History
VNG was founded by five avid gamers including CEO Le Hong Minh, and American entrepreneur Bryan Pelz.
In November 2004, VNG's founders signed the exclusive license deal with Kingsoft for Swordsman Online (or Vo Lam Truyen Ky), known as the successful JX Online franchise in China. The game exceeded everyone’s expectations, reaching 20,000 peak concurrent users (PCU) after only one month of operation. Since then, VNG has licensed and operated games, mostly from Chinese and Korean developers, in Vietnam.
In its early days VNG faced the risk of closure from the Department of Information and Communications of Vietnam because there were no regulations on online gaming in the country. However, the company endured and in 2005, VNG received a significant investment from IDG Ventures. It was the largest investment IDG Ventures had made in Vietnam at the time.
In 2006, VNG closed the year with 17 million USD in revenue, six times higher than the previous year.
In 2007 and 2008, ZingMe, Zingchat, ZingNews, and ZingPlay are released. Zing.vn becomes the number one website in Vietnam, topping the Alexa chart in terms of traffic. By 2009, ZingMe is Vietnam's largest SNS website with over 5 million users.
In May 2010, VNG releases Thuan Thien Kiem, Vietnam's first locally developed MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). Although the game did not perform up to expectations, it marked an important transformation of VNG from a game operator into a game developer.
Read more about this topic: Vina Game
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)