World Zero from Shanda
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Chinese online game publisher Shanda gets $1.9B offer to go private

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

Shanghai’s Shanda Games received a $1.9 billion buyout offer from its major shareholders, who want to take the online game company private.

Publicly traded Shanda makes things such the free-to-play multiplayer online role-playing game World Zero. The company is one of a number of large public game companies with a focus on the Chinese online market. And it’s part of a financial trend: rival game publisher Giant Interactive Group also received an offer from its chairman Yuzhu Shi in November to go private at a valuation of $2.8 billion.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.