Chapter 154: The Counterattack Of The Black Sea Corporation
Meanwhile, in the conference room of Jie De Technology Corporation headquarters.
The company’s upper management was focused on the data graphs displayed on the screen.
Their faces grew sour when they saw the increasing number of returns. The situation at hand was far more serious than they had envisioned.
At present, the number of unsubscribes had surpassed four million. According to the collected statistics, all of the problems had basically arisen due to the incompatibility to run the game Battle Online.
They had not anticipated harm to themselves when they initially put restrictions on Battle Online.
However, when they recognized the problem and removed the shield, they found out that the game was not compatible with the gaming pods.
Since the gaming pods had just been released, the advantage that the Jie De Corporation originally possessed would be utterly lost if the Black Sea Corporation officially launched its gaming pods while the market was unstable.
Under such circumstances, the company’s technology department burned the midnight oil to uncover the problem. However, Battle Online was still incompatible.
Thus, they eventually realized that the problem was with Battle Online, rather than the gaming pods.
Immediately, they contacted Wu Guoyi, as he was the one who facilitated their collaboration with many large companies. Hence, only he would know the game manager’s contact information.
Upon receiving the Jie De Corporation’s request, Wu Guoyi dialed Lu Wu’s cell at once and informed him that the corporate manager wanted to invite him over to talk about the game compatibility issue.
However, Lu Wu refused without a second thought.
Although he had always been quite work-oriented, it was no surprise that he fought back, since it was the Jie De Corporation that first cracked down on Battle Online.
Furthermore, he was merely an insignificant person for now, so he did not want to have any appointments.
At this time, the players were insulting the gaming pods furiously in the Battle Online forum:
Invincible_Loneliness: “The gaming pod is a piece of garbage, claiming to be able to stay online all day? I’ve canceled my subscription. I really got so happy over nothing.”
Crayon_Shinchan: “Another avant-garde game product has just been released. All the users are praising it, let’s all buy that. (funny)”
Watermelon_Taro: “I, a poor dog, reluctantly bought one too after seeing everyone purchasing it. Now, it’s telling me it’s not compatible. I almost bashed it in! Why would I need such a useless thing?”
Xueli_The_Strongest: “It seems that the number of buyers in this forum is nearly four million. I’ve just checked the Jie De Corporation’s official website and almost all the post-sales bad reviews are basically saying that it isn’t compatible with Battle Online.”
Peppa_Boar replied to Xueli_The_Strongest: “I guess it’s only us who need things like gaming pods the most. Other games’ security limits are simply not as crazy scary as Battle Online, so basically, more than 80% of players in this forum ordered it, but the result is rather disappointing.”
Broke_Trash: “Believe it or not, I’ve already prepared several boxes of nutrient solutions for my few-month hibernation plans, but in the end… (flips table)!”
Crayon_Shinchan replied to Broke_Trash: “Hibernation is a good word (funny)!”
Assassin_Creed: “If a gaming pod that’s compatible with Battle Online exists, trust me, I would sleep for a year. (funny)”
Crayon_Shinchan replied to Assassin_Creed: “Only if you don’t die in a year. (funny)”
…
In such a grave situation, the Jie De Corporation repeatedly begged Wu Guoyi to help, but Lu Wu’s attitude was firm and he simply gave them the cold shoulder. In the end, the helpless Jie De Corporation came to Battle Online’s official web forum and sent a letter of apology to Lu Wu through their suggestion inbox.
Even with that, Lu Wu didn’t buy it.
In his head, Lu Wu was clear that if it was not for Battle Online’s high popularity among its users, it would probably be destroyed by the Jie De Technology Corporation’s firewall this time.
Hence, if the Jie De Technology Corporation’s initial intention was to bring him down, a letter of apology by itself would not solve the problem.
So, Lu Wu replied to him with a letter.
The contents were simple. If the Jie De Technology Corporation was willing to take out 5% of the profits from their gaming pods, the developers of Battle Online might be able to work overnight to fix the ongoing incompatibility bug.
Lu Wu’s conditions greatly angered the upper management of the Jie De Technology Corporation. All of them declared in the meeting that they were not going to compromise.
However, the crisis was not over yet.
The day after Lu Wu responded to the email, players in Battle Online were all taken back by surprise when an advertisement for the Black Sea Technology Corporation’s gaming pods appeared on the game’s login interface.
In addition to the gaming pod’s many uses, the advertisement also held a message that players cared about the most.
(This gaming pod is perfectly compatible with running Battle Online. By using this gaming pod to log into the game, the 12-hour safe gaming time limit would be lifted.)
The news inevitably sent players into a frenzy again.
After seeing an official assurance that it would work perfectly, the bulk of orders through in-game links hit the Black Sea Corporation like a wave.
Within a single day, the Black Sea Technology Corporation received more than four million orders.
At this point, even the Black Sea Corporation was quite flustered by the overwhelming response.
They thought they were about to lose the battle against the Jie De Corporation, but the tables have turned.
Moreover, the background data indicated that 99% of these orders were directed from the links in Battle Online.
The huge surprise caught the managers of the Black Sea Corporation off guard. After recovering from the shock, they instantly began to prepare their counterattack against the Jie De Technology Corporation. They took the initiative to contact Lu Wu, hoping to cooperate with him in terms of their gaming pods.
After all, the key to this counterattack was Battle Online, which had provided them with countless orders.
This time, they came up with three cooperation strategies for Lu Wu to choose from.
First, awarding a special title with the purchase of a gaming pod.
Second, awarding a certain amount of soul coins with the purchase of a gaming pod.
Third, rewarding additional event quests with the purchase of a gaming pod and upon completion, the players could gain hidden character classes.
At the same time, the Black Sea Corporation also promised to cover for the expenses for all the rewards sent out, in hopes to elevate the influence of their gaming pods.
However, Lu Wu rejected all of them.
Lu Wu was well aware of the Black Sea Corporation’s thinking, but it was his principle that outsiders cannot interfere with the game progress.
In the eyes of the Black Sea Corporation, these three conditions could be easily done by Lu Wu.
In reality, Lu Wu was unable to do that. Other than the special title which he could freely issue, generating soul currency and hidden character classes as bonus rewards were simply unrealistic.
If these were made into rewards, especially the hidden character class, Lu Wu was very sure that all players would purchase the gaming pod.
Even the bosses of many major guilds had not come across the opportunity to obtain a hidden character class, not to mention a gaming pod. As such, the rich players would gladly accept the price even if it was marketed at ten times or a hundred times the current price.
Besides, if it was put on sale, Lu Wu could have chosen to sell the hidden character classes directly instead of binding them to the gaming pods.
Although Lu Wu could easily distribute large batches of bonus special titles, this would also affect his game settings.
After all, it did not matter if the attributes of the titles increased the experience achieved from fighting monsters or the character attributes, it would still cost Lu Wu soul coins.
Even increasing the number of free Instance Dungeons or free transports alone would still pose a bad deal for Lu Wu.
Currently, Lu Wu did not need much real money, as long as he had enough to spend. What he needed and lacked most were soul coins.
In addition, this collaboration for promotion would provide Lu Wu with 5% of the profit as long as the Black Sea Corporation’s gaming pod was purchased through the built-in link in the game, according to the provisions of the contract.
That was a large sum in itself, which would be enough to cover his expenses.
The Black Sea Corporation was somewhat stunned regarding Lu Wu’s rejection, but they eventually relented.
On the other side, the Jie De Technology Corporation was thrown into pandemonium.
They had just discovered that they’d lost an enormous amount of orders to the Black Sea Corporation.
The main reason was solely because of the game Battle Online.