On the afternoon of the 23rd, Pei Qian had already returned to Jingzhou.

Since it was still early before the end of the workday, and he had flown business class, he wasn’t particularly tired. So he decided to stop by his office to check on the work progress of various departments during this period.

Shortly after arriving at his office, someone knocked on the door.

Pei Qian looked up and saw Assistant Xin.

“Hmm? Is there something?” Pei Qian asked.

As Tenda Group continued to grow in scale, Assistant Xin’s role in the company had actually been constantly evolving.

In the beginning, when Tenda was just a small company, Pei Qian would delegate many trivial daily operational matters directly to Assistant Xin, so during that phase, her work was indeed primarily that of an assistant.

But as Tenda grew larger, and the Human Resources Department’s recruitment exams got on track, professional teams with large personnel had already been formed in areas such as human resources, administration, and finance. Naturally, Assistant Xin no longer needed to concern herself with these trivial matters.

As a result, her work had naturally transformed into coordination and communication between various departments, as well as higher-level resource allocation issues. In reality, she was doing the work of a vice president, with the benefits and treatment of a vice president.

However, since Pei Qian had become so accustomed to working with her, her nominal position was still that of an assistant. Of course, everyone throughout Tenda knew that she was definitely much more than just an assistant.

Generally speaking, since everyone defaulted to the assumption that Mr. Pei had a thorough understanding of everything happening throughout Tenda Group, they would only report relatively important matters.

This time, Assistant Xin’s visit probably also involved some critical issues that required Pei Qian’s decision.

Assistant Xin took out a document and handed it over: “Mr. Pei, this is the activity plan for this year’s 1024 Digital Festival.”

“The overall activity still continues our consistent style from before, with slightly upgraded benefits.”

“However, GOG’s activities this year are quite different from the past. I thought you should confirm them.”

Pei Qian reached out to take the plan: “Oh?”

The 1024 Digital Festival was one of Tenda’s traditional recurring events held every year.

But after all, promotional activities tend to have limited variety, and it’s difficult to come up with something new year after year.

For most people, tangible discounts were far more important than flashy activities. Making activities too complicated could actually be counterproductive.

Ever since the first year’s positive response, Pei Qian had treated this as a regular way to spend money, maximizing benefits as much as possible, making each year better than the last.

Since it had become a relatively stable activity, Pei Qian hadn’t paid much attention to it for some time.

The 1024 Digital Festival involved many of Tenda’s departments. Following the normal procedure, these departments would first formulate their own activity plans, and then submit them to Assistant Xin for consolidation.

Now, Assistant Xin had noticed that GOG’s activities differed significantly from last year’s, so she came to seek instructions.

Pei Qian quickly flipped through the plan and soon found GOG’s section.

The entire plan contained a lot of text, which gave Pei Qian a slight headache.

After all, the 1024 Digital Festival was held every year, and activities always needed to be more varied than the previous year, so gradually the content of the activities had become increasingly rich.

Although Pei Qian had repeatedly instructed that activities shouldn’t be too complicated, that players shouldn’t waste too much energy figuring out the most cost-effective approach, and that price discrimination tactics shouldn’t be used, the accumulation of activities inevitably led to more content.

GOG’s activities were noticeably longer and more complicated than those of other departments.

“What is this Eric doing?”

“Writing activities so complicated—doesn’t it strain your eyes to look at them? I’ve told the managers many times that activities should be written more simply. Now there are three pages of content, how exhausting to read through.”

“Oh, you’re new and don’t know the rules. Never mind then.”

Pei Qian felt a bit of a headache looking at the dense text and clauses.

He even considered sending it back and asking Eric to rewrite it, simplifying all the activity terms.

But on second thought, he abandoned this idea.

Why had he poached Eric in the first place?

Wasn’t it precisely because of his abilities in this area?

If he poached someone but didn’t allow them to continue their working style, instead subconsciously trying to reform them with Tenda’s approach, what was the point of poaching them at all?

If Eric truly “transformed” like everyone else, wouldn’t that be a complete loss?

So after some thought, Pei Qian realized that Eric standing out from other managers was actually a good thing.

It represented that Eric was still continuing with his previous failing traditions, without being assimilated by Tenda. That made poaching him meaningful.

With this in mind, Pei Qian didn’t say anything and forced himself to keep reading.

“Hmm? The activity skin prices have doubled?”

Among the numerous clauses, numbers were obviously the most eye-catching, so Pei Qian immediately noticed the change in skin prices.

GOG’s skin pricing had always been consistent: Brave skins were given for free after heroes reached maximum proficiency, Epic skins cost 18 yuan, Legendary skins cost 45 yuan, and there were also some limited skins available through various methods.

Later, Min Jingchao had created a Creative Community. Any hero designs officially adopted from player submissions would have their first skin priced at 10% of the original cost, the second at 50%, and the third at 80%, effective for a limited time of one month from the skin’s release date.

Since then, GOG’s skins had fully entered an era of bargain prices.

And during promotions, these skins were frequently discounted, with 50% off being commonplace, sometimes even going as low as 30% off. Many players felt that skins were so cheap that not buying them would be a crime.

Under this pricing strategy, Tenda’s main profits actually came from Legendary and Limited skins for certain heroes.

Brave skins were all given away for free, unable to recover their production costs, and were purely for publicity. But under Pei Qian’s requirements, they still made plenty of Brave skins, not just releasing one or two to make do because they weren’t profitable.

Epic skins didn’t earn much money either, and after subsidizing the costs of Brave skins, they were still operating at a loss.

Profits were mainly concentrated on the more flashy Legendary skins for popular heroes, as well as Limited skins during events.

Although Tenda held frequent activities with substantial discounts, this hadn’t affected players’ enthusiasm for first-release purchases.

This was because the intervals between these activities were quite clear. For instance, the 1024 Digital Festival was a traditional recurring event, and players knew that activities would definitely be held on this day, so they would wait until then to buy skins.

Tenda’s policy was that if a skin went on discount shortly after purchase, they would refund the price difference. Of course, if a longer time had passed, they wouldn’t refund.

So for players, on one hand, they could plan their purchases around various activity dates; on the other hand, buying early meant enjoying the skin earlier. Even if they paid more, either they could get a refund of the difference, or they simply benefited from early usage.

Especially for limited event skins, since they were released during specific activity periods and wouldn’t have new activities or discounts in the short term, and by the next activity, the time for price difference refunds had usually passed, they were basically sold at the full price of 45 yuan, generating decent profits.

Simply put, these skins were specifically prepared for players who weren’t particularly concerned about price but very much wanted to get new skins immediately.

They didn’t care about discounts; they only cared about getting the latest skins as soon as possible, because they found that satisfying.

The theme skins for this 1024 Digital Festival had already been completed when Min Jingchao was still around, but hadn’t been announced yet, waiting for the festival.

The skin theme was “Light and Darkness,” with one side featuring righteous angel themes, and the other featuring dark, evil demon themes.

The theme itself had high creative potential, and paired with specific heroes, it was easy to create impressive results, so there was certainly no issue with the quality of the skins.

The problem was with the price.

Pei Qian discovered that the skins had actually increased in price, from the original maximum of 45 yuan to 68 yuan!

Moreover, when Tenda released new skins, there was usually a first-week discount. Though not very high, it was typically around 20% off, meaning 36 yuan.

Calculating this way, the skin prices for this year’s 1024 Digital Festival had nearly doubled!

Pei Qian’s first reaction was displeasure.

What nonsense was this?

All profits from skin sales would be pure profit, and with this price increase, how much more money would he make!

The scale of this activity was already large, and GOG’s activities were synchronized globally. With all this money coming in, how could he eat or sleep in peace…

Pei Qian was about to tell Assistant Xin to reject the plan and have Eric redo it, but then he thought again and realized the earlier issue.

When it came to failure, Eric and Zhao Xuming were the golden duo of professionals.

He should respect the professional opinions of these experts!

It would be easy to cut the price back now, but if he did so, GOG’s situation wouldn’t change at all, and what would be the point of poaching Eric and Zhao Xuming?

Perhaps such a price cut would even affect Eric’s original work approach, causing him to completely shift toward Tenda’s way of working…

No, no, he couldn’t do that.

Pei Qian felt he needed to support and encourage Eric’s ideas.

Though there would be some pressure to earn money in the short term, perhaps slowly Eric might actually ruin GOG?

Of course, completely ruining it was too optimistic and unlikely, but getting a bit of criticism and making room for ioi’s survival, wouldn’t that be nice?

With this in mind, Pei Qian decided to indulge Eric this time.

I’ll reluctantly earn this money, hoping you won’t disappoint me in the future!

“There’s no major problem with the plan, let’s proceed with it,” Pei Qian returned the plan.

Assistant Xin nodded without further questions: “Yes, Mr. Pei.”

Today was already the 23rd, and at midnight on the 24th, the activity content would be revealed to players.

Pei Qian decided to stay up a bit later tonight to see how players would respond, and how harsh their criticism would be.

Of course, even if there was criticism, it would mostly be directed at Eric and Zhao Xuming.

Since Eric and Zhao Xuming had joined, some rumors had already spread, though some players were unwilling to believe that Mr. Pei would poach such characters.

What was the point of poaching defeated opponents? It sounded absurd.

But in reality, the rumors were true…

Pei Qian was quite pleased. If Eric and Zhao Xuming’s bad reputation from ioi could help GOG, that would be exactly what he wanted!

…

…

October 24th, midnight.

As soon as the activity refreshed on GOG’s official website, Pei Qian immediately clicked in to check.

The activity name was slightly different from what he had seen in the plan. The plan stated the theme was “Light and Darkness,” but on the website facing players, the activity name was “The Arrival of Light.”

Perhaps “Light and Darkness” was too straightforward and not suitable as an activity name, while “The Arrival of Light” sounded more impressive.

The specific description of the activity seemed similar in content to the plan Pei Qian had seen earlier, but the wording was very different.

This was normal, as an internal plan and a player-facing description were not the same thing. The former was relatively concise and straightforward, while the latter needed some textual embellishment to give players a sense of politeness and respect.

Besides skins, there were some other activities, but these were quite standard, so Pei Qian scrolled down directly to find the content related to the new limited skins.

Price: 68 yuan!

Looking at the player comments and feedback, sure enough, most people’s focus was mainly on the skin price.

And the response was extremely intense!

“What’s with this skin pricing? 68 yuan? That’s almost twice as expensive as previous event skins!”

“Are these skins made to be more awesome? Oh, it seems these skins also have some exclusive in-game activities, but these activities hardly count as rewards! I’m paying money for a chance to grind activities? Are you insane?”

“It really doesn’t make sense. Isn’t GOG’s skin price capped at 45 yuan? I’ve never heard of skins higher tier than Legendary?”

“Well, now you have.”

“If the skin quality is really good, I guess it’s fine if it’s a bit more expensive.”

“That’s not the point! If adding some special effects means doubling the price, isn’t that just like ioi? ioi already faced boycotts for increasing skin prices before, weren’t they criticized enough? Why is GOG starting to play the same game?”

“Exactly, adding some effects and doubling the price? That’s really distasteful!”

“You guessed right. Familiar? This is exactly how ioi operates! Rumors have been saying for a while that GOG’s project team poached ioi’s former manager Eric, so it’s perfectly normal that they’re now pulling ioi-style operations, isn’t it?”

“Damn! Wasn’t that fake news? Everything was fine with the GOG project team originally, why poach that useless Eric? If it weren’t for him, would ioi have failed so quickly?”

“It’s actually not fake news. Many sources have verified that Eric was indeed poached by Tenda!”

“This is asking for trouble!”

Many players couldn’t remain calm and were even becoming angry.

The skin price increase was just one reason; more importantly, they had absolutely no trust in Eric.

Originally, there had been rumors circulating online about Eric taking over as the head of GOG, but most players didn’t believe it and hadn’t paid much attention.

Because instinctively they thought, isn’t this nonsense?

Poaching this person—are they afraid their company isn’t failing fast enough?

For a poaching of this level, Mr. Pei must certainly be aware.

With Mr. Pei’s brilliance, how could he make such an unwise move that even players found unreliable?

But after the 1024 Digital Festival activities came out, players began discussing this matter again.

And after discussion, they found that this rumor seemed to be true!

There were many sources that could verify each other—GOG’s manager had indeed changed!

Considering ioi’s previous series of ridiculous operations, Eric’s poor reputation among the player community, plus the catalyst of this skin price increase, these contradictions suddenly erupted.

Many players were not only protesting on forums but also calling on everyone to boycott buying skins, using practical action to resist.

As long as officials saw that after player resistance, skin sales didn’t meet expectations, they would naturally restore skin prices to normal!