Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Pei Qian did not give the trio time to hesitate. He assigned them their respective tasks immediately.

"So, Chef Lin, you will be in charge of researching this thing and creating a pilot project at this internet cafe.

"As for the menu choices, delivery area, website or mobile application for ordering, initial publicity…

"Ma Yang and Zhang Yuan, you two will be in charge of these. Show me your proposal sometime later. It will be great if you two can provide me with a rough plan by this week, and our delivery services can officially open for business by next week."

Ma Yang patted his chest and said, "Rest assured, Brother Qian. You can count on me for that!"

There were similar delivery services that existed. After all, the Fish-Catching Internet Cafe was currently also responsible for the meals of all Tengda employees. They had to deliver the food anyway.

However, they now had to perfect some details and hire more delivery men. After settling all of that, they could then cater to the delivery requirements in the vicinity.

Of course, the delivery services by Fish-Catching Take-Out would revolve around the surroundings of the Fish-Catching Internet Cafe before gradually spreading to other areas.

They currently only offered delivery services to a two kilometers radius from the Fish-Catching Internet Cafe. As they opened more outlets, they could then naturally accomplish their goal of catering to the entire city.

Strictly speaking, this hodgepodge-style method was not very economical and scientific.

However, non-economical and unscientific were what Pei Qian was aiming for. After all, he counted on the Fish-Catching Internet Cafe to lose money for him!

If the brick-and-mortar store only did one thing, such as opening an internet cafe, restaurant, bar, or offering delivery services. There was still a possibility of earning money given the investment that Pei Qian injected.

After all, the system restricted Pei Qian in many ways. He could not produce sub-quality products. Therefore, no matter how much money he had spent, the services and goods that he provided were all within a floating range. No matter how cheap or expensive his products were, there was always a targeted crowd.

Turning the internet cafe into a hodgepodge could naturally make the various components influence and drag one another down. That would then successfully achieve Pei Qian's goal to lose money.

Pei Qian was very satisfied with the state which the Fish-Catching Internet Cafe was in.

Amongst the various services that the internet cafe offered, Pei Qian was the most satisfied with its F&B sales. He wanted to continue expanding on this aspect naturally.

It would not cost much to hire a few more chefs. However, if he hired more deliverymen, dishwashers who were in charge of cleaning and disinfecting the utensils, and R&D personnel for the website and app, it would be a completely different situation.

In the future—when there were more Fish-Catching Internet Cafes, his losses would be multiplied several times. Where else could he find such a good opportunity?

Pei Qian handed this crucial task over to Old Ma. In doing so, he had high expectations for him.

That gave Old Ma something to do so he would not turn to extreme overeating after Chen Lei left. It would be terrible if he gained weight.

After assigning the tasks for the following minutes, Pei Qian was finally at ease. The sparks that could have ignited over at the Fish-Catching Internet Cafe had been discovered and put out by Boss Pei in time before it turned into an inferno. Perfect!

…

June 10th…

Tengda Network Technology Co., Ltd…

Pei Qian paid some attention to the progress of the new versions for the games. The finalized update time was slightly more than a week away. They had to leave a few days for the checking process. Therefore, as of now, most functions had been completed.

The art resource had not been fully submitted. After all, Ruan Guangjian was in charge of all the concept art for Ghost General. This was something that took time to produce quality work and could not be rushed.

It would be fine as long as all the art resources were completed before the version update on the 18th of June.

After all, art resources were different from the different functions that needed to be programmed. There would not be bugs in it that could affect the gaming experience of players'.

Pei Qian ran through the various new functions in the new versions of the games. He also looked through the new items that would be sold.

Pei Qian knew that the new versions of these few games would definitely earn money. The amount earned was within his expected range. Therefore, he was not as concerned with the new purchasable items.

There was quite a lot of new content in the updates. However, most of the updates were regarding art resources.

The Lonely Desert Road had ten new maps and added a new infinity mode. Pei Qian felt that there was no way this new infinity mode would be profitable. Although a downloadable content priced at one yuan was very reasonable, Pei Qian did not think that there would be many people buying the downloadable content just to play the game again on a new map.

Ghost General had fifty new warriors. They were included in the new downloadable content that was priced at five yuan. In Pei Qian's opinion, there was a medium-to-high possibility of earning money. However, considering the huge amount of two hundred and fifty thousand yuan spent on creating these fifty warriors, they had to sell one hundred thousand downloadable packages to recover their principal.

Pei Qian estimated that they would most probably be able to recover their principal, but there wasn't a high possibility of them profiting too much from that.

Game Designer's downloadable content was priced at five yuan. The game should be floating near the fine line that separated profitable from non-profitable.

The biggest issue was with Ocean Stronghold.

Ocean Stronghold had included new story plots, new settings, new characters, and new weapons. Those updates were all for free. The only chargeable item was a new epic weapon that sold a limited quantity.

Each month, the game would only sell five hundred of the 888- yuan weapons. That meant that Pei Qian could at most earn two hundred thousand yuan each month after tax and deducting the commission for the platform.

The main source of revenue for Ocean Stronghold was the inflating number of users and the adjacent increase in the number of Red Kilins sold. There were about tens of thousands of new players each month. Even if only a small proportion of them bought the Red Kilin, the total profit was still significant.

Taking that into account, the money earned from the new epic weapon was pretty insignificant.

Looking at the ledger for this month, the two hundred thousand yuan revenue was too little to recover the R&D costs. However, the main reason why the system did not point that out as a violation was that the new weapon was a long-term revenue source.

Once the new content has been updated, the company could earn the same amount monthly for the following few months. At the same time, the R&D costs of the new version were only a one-time deduction. Considering the publicity effect the update has on the game as current players' interest in the game was maintained and past players returned to the game, this was not considered an intentional loss in the long term.

Therefore, while it was almost guaranteed the new epic weapon in Ocean Stronghold would send players injecting money into the game—no matter how much they wanted to spend, they had to snap up the weapon before other players do. Therefore, Tengda could never earn more than the estimated two hundred thousand yuan. Pei Qian was not worried at all.

After the release of the Red Kilin, the new epic weapon that Ocean Stronghold was releasing was the Barrett Doom.

Seeing how extravagant the sniper rifle, Pei Qian could not conceal the smile on his face.

He seemed to be able to sense Lu Mingliang's grievance just by looking at the gun.

Lu Mingliang had previously reported on how the 500 limited quantity of the new epic weapon in Ocean Stronghold incited protests from the players. He suggested changing the quota to 5000, but his suggestion was rejected by Pei Qian.

It was apparent that Lu Mingliang had spent a lot of effort on this gun and was aiming to use it to earn money for Pei Qian.

As a sniper rifle, Barrett Doom was superior to the Red Kilin in both its design and functionality. However, so what if it was superior?

Pei Qian did not care about that at all. He was bent on selling on 500 rifles. He would admit defeat if he sold more than that number!

There was no way he could profit from the limited weapons sold, wasn't it?

After checking all the updates for the new version, Pei Qian was very satisfied. He had everything at Tengda under control at the very least.

Over at Shang Yang Games, the reputation of the old games was revived. However, he had reduced most of the profitable content in the games. It was very hard for the games to recover their principal. Pei Qian estimated that there should not be any more problems cropping up before the settlement date this time around.

As long as he was on his guard and paid attention to the profit figures ever so often, there should not be any problems.

Even if Huang Sibo managed to profit from his documentary, Pei Qian had five Fish-Catching Internet Cafes which were steadily losing money. The losses should be more than enough to cover the possible profits.

Moreover, there were also daily expenses and employee benefits. If he had another sudden spending…

Pei Qian felt that he should have no problems with losing one to two hundred thousand yuan this time!

Of course, he could not lower his guard.

Previously, every time Pei Qian thought that he was going to lose money, his employees always managed to surprise him. The stimulation that they gave him was more than his heart could handle.

This time, Pei Qian acted as though he was treading on thin ice. Until the last second of the settlement, he must not let his guard down!