Although anyone could see that IOI was using rewards from other events to supplement the “Gods’ Fantasy” event rewards, from the players’ perspective, why not claim double if they could?

So, some players came up with this clever maneuver:

First, register an account on GOG, which meant giving up the “IOI to GOG” rewards—but that was fine, since those rewards were pretty garbage anyway.

Then link the IOI main account in GOG, which would cause the system to classify them as “IOI veteran players who had migrated to GOG,” because the system wouldn’t cross-reference account creation times or other data to comprehensively determine and analyze the player’s actual identity.

After all, under pressure from Dayark Group and Long Yu Group, this event had been prepared in a very short time, with no opportunity to implement such complex functionality.

This way, IOI veteran players could get all the rewards in the IOI game—double the pleasure!

The only issue was that new GOG players had to go through the tutorial and several matches, leveling up somewhat, before they could participate in various fancy activities.

This wasn’t designed specifically for the “Gods’ Fantasy” event but was GOG’s original underlying design that applied equally to all events.

In fact, most games had such regulations, mainly to protect the gaming experience of new players, preventing them from encountering too many things at once during the beginner phase and becoming confused.

So, for those who already had GOG accounts, it was straightforward—just link accounts directly. But IOI players without GOG accounts had to register new accounts and play for a while before they could obtain these rewards.

Pei Qian was shocked.

He was even a bit dizzy from the players’ clever tactics!

Now Pei Qian finally understood why, despite the ongoing diversion from the event, GOG’s online data showed fluctuations.

Because some IOI players had discovered this loophole but didn’t have GOG accounts, so they were creating new accounts on GOG!

“Damn it! What backstabbing teammates!”

“How can players find loopholes in an event like this?”

Pei Qian was utterly speechless. His current feeling was like two swordsmen facing off—he had practically placed his neck directly on his opponent’s blade, but the opponent, suspecting a trap, had dodged!

It was completely absurd!

After silently freaking out for a while, Pei Qian still picked up his coffee, took a sip, and tried to calm himself down a bit.

“Let’s wait and see—things might not be completely hopeless.”

“After all, these IOI players coming to play GOG are ultimately doing it for the rewards on the IOI side.”

“Once they complete the beginner content and successfully link accounts to get the rewards, they should go back and won’t stay too long.”

“Hopefully Long Yu Group can do something about this…”

Pei Qian didn’t have any better ideas at the moment. After all, Tengda was already on holiday, and besides, this loophole had nothing to do with Tengda—it was created by Dayark Group and Long Yu Group themselves.

He could only hope they would discover this loophole quickly and fix it as soon as possible!

……

Meanwhile, Zhao Xuming had just hurriedly arrived at Long Yu Group and entered the meeting room.

Eric was already there, and the other persons responsible for the “Gods’ Fantasy” event had also gradually arrived.

Normally, during statutory holidays, problems were usually communicated and resolved through conference calls.

But this issue was clearly not something that could be clarified in a few words over the phone, so they had called an emergency meeting, summoning all relevant managers.

Before coming to the meeting, everyone basically had a grasp of the current situation.

In short, it was extremely unfavorable!

It was already difficult to determine which player first discovered this maneuver, but now a large number of IOI players knew about it and were taking action.

This resulted in many IOI players flowing toward GOG for the rewards.

And from the current situation, this was just the beginning—subsequent developments could be even more serious.

After all, for these IOI players, why not register an account on GOG to claim new rewards?

Although IOI officials had already provided rewards through other activities, one could never have too many rewards. Even if it was just a few more chances at a lucky draw, that was still very tempting for players!

Moreover, this wasn’t just happening on the Chinese server—similar situations had emerged on servers around the world.

Although the data didn’t yet indicate extremely serious consequences, both Dayark Group and Long Yu Group had been highly vigilant about this event from the beginning and didn’t dare to be the slightest bit negligent.

They feared that Mr. Pei was secretly hiding an ace up his sleeve, and now it seemed they were right to be suspicious!

So this meeting was to urgently discuss countermeasures.

Obviously, Dayark Group headquarters and Finger Games headquarters were likely also discussing or about to discuss the situation.

Zhao Xuming looked at Eric, indignantly saying: “Your intuition was correct—Mr. Pei is cunning and treacherous, hiding dirty tricks in places like this. Headquarters thought too simply and fell into his trap!”

“Mr. Pei’s suggestion, which seemed casually thrown out under questioning, was clearly a facade, carefully disguised!”

By speaking first and directing blame toward Mr. Pei, he could avoid responsibility himself.

After all, if problems arose, it must be because Mr. Pei was cunning and treacherous, definitely not because he himself was stupid.

Zhao Xuming had rich experience in deflecting blame, and with his opening remarks, he nonchalantly absolved himself of any responsibility.

Eric nodded, then slightly shook his head: “The direct cause is indeed Mr. Pei’s suggestion.”

“But Mr. Pei’s point actually made good sense. If we hadn’t adopted his suggestion, there would have been other problems.”

“One can only say, truth and falsehood are intermixed, making it difficult to distinguish!”

Thinking back, Dayark Group headquarters had proposed many excessive demands, which Mr. Pei seemingly accepted without hesitation.

Eric, fearing he might change his mind, asked him to review everything again.

As a result, Mr. Pei seemingly casually made a small suggestion: considering that most GOG players had previously registered IOI accounts, it seemed inappropriate for only new accounts to enjoy event benefits—the scope should be expanded to all accounts.

This suggestion directly led to IOI players exploiting the loophole by registering GOG accounts to farm rewards!

Moreover, this activity very precisely targeted those IOI diehards—players who had truly never played GOG before.

Because players who had already played GOG had accounts, and if they wanted to register new accounts, they would need to bind new phone numbers, which was quite troublesome.

But for players who had never played GOG, registration was extremely convenient.

As a result, these most dedicated IOI players also tried registering GOG accounts and playing the game—it was like a tiny crack appearing in a solid dam.

The effect seemed insignificant, but the impact was far-reaching and extremely targeted!

On the other hand, if they hadn’t accepted this suggestion, there would have been serious consequences as well.

Many GOG players had previously played IOI and registered IOI accounts. If they hadn’t adopted Mr. Pei’s suggestion, requiring new accounts to get rewards, they could indeed have prevented this maneuver by IOI players. However, the problem was that doing so would have created enormous difficulties for the traffic diversion activity!

GOG players originally wanting to participate in the event would discover their old IOI accounts couldn’t be used and would need to register new accounts, requiring new phone numbers…

Many players would undoubtedly give up on the rewards in frustration, unwilling to go through the trouble.

This way, the effect of the activity would have been greatly diminished.

Problems would arise either way!

Of course, if they had anticipated these issues on both sides, there would have been solutions—such as creating a specific program to evaluate the status of each account based on gameplay hours, recent login times, and other data, and taking different measures for different accounts.

But that would have required too much work to launch before the holiday.

Moreover, to meet the deadline, everyone’s thinking had been a bit unclear, and they hadn’t considered the issue so deeply or seriously.

So this awkward situation had emerged!

Eric’s attitude was very calm—he wasn’t furious.

On one hand, this wasn’t his responsibility—he was now just a mouthpiece, a tool, with no reason to be angry. On the other hand, he had long had an ominous feeling and was mentally prepared.

“Let’s think about how to solve this problem,” Eric said.

The meeting room fell silent for a moment, then everyone began sharing countermeasures.

Someone proposed: “Quickly develop software to check accounts and plug this loophole?”

But this suggestion immediately drew opposition.

“That definitely won’t work! First, it would certainly affect players trying to profit from this rule, causing their resentment. Second, the development timeline doesn’t allow it—by the time development and testing are complete, more than half the event would be over.”

Although this was indeed a loophole, for IOI players, it was a beneficial loophole they could exploit. Moreover, the official announcement never stated that registering new accounts on GOG was prohibited.

At most, they were exploiting a technicality, fundamentally different from cheating or maliciously exploiting bugs.

Even if they could mitigate the impact to some extent through apologies and compensation, they would inevitably face criticism. Moreover, they couldn’t currently make an accurate timeline estimate—by the time the update was released, the event might already be ending.

Someone else said: “What if… we ask Tengda to cooperate with some screening…”

Eric immediately shook his head: “Impossible. First, the contract doesn’t stipulate these things. Second, Tengda never works overtime—even when they were so desperate they almost sold their building, they didn’t make an exception.”

The meeting room temporarily fell silent, clearly showing some very sour emotions upon hearing “Tengda never works overtime.”

Zhao Xuming thought for a moment and said: “This is truly difficult to handle because we definitely can’t make any adjustments to the reward content—partly due to the contract, and partly because we’d be criticized by players.”

“The only option is to screen and segment players, but that brings us back to the initial problem—development time is insufficient, and we don’t have enough time.”

Eric nodded somewhat helplessly.

That was exactly it—they were at an impasse!

It seemed every path had been perfectly blocked by Mr. Pei.

The unprecedented eight-day holiday was timing;

The contractual constraints represented position;

The players’ mindset naturally represented unity.

They had thought the contest of inner strength was ten parts against three, with an uncertain outcome.

But now, IOI players were also going to play GOG. GOG was no longer at three parts strength but had increased to five parts, seven parts, or even more!

It couldn’t be contained!

After pondering for a long time, Eric finally seemed to find peace: “Let’s leave it at that, everyone go back home and continue resting.”

Zhao Xuming was stunned.

What? Just pretend nothing happened?

That didn’t seem right!

Eric continued: “This isn’t something we can solve. I will report the relevant situation, and I believe the headquarters’ higher-ups will definitely come up with an appropriate solution.”

Eric had his own perspective: I’m just a mouthpiece now—what do you expect a mouthpiece to do?

Have you ever seen a mouthpiece jump out and save the world?

And Eric’s response wasn’t purely an attitude issue—in the current situation, he truly lacked the ability to solve this problem.

The situation was what it was, stuck at this point—what could be done?

They could only let nature take its course.