Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Afternoon…

"Ah-chu!"

In the office, Pei Qian was just enjoying his air conditioning when he sneezed.

"This is weird; is there too much cold wind blowing at me?"

Pei Qian tugged at the small blanket on him as he turned off the drama he was watching and was intending to take a nap on his office chair.

A knock rang out; it was Lu Mingliang. "Boss Pei, I have a few things to report to you."

Pei Qian nodded, "Speak."

Lu Mingliang saw that Pei Qian was wrapped in a blanket and looked about to fall asleep as he felt a little touched.

Boss Pei looked like he wasn't feeling well; he could go home and rest but was still remaining at work to work alongside us!

Indeed, no matter how much success one had, maintaining a fighting spirit was important!

Lu Mingliang was afraid he was interrupting Boss Pei's rest as he hurriedly reported.

"First is regarding the new edition.

"Everything is going according to plan. However, for some reason, when the news regarding limits on the sales of Ocean Stronghold's epic weapon was spread, all the existing players started to protest violently.

"Boss Pei, should we relax the quantity restriction on this epic weapon a little? Say… to five thousand?"

Pei Qian adamantly shook his head, "No."

Five thousand weapons a month? What a joke!

5000 x 888 was how much; do you know how to count?

Pei Qian said with a straight face, "A limit has been set for a reason. If it becomes so widely available, why would it be called a limited sale in the first place? Don't bother with their grumblings. Five hundred will be five hundred; we will not sell even one more."

Seeing Boss Pei's determined expression, Lu Mingliang couldn't do anything as he nodded, "Alright, Boss Pei.

"Second is regarding Ma Yiqun's responsibilities.

"He has already given feedback to me many times that he strongly wishes to take part in the development of the new editions for our existing games. I thought for a while, and for Ghost General and Game Designer, their new editions really needed an expert at synopsis like him to do the work.

"Could we let him try it out and polish his skills?"

Pei Qian did not reply immediately. He could not think of any good reasons to reject. However, if he didn't reject, Pei Qian was very reluctant to let Ma Yiqun take care of these synopses.

Ma Yiqun's expertise in this area was outstanding. The few synopses he had done for Shang Yang Games' games had been very well done. If he did a great job for Ghost General and Game Designer, the consequences would be dire!

However, how could he reject this?

Ma Yiqun had entered the company in March; it had been two months already. If he asked to continue to understudy, that was a little too much. Even if Ma Yiqun was not allowed to touch the games synopses, he had to be given some order work to do.

Send to Huang Sibo to film short videos? That didn't seem right. His writing prowess could probably also be fully used in the short videos.

Sent to Fish-Catching Internet Cafe? This was not a bad idea. However, Pei Qian did not have a suitable reason to just suddenly send Ma Yiqun away.

After thinking for a while, Pei Qian really didn't have any good suggestions. He could only begrudgingly nod. Pei Qian said unwillingly, "Alright; he has already understudied for so long. Ask him to be responsible for some basic tasks."

Lu Mingliang hurriedly nodded. "Alright, Boss Pei. Do continue to rest; I'll go and work now."

Pei Qian leaned into his chair as he tugged at his blanket again. Somehow, he was a little restless; and he couldn't seem to fall asleep.

"This is strange; where is this feeling of danger coming from all directions coming from? It can't be Shang Yang Games, right?"

Pei Qian speedily reviewed each of his projects in his mind.

For Tengda, the new editions would probably make money. However, this was controllable; and it wasn't that big an issue. As for Fei Huang Workspace, they said they wanted to film a documentary; but there have been no updates yet.

The Fish-Catching Internet Cafe was in a traditional position of strength; two new branches have just finished renovations and were preparing to open. As for the flagship store, he had gone over to take a look slightly more than a week ago; and there had not been any lurking dangers.

Thinking more about this, it seemed like the risks at Shang Yang Games were still the biggest! Pei Qian had requested for them to remove all their purchase options for their existing two games, leaving only one such purchase option. This was indeed a risky move.

Removing the purchase options would definitely be beneficial for the game's reputation; this was given. However, reputation and income were two separate matters.

For a game like Bloody Battle Song that had trashy graphics and ordinary gameplay; its only selling point had been that ballers could whack and kill people within the game. In other words, this game's core selling point was in 'revenge buying'.

After one hacked another, the latter would immediately top up more money to hack the first person back. This was a core attraction of this kind of game.

Precisely because these games had a 'revenge buying' mentality that triggered the negative emotions of players—no matter how bad the graphics were and how inferior the gameplay was, people would still play this game.

If Pei Qian didn't change anything about it, this game might still have a chance of making a comeback; this chance was not small at that.

As long as Ye Zhizhou did a little promotion here and there to bring back old players, this game might actually return to its previous profitable state; Pei Qian would no longer be able to incur losses from it.

Hence, Pei Qian had decided to remove the purchase options in the game.

Bloody Battle Song had no other selling point when it came to graphics or gameplay in comparison to other games; it was a pipe dream to think of attracting new players.

Even if the game became fair and its reputation became good, so what? As long as it didn't earn money, Pei Qian was fine with that.

Of course, what if this game started to attract many new players because of its improved reputation and the player base became so big that profits actually grew? This was not entirely impossible; the possibility was rather small, however.

Pei Qian thought about this for a while, and it seemed that only Shang Yang Games still had a certain risk factor to it. He decided to pay special attention to them.

He was going to head to Bloody Battle Song's official site to take a look.

Indeed, it seemed as if its popularity had risen a little. After its reputation had changed for the better, a portion of old players had returned to this game. However, Pei Qian wasn't flustered. He immediately sent a message to Ye Zhizhou: "Send me some backend statistics regarding top-ups for Bloody Battle Song."

A few minutes later, Ye Zhizhou sent over a screenshot.

This was the top-up platform figures for Bloody Battle Song. Pei Qian took a casual look and saw that on average, the per capita spending was indeed rising—not insignificantly either. However, the total top-up amount had actually fallen by seventy to eighty percent!

Based on a situation like this, Bloody Battle Song's monthly revenue might not be able to hit one hundred thousand.

En, no need to panic; this is part of the plan!

Whether a game could survive depended mainly on profits. Hence, all game companies would push for top-up gaming activities despite the objections and curses from players; they all wanted to become profitable.

If a game kept on losing money, so what if its reputation was good?

The revamped Bloody Battle Song was indeed now rather wallet-friendly; the crux was who it was compared to now! Compared to games with paywalls—as ballers no longer found satisfaction in this game, income from ballers would fall drastically.

Compared to other wallet-friendly games such as Fantasy World, Bloody Battle Song's graphics were trashy; and its gameplay was ordinary. It could not compete with those.

This meant that the new Bloody Battle Song would not be able to compete against these two types of games and their targeted gamer profiles.

"Not bad, let's maintain this."

After replying to Ye Zhizhou, Pei Qian relaxed as he laid his blanket well and went to sleep soundly.

In another two days, the two new branches were going to be open for business. He had to go and take a look then in order to have peace of mind.

…

At Shang Yang Games…

Ye Zhizhou saw Boss Pei's message as he suddenly felt warmth in his heart. Although Boss Pei had so many things to attend to and was busy with his work, he was still concerned about Shang Yang Games!

Although our games' income has fallen drastically now, this is evidently part of Boss Pei's plan; hence, he wants us to maintain this!

This meant that our trajectory is right!

Ye Zhizhou instantly was filled with vigor. Indeed, this was the effect a good boss had on a company, right?

…

…

May 20th…

The two Fish-Catching Internet Cafe branches officially opened for business! Pei Qian, Ma Yang, and Zhang Yuan, the three management level personnel of Fish-Catching Internet Cafe naturally had to be present for the grand openings.

However, the situation at the venue was a little awkward. It was so deserted!

It was even worse than when Fish-Catching Internet Cafe's flagship store had first opened.

These two branches' location was even worse than the flagship store's. Pei Qian had also repeatedly emphasized that they couldn't pull any stunts during the opening, couldn't let off fireworks, and couldn't give out flyers; the more low-key, the better.

To open a business without any promotion or publicity in such a deserted place, it was naturally going to be so cold and empty.

Pei Qian was actually rather satisfied. He sat in the empty coffee area as he looked outside, enjoying the pleasantly warm sunlight very much.

The two branch managers looked a little awkward. However, they had after all been redeployed from the flagship store; and they were used to such sights. They knew that Boss Pei would not blame them, and so the duo wasn't flustered at all.

On the other hand, the newly-recruited servers have never seen such a strange sight before as they all felt as if they didn't know where best to stand or put their hands at; they all seemed to feel that this place was a little eerie.

In the internet cafe section, Ma Yang and Zhang Yuan muttered to themselves softly.

"Why are you stopping me? Ma Yang asked, looking confused.

Just now, Ma Yang had thought that the place was too empty. As morale seemed low, he had wanted to go over and share with Pei Qian the latest good news of Fish-Catching Internet Cafe. With Chen Lei's star appearances, the internet cafe's drinks sales had been increasing daily; the customer flow was also evidently increasing!

Ma Yang felt that this method could be replicated at all Fish-Catching Internet Cafes. However, he had not managed to say anything when Zhang Yuan stopped him.

Zhang Yuan seemed to know what Ma Yang wanted to say. Zhang Yuan said, "Brother Ma, it's not that I'm stopping you from saying. It is not the right time now; it's a little rash."

Ma Yang was confused. "En? Why?"

"Brother Ma, we only have an improvement in sales for our drinks; we would only make an additional twenty to thirty thousand a month. Compared to the monthly losses of three hundred thousand, that isn't much!

"If we raise this up now, it would not be very significant!

"If you keep on bragging about this and Boss Pei finally asks 'Not bad, how much money did you make?' and you say 'We are still making a loss', what would be the point of telling Boss Pei this?!

"If we say nothing now, no one would be wiser. If we do so now and raise Boss Pei's expectations, wouldn't he be even more disappointed when he found out the truth?

"I think that we should wait till we turned our losses into a profit before telling Boss Pei, to give him a surprise. This way, Fish-Catching Internet Cafe and our position in Boss Pei's heart would be elevated; this would be more impactful!

"Brother Ma, don't you agree with this?"

Ma Yang contemplated for a while; this seemed to make sense.

They were still far away from making a profit. If they informed Pei Qian of the good news now, it actually wouldn't amount to much. It would also make Ma Yang seem as if he was eager to take credit for something, that he wanted to come and boast after just achieving minimal success.

This was indeed not the way to do things.

Ma Yang nodded. "En, you make a lot of sense. Let's raise this matter another time. When Fish-Catching Internet Cafe finally turns its losses into a profit, we can then give Brother Qian a surprise!"