The head of Alibaba Group Holding‘s entertainment business has apologised to employees for his controversial remarks dismissing a video-gaming unit’s performance and disparaging the Cantonese dialect, which went viral on Chinese social media over the weekend.
Fan Luyuan, chairman and chief executive of Alibaba’s Digital Media and Entertainment Group, admitted he was “out of line” with the remarks, adding that he only wanted to “liven up the atmosphere” during a meeting with the employees of subsidiary Lingxi Games, according to an internal statement posted on Alibaba’s intranet on Saturday.
At the meeting, Fan – a member of the Alibaba Partnership who also serves as chairman and chief executive of Hong Kong-listed Alibaba Pictures – criticised Guangzhou-based Lingxi Games for going “astray under the leadership of the previous management team”.
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“I don’t think you had the value system, mission and vision of Alibaba,” he said, adding that employees should re-evaluate what the group stands for.
Fan said the studio failed to innovate beyond hit mobile game Three Kingdoms Tactics or launch other major titles, which weakened the unit’s competitiveness in the past three years. “A game without innovation for five years is nothing,” Fan was quoted by Chinese media as saying.
He was also quoted in reports as saying that Cantonese is a “dialect for barbarians”. Cantonese is widely spoken in the southern province of Guangdong and the autonomous region of Guangxi on the mainland, as well as in Hong Kong and Macau.
Images of mobile gaming titles published by Lingxi Games. Photo Lingxi Games alt=Images of mobile gaming titles published by Lingxi Games. Photo Lingxi Games>
To make amends, Fan said in his online statement that he would donate three months’ worth of his salary towards a team-building fund of Lingxi Games employees.
Notwithstanding Fan’s apology, his earlier remarks continue to ignite online discussions about his ability to make judgment calls in an industry where he is known to lack experience.
Fan’s controversial comments came months after Lingxi Games – known as Ejoy before it was acquired by Alibaba in 2017 – went through major personnel changes. Zhan Zhonghui, one of the three co-founders of Ejoy stepped down as head of Lingxi Games in March, replaced by Three Kingdoms Tactics producer Zhou Bingshu.
