July 31st, Tuesday.
It was finally time for settlement again.
This weekend, the outside world was in complete chaos.
GOG’s “Lucky Koi Activity” was successfully completed, with lucky koi players drawn from all over the world, and various amounts of coupons distributed to nearly ten million players.
As for Pei Qian…
Of course, he wasn’t drawn as a Lucky Koi.
Although he did receive a 100 yuan coupon as a tier-two player, but… these coupons were completely useless to Pei Qian!
His account already had all the skins, because all in-game expenses could be reimbursed under the banner of “experiencing the game.”
What Pei Qian cared more about was the situation with IOI.
Logically speaking, if they hadn’t collided with GOG’s Lucky Koi activity, IOI’s new version wouldn’t have been criticized so harshly.
After all, this new version activity wasn’t all about spending money; they had also released some benefits, which was better than having no activity at all.
Moreover, the new hero was well-made, and the new skins were quite cool. Discussion about this in-game content could, to some extent, cover up players’ criticism.
But the problem was that it coincided with GOG’s Lucky Koi activity, which was very awkward!
An activity that was originally passable suddenly seemed particularly exploitative.
The more critical issue was that in the players’ eyes, this wasn’t the first time IOI had acted unhuman.
It had happened three consecutive times!
During the 515 Gaming Festival, GOG gave things away for free, while IOI held a promotion and was exposed for the car giveaway scam;
During the Summer Promotion, GOG offered 50-70% discounts first, while IOI remained indifferent, giving an insignificant 40% discount;
After these two incidents, many players were already filled with anger.
And this time it was even worse—GOG directly gave away 10 million yuan plus hundreds of millions in coupons to celebrate breaking 10 million daily active users, how incredibly generous.
Meanwhile, IOI’s new skins not only weren’t discounted, but their prices had increased!
How could anyone stand this?
As the saying goes, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but there shouldn’t be a third or fourth time.
Three activities in three months, and each time they were pummeled by GOG. This really made people seriously question whether Finger Company was incompetent or had the wrong attitude.
Judging from the monetization content in this new version, it was most likely the latter.
So, the criticism online was overwhelming, almost drowning Finger Company!
Finger Company was quite wronged—this wasn’t their responsibility at all; it was all decided by Dayark Group.
But they couldn’t deflect blame, so they could only silently endure the criticism.
The miserable state of being cursed by players to the point of not daring to make a sound, only able to be turtles with their heads pulled in, was truly heartbreaking. Even Pei Qian couldn’t bear to watch.
But he had no choice; to rush spending money to complete the settlement, his good brother had to suffer a bit.
Hopefully, the situation next month would be more optimistic, with less pressure to make losses, so he could ease up on his good brother and let IOI catch a breath!
In front of Pei Qian, the system’s light screen automatically appeared.
[Wealth Conversion System 2.0]
[Host: Pei Qian]
[Surplus conversion ratio 1000:1, Loss conversion ratio 10:1]
[About to settle…]
[About to re-estimate fixed asset value…]
[System funds: 6.72 million + 32.03 million (↓11.48 million)]
[Fixed assets: 320.28 million]
[Details:]
[Mingyun Manor residential villa (12.08 million)]
[City Dawn Building 1, 12 units (43.89 million)]
[Shundong Garden commercial residential building, 77 units (25.8 million)]
[Binhu District Buildings 8 and 9, 32 units (29.73 million)]
[Jindi Huating District Building 5, 30 units (77.83 million)]
[Huaxin Mountain Language District Building 3, 24 units (26.48 million)]
[Old industrial district farmers’ market (11.7 million)]
[Old industrial district street shops, 62 units (92.77 million)]
Seeing this long string of numbers, Pei Qian fell into prolonged silence.
“What the hell is this?!”
“News about the subway coming out right before settlement, is this something a human would do?”
Pei Qian nearly coughed up blood on the spot from anger.
According to the previous fixed asset update values, the total should be around 270 million, which would mean a loss value of around 16.28 million, meaning Pei Qian could convert 1.6 million in personal assets.
However, once the news about the second phase of the subway project came out, disaster struck.
The street shops in the old industrial district all skyrocketed, rising from around 60 million to more than 90 million in a short time. The farmers’ market, after being transformed into a food court, saw its value surge from over 7 million to nearly 12 million.
Other properties around the subway also increased in price; for example, the villa in Mingyun Manor rose by more than 2 million.
It was simply taking off!
Originally, he could have converted 1.6 million, but now only about 1.15 million remained.
In other words, the increase in these fixed assets directly ate up about 450,000 of Pei Qian’s personal assets…
The key was that the appreciation of these fixed assets didn’t benefit Pei Qian at all.
Because he bought these fixed assets for business operations, not to hoard and speculate, so whether they appreciated or not didn’t affect normal production and business activities, nor would it help Pei Qian create losses.
All he could say was, maybe this was fate!
The rules given by the system were such that fixed assets would be discounted and included in the system fund quota, providing Pei Qian with a good method for quick spending. But this good method also had a side effect—it would occupy part of the quota, causing the converted money to be less.
Indeed, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Just thinking about the vanished 450,000 made Pei Qian feel a sharp pain.
“I will absolutely never carelessly buy fixed assets again!”
“Buying fixed assets is completely a scam. Although in the short term it seems like spending money, but when they appreciate later, it only gets more and more troublesome, seriously affecting my settlement.”
“Fixed assets, definitely touch less in the future! If I carelessly buy buildings again, I’m a dog!”
“…”
“But looking on the bright side, there’s still over a million, so it wasn’t all for nothing.”
“Looking at Meng Chang makes me feel a sense of happiness in life.”
Thinking about how Meng Chang worked for a month and could only get a few thousand yuan, while he worked for half a year and could get over a million, Pei Qian felt that the system was treating him quite well. What more could he ask for?
Indeed, happiness is ultimately derived from comparison.
The system light screen continued to scroll.
[Settling…]
[Performing wealth conversion…]
[System funds: 6.72 million + 32.03 million (↓11.48 million)]
[Fixed assets: 320.28 million]
[Personal assets: 2.725 million (↑1.15 million×110%)]
[For each cycle where wealth conversion value reaches 800,000 or above, you will receive a *significantly impactful* mysterious reward (currently available)]
[Current uncompleted project: Jingji Hotel roller coaster project, must be officially open to the public in the next cycle.]
Seeing the system funds converted into personal assets, Pei Qian felt much more at ease.
This cycle, he had spent quite a lot out of his own pocket.
He spent nearly 1.5 million buying houses, paid 100,000 out of pocket to exchange for a 10 million spending quota, and spent money to buy some paid commenters to set a correct example for Meng Chang.
Plus various miscellaneous expenses, it was really painful.
But thankfully, now it was proven that it was all worth it!
He clicked on this cycle’s mysterious reward.
[Mysterious Reward: To meet the company’s development needs, infrastructure project related rules are now activated.]
[Infrastructure projects: Specifically refers to non-profit basic facilities needed for the company’s daily operation and office work, such as office buildings.]
[Unfinished infrastructure projects do not affect cycle settlement, but subsequent additional investments must not exceed 30% of the originally planned funds. If exceeded, the current settlement cycle will be delayed based on the excess ratio.]
[Infrastructure projects will be counted into system funds at a ratio of 100:1.]
“Oh?”
Pei Qian’s eyes lit up.
This new reward was awesome!
Infrastructure projects don’t affect cycle settlement, don’t need to engage in commercial activities, won’t make a profit, and are counted into system funds at a ratio of 100:1—this was absolutely the best choice for rushing to spend money!
“What did I just say?”
“Uh… never carelessly buy fixed assets again?”
“Ahem, this doesn’t count as a fixed asset. Look, the system has categorized it as an infrastructure project, it’s not the same thing.”
Pei Qian studied the detailed rules a bit and found that although the restrictions seemed quite broad on the surface, there were still some limitations.
For example, if Pei Qian spent 300 million to build a large building, this definitely wasn’t something that could be completed in one or two cycles. Without this rule before, wanting to build a building would be troublesome and might block settlement.
But now, after throwing in the 300 million, he could slowly wait for the building to be completed without affecting settlement.
And because it’s counted into system funds at a ratio of 100:1, a 300 million building would only be converted to 3 million, which wouldn’t put too much pressure on settlement.
Of course, when the fixed asset rules were just updated, Pei Qian thought the same way.
At that time, he thought that with a 10:1 ratio conversion to system funds, a 10 million building only counting as 1 million, wouldn’t that mean unlimited buying?
Now he realized that it wasn’t unlimited buying…
But there shouldn’t be any problems in the short term.
After an infrastructure project is determined, although there’s no time limit, money can’t be invested unlimitedly; at most, up to 130% of the original budget can be invested. If exceeded, there would be a delay.
The subsequent 30% was probably for handling some unexpected situations. For a 1 billion building, an additional 300 million investment could be added later, but it couldn’t be increased unlimitedly.
Moreover, to spend a large amount on infrastructure, one must have that much money first. If system funds aren’t enough, no major projects can be done—this is also a limitation.
This point wasn’t a problem for Pei Qian, because he was currently worrying about how to spend money in the next cycle!
The box office for “Mission and Choice,” the subsequent sales of Doubt VR, and various miscellaneous income had created unprecedented pressure for losses in the next cycle.
But with this new rule, the difficulty of losing money was greatly reduced!
“Not bad, not bad. This rule appeared quite timely. System, you’ve finally done something decent.”
Although Pei Qian was always very suspicious of whether there were new tricks behind each system rule update, this time it was after all a major benefit for spending money. Even if there were some tricks, he had to accept it.
The system light screen continued to scroll, loading the information for the next cycle while also listing all the rewards obtained so far for reference.