With this kind of distribution, the player base covered would be extremely extensive.

1,000 lucky winners would share 10 million yuan;

First-tier lucky players totaling 100,000 would each receive a 300 yuan coupon, totaling 30 million yuan in coupons;

Second-tier lucky players totaling 1 million would each receive a 100 yuan coupon, totaling 100 million yuan in coupons;

Third-tier lucky players totaling 10 million would each receive a 25 yuan coupon, totaling 250 million yuan in coupons.

The coupons distributed would total nearly 400 million yuan, plus an additional 10 million yuan in cash.

10 million players wouldn’t necessarily cover the entire player base, because breaking 10 million daily active users meant nearly 30 million monthly active users, and there were even more registered players who hadn’t played in the past month.

Those who hadn’t been playing would definitely come to participate once they heard about this event.

So in the end, the proportion of players who would benefit might be one-fifth or even lower.

This ratio was still acceptable.

These coupons wouldn’t directly spend money earned by GOG, after all, all the skins in the game were virtual products, and once developed, there were no subsequent costs.

If they were distributing physical products this way, the system would absolutely not approve it, as it could lead to bankruptcy in no time.

Even without giving these skins away, players might not necessarily buy them, so this figure couldn’t be used to directly measure the actual money Tenda was spending.

But regardless, this event would definitely greatly diminish players’ enthusiasm for purchasing skins. Since they were being given away for free, and players could get the skins they wanted without paying, who would still spend money to buy them?

GOG’s revenue for this phase would definitely plummet, and might even continue to do so until next month.

For Pei Qian, this was obviously exactly what he wanted.

Before the end of this cycle, the less money earned, the better!

The less money earned, the easier it would be to show a loss during settlement.

Pei Qian checked everything one last time and felt the plan was good.

Since the system had approved it and the money had been distributed, if this cycle’s settlement showed a loss, then there would be no problem.

After finalizing the plan, Pei Qian handed it over to Min Jingchao, telling him to quickly notify the operators of all other global servers, to release announcements early to build anticipation, and to let players prepare by adding friends in advance. The event had to be completed before the end of this month!

…

…

July 25th, Wednesday.

Magic City.

Zhao Xuming waited expectantly at the airport.

Upon seeing Eric’s familiar figure, Zhao Xuming immediately went forward to greet him.

“Welcome back!”

When he heard that Eric would be returning to Magic City, Zhao Xuming was overjoyed.

Thankfully, IOI’s domestic server hadn’t changed its person in charge!

Although there had been some minor friction when he first started working with Eric, after such a long period of adjustment, Zhao Xuming was now very satisfied with Eric as his direct superior.

After all, Eric was willing to take the blame and never pushed it onto his subordinates!

This also meant that Zhao Xuming’s position was secure. Any blame would all be Eric’s, and as for the credit, well, he could take some of that for himself. How comfortable!

During Eric’s absence, Zhao Xuming had been quite worried. What if the Dayark Group replaced the person in charge?

Now it seemed that his worry could finally be put to rest.

Nothing had changed!

However, Eric simply said, “Mr. Zhao, please get in the car.”

Eric had obviously flown first class, sleeping comfortably during the journey. His suit was neat, and he looked refreshed.

But there was no happy expression on his face.

Before Zhao Xuming could ask, Eric sighed slightly: “Mr. Zhao, although I’ve returned to continue as the head of Greater China, compared to before… things will likely be completely different.”

Zhao Xuming was startled: “What do you mean?”

Eric took out his phone from his pocket: “These are the activities IOI will be conducting globally over the next month.”

“The update package and activities are already prepared, and can go live with just an update.”

Zhao Xuming took the phone somewhat bewildered.

The domestic server didn’t have much say in IOI’s specific design and operational activities. When Eric was here before, he could at least speak with Finger Company about a few things, but during Eric’s absence, Zhao Xuming had effectively lost all contact with Finger Company’s upper management.

Apart from some routine work handovers, there had been no communication, and he knew nothing about the upcoming update content.

The file on the phone outlined IOI’s global operational activities for the next phase.

New heroes, earning tokens through grinding, with tokens also given as bonuses when spending money;

A new series of skins for several popular, visually appealing heroes, with skin prices 30% higher than the original premium skins, and a 10% discount for bundle purchases;

Added extras like borders, avatars, trail effects, recall effects, etc., which couldn’t be purchased directly but required participation in events, though spending money could help acquire them faster;

A lottery event with random skin draws at a much lower price than retail, but the lottery also included fragments, tokens, emotes, and other rewards, with additional rewards for reaching certain drawing thresholds.

The changes were basically along these lines.

Zhao Xuming stared in astonishment: “This…”

Although the content of the activities was rather complex, and not exclusively focused on monetization, a quick glance made it clear that this event was primarily aimed at making money.

New heroes were no longer directly unlockable but required grinding for tokens, with money speeding up acquisition; the prices of new skins were also higher than before.

Although the new skins did appear to have cooler effects, the price increase was clearly something that warranted deeper analysis.

On the surface, a 30% increase for new skins wasn’t a huge markup, since IOI had been competing with GOG and had already been forced to adjust skin prices to GOG’s level.

Moreover, the new heroes had rich mechanics, so requiring players to complete events to unlock them, and the new skins being more impressive than the original premium skins and thus costing more—these all seemed reasonable.

But this was a signal, a testing of the waters.

Players might complain at first, but as long as most players gradually accepted these settings, future new skins could continuously add more effects, be created with greater detail, and sell at higher prices.

It would allow the previously reduced skin prices to gradually return to what Dayark Group considered a “reasonable level.”

Dayark Group’s goal was clearly to gradually increase profits and change the pricing strategy that players had become accustomed to.

Digging deeper, it meant that Dayark Group no longer wanted to engage in a price war with Tenda.

In the future, GOG could burn money or reduce prices however they wanted, they could run whatever events they liked, while Dayark would focus on making their own money—they weren’t going to compete anymore!

Of course, their approach was still relatively restrained. They didn’t immediately hike skin prices dramatically or introduce many heavy pay-to-win activities; they were taking it step by step, which would elicit smaller reactions from players.

This showed that Dayark Group still valued IOI as a money tree and wasn’t looking to uproot it all at once, but rather trying to pluck a few golden leaves first.

Zhao Xuming now understood what Eric meant.

Although Eric had returned to continue as the head of IOI’s Greater China region, he clearly no longer had as much autonomy as before. In the future, he would just be a tool unconditionally facilitating Dayark Group’s money-making, only able to implement these cash-grab activities, and actively fighting against Tenda was absolutely impossible.

He wouldn’t have those resources.

Eric’s performance as the Greater China regional head had been difficult for Dayark Group and Finger Company to be satisfied with, and by all rights, he should have been replaced.

But Eric was Dayark Group’s person after all, and Dayark Group needed to more firmly grasp IOI in their own hands, so they needed to bypass Finger Company’s upper management for some “micro-operations” commands. Having Eric continue as the person in charge aligned with Dayark Group’s interests.

Zhao Xuming sighed and said, “After this new version update, we’ll probably be cursed to death by the players.”

“Ah, it’s all Tenda’s fault!”

Originally, IOI’s prospects should have been bright.

Wasn’t it normal and reasonable for a skin to sell for 30 yuan, 50 yuan, or even over 100 yuan?

Wasn’t it normal and reasonable that heroes needed to be purchased?

Under the original charging standards, IOI should have grown into a behemoth with annual revenues exceeding one billion dollars, becoming the ruler of MOBA games.

However, they never expected GOG to emerge in the middle of it all.

GOG had forcefully, with a stance that would either see both sides thrive or perish together, reduced skin prices to dirt cheap levels.

Finger Company had no choice; they were losing too much market share and had to follow suit with price reductions.

Once prices had been lowered, raising them again became difficult.

Originally, Eric and Zhao Xuming should have been riding the wave of IOI’s success, making money without effort. How could they have ended up in such a predicament?

Eric showed no particular expression: “We’ll just follow orders.”

Things already decided by Dayark Group’s upper management couldn’t be changed.

So, no matter how much they complained, it wouldn’t have any effect on IOI’s future direction.

Zhao Xuming nodded slightly; he also understood this principle well.

“But looking on the bright side, given IOI’s massive scale, these complaints won’t be enough to cause serious damage.”

“And it will definitely help significantly increase revenue. When revenue goes up, bonuses will certainly be more generous.”

“Besides, Tenda has already run two rounds of activities over the past two months, first the 515 Gaming Festival, then the summer promotion. Such intensive activities certainly can’t continue indefinitely; at least for the next two months, they probably won’t have any major moves.”

“Releasing new heroes and skins at this juncture should be relatively safe.”

Zhao Xuming had one virtue: he was quite optimistic with a strong capacity to adapt.

Combined with his characteristic of not holding grudges, he could thrive in large corporations like the Long Yu Group.

Finger Company had changed its person in charge for the Greater China region several times, and its strategy had changed several times as well, yet the person in charge at Long Yu Group had always been him, which showed that Zhao Xuming was indeed quite capable.

Eric was silent for a moment, then said: “Based on my understanding of Mr. Pei…”

“I’m afraid this won’t be so simple.”