This period of time was known as the Hasbro Overbearing Clause Incident. This incident was so huge that it shocked the entire United States. It lasted for about half a month, and in the end, the people of the United States took a big bite out of it.
After the mess was over, the fate of the many forces involved in this incident was revealed.
The worst was naturally Hasbro. It directly became the focus of all public opinion, and in the end, it also suffered painful losses. The vice president, Medea, was fired, the president retired early, and there were large-scale changes in the company's senior management.
However, this was nothing. After the incident, Hasbro's stock price of 10 billion US dollars was reduced to less than 4 billion US dollars. It lost more than 60% of its market value, which was simply tragic.
However, this was still nothing. After that, Hasbro had to sign a settlement with the major shopping malls for a total of 800 million US dollars.
These were all visible losses, but there were also many invisible losses.
The most important of which was the loss of Hasbro's reputation. After this incident, Hasbro became an extremely overbearing company in the eyes of the United States. Its reputation was in tatters, and many parents naturally avoided Hasbro's toys when they were shopping for toys for their children.
Although Hasbro was still able to sell a lot of toys with the help of many well-known IPs, the sales volume was far from what it used to be.
In addition, Hasbro's sales in major shopping malls across the country were empty for about half a year. All of their products could not be sold, which was equivalent to being banned by the printing press for half a year.
This was also the reason why Hasbro had to agree to an out-of-court settlement. After all, if their toys could not be sold, the loss would not be as simple as 800 million US dollars.
Finally, and most importantly, Hasbro's absolute dominance in the toy industry was shaken. Taking advantage of the six-month period when Hasbro was banned, many game manufacturers took advantage of the situation. The entire game industry seemed to have returned to a state of competition overnight.
Hasbro was the unluckiest one, and the second unluckiest was probably the shopping malls across the country. According to their calculations, the major shopping malls across the country lost at least 2 billion US dollars in revenue because of this dispute, and they only received 800 million US dollars in compensation. In the end, they lost 1.2 billion US dollars.
Of course, this was only the data calculation provided by the shopping malls, and no one else would admit it.
In fact, there weren't many people who benefited from it.
Although the Daqian had taken the opportunity to take revenge and allowed their products to enter the market, there were already many conspiracy theories circulating in the United States. Gradually, some people began to analyze that the Daqian was the mastermind behind this world war. Anyway, the Daqian's reputation had suffered.
If one had to find a pure profiteer, then the profiteer would probably be Blizzard Entertainment and Warcraft.
After all, this whole incident started because of Warcraft. Although the focus was on Hasbro, the source of all this, Warcraft, received a lot of attention. At least a lot of players in the United States had heard of Warcraft. This was a great start.
However, knowing was one thing. If it couldn't make players want to buy it, then it wouldn't be enough.
Fortunately, Medea helped Warcraft this time. After Medea was fired, a reporter finally found Medea for an interview. Of course, as for many questions about Hasbro, because of the original CEO contract, Medea was not allowed to answer any questions about Hasbro after leaving the company.
However, Medea could answer questions about EA. Moreover, Medea hated EA to the core. If it wasn't for that damned bastard who instigated him to create Warcraft, this wouldn't have happened.
Therefore, Medea said that he had received a secret request from EA. Because EA felt that Warcraft was too fun and posed a threat to their game, they wanted to use him to get rid of Warcraft.
After this news was broadcasted, EA naturally received a lot of criticism. Then the players started to become curious about Warcraft.
No matter how perfect Warcraft's advertisement was, most of the players didn't believe it.
But if it can make EA feel threatened and take the initiative to ban it, then Warcraft is definitely a good game!!
Therefore, when Warcraft was released, players started to head to the store to buy it. At this crucial moment, Blizzard Entertainment suddenly announced a new sales policy, which was a 7 day refund policy.
According to Blizzard Entertainment, in order to thank all the American people and players for their support and solidarity in this incident, Blizzard Entertainment decided to give back to all the players for free.
First of all, the price was half off.
In the United States, a typical PC game was priced around 49 USD per copy, similar to Pokemon. Then Blizzard Entertainment announced that they would adjust the price to 24 USD per copy.
This price would only last for 7 days. After 7 days, the price would return to the normal price of 49 USD per copy.
That wasn't all. Blizzard Entertainment also announced that their products were open to all players to test. After buying Warcraft, as long as players felt that it wasn't fun within 7 days, they could immediately return it to the store.
As long as the cartridge wasn't damaged, they could get a full refund at no cost!
The effect of these two policies was terrifying. On the first day of Warcraft's re-release, three hundred thousand copies of the game were sold.
This number sounded a lot less than Pokemon. However, in the United States of America, a home game console was only 199 USD, but a home computer cost more than a thousand USD.
Therefore, even in the United States, the PC retention rate was only around 1/10 of a console. In other words, in the console market, this would be equivalent to three million copies sold on the first day.
In the next three days, Warcraft's daily sales reached its peak on the third day, selling 700,000 copies in a single day.
After that, the sales started to drop, but even on the sixth day, the lowest sales were still two hundred and fifty thousand copies sold.
In the end, Warcraft sold a terrifying 3.12 million copies in seven days, taking it to the top of the PC game sales charts, surpassing the 1.2 million copies that Warcraft in the future took an entire year to sell.
Of course, from the seventh day onwards, a large number of players came to return the game. But in the end, the total number wasn't that high, only around three hundred and fifty thousand copies, equivalent to 12% of the total sales.
Later on, someone did a survey and asked if the reason why the players didn't return the game was because they were satisfied with the game.
In the end, 65% of the players said that they were satisfied. The other 35% said that they were too lazy to return the game. It was too troublesome to go through all the procedures!
All in all, Warcraft sold a terrifying 2.77 million copies in the first seven days, and this was only the first seven days. As the quality of the game continues to improve, the future sales will continue to be this high.
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