complement each other in a marriage between content and platform. As the leading online game developer, operator and publisher in China, Shanda Games has a large portfolio of gaming content that would integrate well into the Mochi Media platform. This relationship opens up a new market for Shanda Games and gives them a footprint outside of China while opening up the Chinese market for Mochi Media and gives ourcommunity access to Shanda Games’ strength and expertise in virtual goods.
Does this mean Mochi is expanding beyond Flash?
We’ve always been focused on the Flash games community and will continue to do so into the future.
awesome news!
…and scary news
Great news. We hope that cooperate with Shanda will not affect your assessment of other game developers
I don’t see how it benefits me as a developer. This looks more like mochi was sold, and instead of just telling that, you are disguising it as some kind of partnership deal.
I… am not sure what to say or think. I hope Mochi actually continues to live long (and continues to allow us developers to continue as well with it). Lets hope this Shanda Games deal is for the better and that it doesn’t cause Mochi to end like GJ did.
So if Mochi is a subsidiary of Shanda Games then mochi is now owned by Shanda Games. And the title of joining a family is kinda like being adopted.
hey Jameson. Well done! I hope you did well out of the deal, you deserve it the way you have built the Mochi business.
This could be sweet. My game got mostly Hong Kong traffic but I didn’t make any money. If Mochi Services can monetize global traffic better it would be a win for everyone.
i m a chinese, this is great news, Shanda Games is the leading online game company and everyone knows in China. i think Mochi is going to be more popular in China.
Doesn’t sound all that helpful to flash games…
“Ms. Li said Shanda Games would use Mochi’s network to lure more players of the light, casual games to Shanda’s profitable massive multiplayer games.”
source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704081704574653430020773954.html?mod=WSJ_PersonalTechnology_LEFTTop
I think they bought mochi media for huge amount of free chinese gamers traffic.
They not gonna pay more money to developers from that traffic but instead will redirect all that free traffic to they games.
I think it’s good deal for Shanga and mochi owners but not so much for developers or mochi media future as company.
I do not think mochi media will do anything new from now on but instead will be reduced to game traffic cow for Shanga.
It sounds exciting to me.
If they advertise their games in China through MochiAds games (and pay the developers for hits), then this could increase the ad money from China dramatically \(^_^)/
Also, it should make it a lot more easier to find more far eastern advertisers too.
Except, they would likely add a simple disclaimer: for any free ad slots we reserve the right to display shanda ads a.k.a no payout?
@Joe, yeah, but that’s the worst that can happen.
At the moment we get pretty much nothing from a million impressions in China.
If they do pay a little for their ads and get more Chinese ads and promote Mochi games more in China then that would be amazing.
Hey!!! We just finished a game that is in english and chinese! Major co-incidence! Do you want it? :o)
So you sold yourself to Shanda Games. Thats not something you should be proud of.
Lets see how it goes, now it looks a bit bad.
Just be realistic. This is probably not going to help any of us. Mochi might have great intentions, but they are no longer in charge, and things will for sure change, and not necessarily for the better.
This is a deal for shandra to get on the US market, not the other way around. China has ridiculous censorship laws and won’t want foreign stuff in their country anyway.
Surely we will start seeing games that compete with shandas games rejected. It’s the way it goes.
Great that the people of mochi got some money. I’d do it too. But don’t act like it’s all so great for all the users.
OMG!!!
Seriously hope that nothing change about JSON/XML feeds and Mochibridge system… ‘O_O
I’m… unsure about this. Lacking enough details of any agreement to make any educated opinions, I can’t actually see any good reason why MochiMedia would have sold up at this point. US$80 million isn’t that much more than the apparently rejected US$65 million alleged Time Warner offer of about two years ago. I would have expected the company to be worth substantially more than its’ current valuation in the not too distant future. Unless there are unknown factors requiring a sale at the current date. Although it sounds a lot of money, after investors get their share, and the taxman, it’s not really that huge.
Mochi will no longer be as independent as it was previously, even if Shanda don’t start micro-managing it.
Wait and see, and hope for the best.
Well there’s a whole world of competition out there. If Mochi were to drop the ball in favor of strictly trawling for Shanda traffic then another advertising / microtransaction provider will step in to fill in the gaps.
Mochi Services are far from a monopoly on monetizing Flash. Relax!
Well… this is actually VERY BAD NEWS for developer community, because from now on, Mochi Media is in major conflict of interest :/ I will not be surprised, if in coming months, we gonna see developer exodus to other platforms, on which devs will not be forced to compete with products of their own add provider! Congrats on big bags of money…
guys, wait until mochi goes evil, and THEN complain about it ;)
@NPGAMES: Mochi made kind of evilish decision by taking this deal – and I`m sure they know it ;) Think, why should they promote independent games, if Shanda games has its own big (and fast growing!) portfolio? Guess who`s games gonna get the fattest deals, and exposure? It is not Christmas, and Shanda Games is not Santa – they paid 80mln $, and I`m sure they have many ideas how to get it back with profit. It is major conflict of interest, and my fear is, that in process so called Mochi community will change into background noise for Shanda Games products…
This is not a partnership. Shanda bought mochi. They are in control now, and what they intend to use mochi for, is to use it as their tool for getting traffic to their own games and sites. They stated that quite clearly in the quotes in the news article at this url:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704081704574653430020773954.html?mod=WSJ_PersonalTechnology_LEFTTop
Shanda says they are going to use mochi to distribute their own games.
They also say they are going to use mochi to try to lure players to their own more profitable multiplayer games.
Having been around a long time I’ve seen many “partnerships”. This is not a partnership, it is an acquisition and in the long run spells the end of new features and exciting things coming from Mochiads. Mochiads will die a slow, painful death and here’s why:
1. The guys sold and made a bunch of money. Good for them. Well deserved. Passion gone.
2. The main players in Mochiads are likely on an “earn out” where they need to stick around for 2 or 3 years and if they do stand make a bunch more money at the end if they meet certain profitability targets, etc. They will do what they need to make there $ but will be starting new ventures on the side for their next big thing.
3. In order to make the earn-out and targets set by Shanda they will stop spending money resulting in less features, worse support, etc.
Contrary to the spin put out this is what happens. I have seen it many times. Time to move on. Mochiads will soon be a shell of it’s former self.
Good luck and congrats!
Do you know where I can play one of Shanda’s “advanced casual games”
Jameson and I are committed to Mochi, as is the entire team. Every employee of Mochi is staying. We’re still very passionate about what we do. Personally speaking I’m not doing this for the money, I love my job. We chose Shanda Games specifically because they wouldn’t screw up Mochi and that we could continue to love our jobs for years to come (Jameson and I are already at year 5). Not only is the team staying, but we’re not ripping out any features or anything silly like that. Mochi is still Mochi, the only difference is that it’s now a wholly owned subsidiary of Shanda Games. We’re in the same office, in the same country, with the same staff and the same goals.
I can’t speak about the details of the transaction as it is confidential information but what I can say is that you are simply making stuff up. We are not making any cuts and if we were cutting expenses we certainly wouldn’t be hiring right now (we are hiring). We have a ton of features in the pipeline and support is improving as we scale it up, but I still respond to many support requests myself just as it has always been.
The Mochi team and Shanda Games both want us to do exactly what we have always been doing and we’re both very excited about what was in our pipeline before the deal, but we’re also collaborating on helping Mochi work better in China and helping Shanda Games break into the global marketplace. All of these things are very good things for indie developers because we will be improving our platform, helping developers directly with the “18 fund”, etc.
In any case, I’d rather prove that this is a good thing by continuing to provide awesome services and build great products rather than commenting on speculation. I’m sure Jameson will have some things to say when he’s finished traveling but that’s it from me.
Just as google is pulling out of China, Mochi is going there, very interesting …
I hope it stays the way it is, because else small time hobby developers like me won’t have a chance any more.
Shanda clearly stated that they will use mochi to distribute their games to lure players to their own websites.
99.999% of the developers are not the top ones lucky enough to be able to sell their games to Shanda or get other special deals.
As I understood the not so detailed statement from Shanda, the 18 fund is for purchasing intellectual rights to games. Not really for helping developers in any other way than buying their games.
But let’s see. For the top developers, they can always earn from sponsorships anyway. For the rest of us, we are out of luck if we don’t have a good ad provider like mochi has been so far.
“Shanda clearly stated that they will use mochi to distribute their games to lure players to their own websites.”
Should have been
“Shanda clearly stated that they will use mochi to distribute their games AND to lure players to their own websites.”
Hmm… I think it’s too early to make judgments, but this seems a little suspicious. Hopefully, Mochi will retain its integrity and not be an overt sellout. I hope this won’t be too bad for game makers like me.
So I should be glad that more manga-dressup-jigsaw-ben10 will come to mochi ?
NO thank you :(