Chapter 179 - Putting Out One Fire While Another Burns

In the office, Pei Qian took a look at the platform to see how Tengda’s games were doing.

“This group of people only knows how to give me the bad news; all of them are unreliable! In the end, I must take everything into my own hands.”

Pei Qian was filled with resentment.

Everyone else’s employees all gave them good news instead of bad; only his employees were the exact opposite. Whenever there was good news, he would be the last to know.

Pei Qian had reflected on this before. This might be because, right from the start, Tengda was a company that had a rather flat hierarchy; it did not have such a stringent superior-subordinate system. Furthermore, Huang Sibo and Bao Xu were both people that hunkered down and did their work, not having any airs at all.

Whenever they encountered problems, his employees would think of resolving them themselves, not wanting to give Boss Pei trouble. Even if they succeeded, they would think that everything had been arranged by Pei Qian and would not appear surprised at all. They most definitely would not try to claim credit for their success.

This made Pei Qian very pained. Whenever profits appeared from some aspect of his businesses, he was always the last to know; this hindered him immensely.

The crux was he couldn’t act as if he knew nothing. This would be very incompatible with his image and standing; it would make things awkward!

Pei Qian felt that he couldn’t make the same mistake twice.

Only a few days were left until the next settlement; he had to constantly keep track of the statistics of his profitable profits; he would not tolerate any mistakes.

Pei Qian had intentionally made a trip to the company today precisely because of this.

After opening the platform, Pei Qian hurriedly took a look at the statistics of Tengda’s games.

Income from the games was all growing. This was as expected. After all, Tengda had just released downloadable contents while the official platform was still recommending Tengda’s games on its front page; it was impossible that the income would not rise.

Looking at the rows of rising numbers, Pei Qian was a little jittery. However, after taking a closer look, most of the increases in income were actually still acceptable. Then again… there were places where the increase was a little abnormal.

Ocean Stronghold!

Pei Qian immediately noticed that the income stream from this game was higher than he had predicted; it was much higher!

Even taking into account the recommendation from the official platform, the altering of the profit-sharing agreement, and the popularity of the game after the launch of the downloadable content, the figures were rather high!

Pei Qian immediately grew a little wary and a little unhappy.

Such a serious thing had happened; no one had bothered to report this to me!

What were Lu Mingliang and Bao Xu thinking about; they saw these numbers and didn’t hurry to inform me? What were they waiting for?

Luckily, I had come to the company today to take a look. If not, I would be cheated again!

Pei Qian was now rather angry but also happy that he had discovered this. Now that he had found this out early, he might still be able to do something to remedy the situation! The crux of the problem was finding out why such an increase in income had been experienced for this game.

If it was something that happened by chance and this increase in income was short-term, Pei Qian wouldn’t pay too much attention to it. He could spend a little more money to offset this.

However, if it was some long-term factor that would continue to propel a rise in income and perhaps even a potential explosive increase, Pei Qian would have to be wary right in this instance and take decisive action.

Pei Qian went into Ocean Stronghold’s game forum as he searched in detail for the most recent discussion thread.

“I did not expect Li Zhengwei would also become a traitor and join the revolution. Sigh! Could it be that Counter Strike was really going to become redundant as times progressed?”

“I think you’re thinking too much; Brother Li must have just done a normal sponsored partnership.”

“Brother Li had said in his fan group that he wasn’t doing a sponsored partnership. Primarily because Fei Huang Workspace’s documentary had been so well-done; that’s why he wants to lend his name to help Tengda publicize their game to return the favor.”

“I feel that there isn’t anything wrong with this. Ocean Stronghold is a domestically-produced game with a heart; I think it’s good to promote it.”

“I started to play because even Brother Li had lent his support; this game is actually really good.”

“When it comes to competitiveness and hand sensitivity, Counter Strike is indeed good. However, it is an old game after all; and its online system is rather bad while the gameplay is not abundant enough. After changing to play Ocean Stronghold, I feel that going online to play it for a while when I’m free is actually rather nice. All thanks to Brother Li’s recommendation!”

Pei Qian placed his hand on his forehead; he was speechless.

It was impossible to guard against everything!

Fei Huang Workspace’s Coming Out of the Cocoon as a Butterfly had not turned in a profit yet; it was that hard to earn money from it. Even Huang Sibo and Zhu Xiaoce had given up and were already preparing their next video.

Hence, Pei Qian had also not considered what impact this documentary would bring. He had not expected that this documentary had impacted Ocean Stronghold!

Evidently, even people in the Fei Huang Workspace could not have expected this.

Presently, FPS games were a rather hot genre in the gaming field. As Li Zhengwei was known as the ‘number-one FPS gamer in the country’, he was rather influential among his fans while his journey to becoming a professional player had been filled with difficulties; there had been more content to film about him.

Hence, Fei Huang Workspace had decided to choose him for the documentary.

After the documentary had finished filming, Li Zhengwei was very appreciative of Fei Huang Workspace. After all, this documentary had been for public interest and the public good. It had helped raise Li Zhengwei’s profile while it had also given the gaming profession a slight nudge in a positive direction.

During filming, when Li Zhengwei had chatted casually with Huang Sibo, he had discovered that the latter was actually the chief planner behind Ocean Stronghold.

Hence, after the documentary had been completed, Li Zhengwei had done much publicity work for Ocean Stronghold!

As Pei Qian had not been paying attention to the FPS gamers’ circle, he had not known any of these things at all.

Li Zhengwei was also rather influential among Counter Strike’s players. As he had gone all out to promote Ocean Stronghold, another huge wave of players had started playing the game naturally!

As such, many Counter Strike players had shifted allegiances as well; this had created a chain-reaction.

The official games platform had given its recommendation while Ocean Stronghold’s new epic weapon had been selling well, and so Pei Qian had not noticed anything amiss with the game’s statistics immediately…

Until today.

Pei Qian kept his hand on his forehead. “… Damn.”

Although he had found the problem, Pei Qian was powerless to do anything.

It was… too late!

Although Li Zhengwei had a certain amount of influence among FPS gamers, promoting Ocean Stronghold could at most only result in a surge in popularity for the game for a few days. Now that a few days had gone by, Ocean Stronghold’s popularity was not increasing that much. Most gamers that started on the game had already done so; what else could Pei Qian do?

“I have overextended myself; it’s really like putting out one fire as another burns…

“Calm down. From another perspective, this is not that bad a thing. This time, it had just been an unexpected occurrence; Li Zhengwei’s influence was soon going to lose its effect. As long as this won’t continuously affect Ocean Stronghold and raise its income, all is still well.

“Hu… all in all, this is now over. At least I can rest easy for the moment.”

In a mere half-hour, Pei Qian had experienced such a fluctuation in his emotions; fortunately, it had just been a scare.

According to Pei Qian’s estimates, this flood of new players could only persist for two to three days. If he spent more on shopping or employee benefits, this would not affect the settlement.

After triple-checking that the other games were doing alright and that only Ocean Stronghold had experienced this irregular rise in income, Pei Qian rested easy as he prepared to leave.

In the working area, Lu Mingliang and Bao Xu swiftly exchanged a glance.

“Boss Pei is coming out; should we report to him?”

“I don’t think it’s necessary.”

“…let’s report it in any case.”

Although Bao Xu thought there wasn’t a need, Lu Mingliang felt that they should still casually mention this to Pei Qian as he stood up from his seat.

“Boss Pei, we have something to report to you. Ocean Stronghold’s active players and top-ups have recently experienced a spike. Also…”

Pei Qian smiled slightly as he nodded. “I already know that.”

“Oh, okay then, Boss Pei.”

Lu Mingliang quietly sat down as he felt that his actions had indeed been unnecessary.

How could Boss Pei miss such a simple statistic? That was not possible. Indeed, he had thought too much.

Before Pei Qian left, he glanced over at Lu Mingliang and nodded slightly.

Not bad!

It had been the right decision to make you chief planner; you are more reliable than Bao Xu and Huang Sibo! Although your information has come a little late, your actions are worthy of commendation. Your chief planner position is secured!