Zhao Xuming thought for a moment and asked, “What do the other managers say?”

Zhang Nan replied, “They’re envious, but they didn’t say much. After all, if Mr. Pei has decided to give us this money, he definitely has a specific intention.”

Ten million yuan in concession funds was no small amount.

This wasn’t marketing funding or subsidy funding, but concession funding.

Marketing funds were spent to create promotional effects, to sell more products and earn more money.

Subsidy funds were essentially a promotional tactic, which could be used for low-profit, high-volume sales, or for expanding market share.

But the money Mr. Pei gave this time was clearly specified as “concession funds,” meaning it was for giving benefits to consumers.

To put it bluntly, it was simply giving money away!

Marketing funds and subsidy funds had fixed applications, and once spent, they had to show results. Concession funds were different—they completely disregarded effectiveness and returns.

These funds didn’t consider marketing effects at all, nor whether they could earn a return. They were purely for thanking players and giving benefits to them.

Many other departments coveted this money.

Yet ironically, the GOG project team needed this money the least!

On one hand, the GOG project team was already the highest-earning project team in the entire Tenda Group. Their revenue was already high, and the resources and promotional funds at their disposal surpassed all other departments.

Never mind the money—with GOG’s current scale, simply posting an announcement in the game to advertise their own products would influence a player base numbering in the millions.

Therefore, the GOG project team unanimously believed that since they were already doing so well and were receiving so many resources from Tenda Group, there was no reason to compete with other departments for such precious concession funds.

On the other hand, the GOG project team had already received such funds once before!

GOG had previously held a money-giving activity. Although the response at that time was pretty good, in retrospect, the effect of giving away money was just average. It might have had a slight impact on promotion and market expansion, but the effect wasn’t significant enough to be clearly perceptible.

Even without this activity, GOG’s market share and active player count were rapidly increasing.

It was precisely because of these two considerations that Zhang Nan, Eric, and Zhao Xuming had reached a consensus not to get involved with this round of concession funding, to avoid giving Mr. Pei the bad impression that they were “insatiably greedy.”

But unexpectedly, without even submitting an application report, Mr. Pei had actively given them the money!

For ordinary people, if funding was approved, they would just use it—there was nothing to overthink.

But for Tenda Group managers, this was clearly a signal, indicating that Mr. Pei had completely overturned their previous conclusions!

After considering for a moment, Zhang Nan said, “I think Mr. Pei giving us this money is hinting at something: our department actually needs this money desperately, even more than all other departments.”

“Otherwise, Mr. Pei would never force the money on us when we didn’t even apply for it.”

Eric and Zhao Xuming nodded in agreement.

Indeed, this seemed to be the only reasonable explanation.

When it came to resource allocation, Mr. Pei had always been perfect.

Although sometimes Mr. Pei would invest a large amount of resources in areas that appeared unimportant, marginalized, or even completely unrelated to existing business, seemingly wasting resources, in hindsight, almost all cases proved Mr. Pei’s global perspective and foresight.

Looking at problems from a partial, one-sided perspective would naturally make Mr. Pei’s resource allocation seem chaotic and illogical. But viewing from a holistic, comprehensive perspective, one would marvel at Mr. Pei’s powerful strategic abilities.

What seemed methodless was actually under complete control.

“So the question is… why exactly is this money so important to us?”

“Honestly, I can’t figure it out.”

“GOG is currently doing well in every aspect. For us, this money can certainly benefit players and improve our reputation a bit. But our reputation is already excellent, and there’s not much room for further improvement.”

Zhang Nan still didn’t quite grasp the key point.

After a moment of silence, Eric said, “If there’s nothing wrong with us, then we need to look for reasons from our competitors.”

Zhang Nan’s eyes lit up. “You mean… ioi?”

Eric nodded and began to analyze seriously: “Mr. Pei has given us a weapon. This weapon must either provide us with a huge boost or cause tremendous damage to our enemies.”

“Since the former is impossible, it must be the latter.”

“Everyone knows that ioi hasn’t been doing well since the world championship ended. FV team’s victory rendered all of Finger Company’s preparations useless, and discussions about FV team transitioning to GOG even trended on social media.”

“Although Finger Company has been playing dead, and FV team hasn’t made any extreme reactions, preventing domestic players’ anger from escalating further, players are still continuously leaving.”

“To salvage this unfavorable situation, Finger Company definitely has to make some moves; otherwise, they’re just waiting for death.”

Zhao Xuming nodded. “Yes, that makes sense!”

“But… we don’t know what moves Finger Company is planning to make. They have too many options: discounted sales, making promotional videos for the champion team, or creating special activities to appease domestic server players… We can’t determine exactly what they’re going to do.”

“We can’t go to former acquaintances to gather intelligence, can we? Mr. Pei would never support such behavior. We need to win fair and square!”

After some consideration, Zhang Nan said, “Discounted sales are possible, but making promotional videos is highly unlikely.”

“Finger Company has always disliked FV team. Sucking up to FV team now wouldn’t win back domestic players; it would only make them look pathetic. Besides, wouldn’t all their previous efforts to suppress FV team be in vain?”

“I believe Finger Company will only provide FV team with the rewards they deserve—the ones they can’t reasonably withhold—and perhaps do it exceptionally well to give FV team’s fans and domestic server players some closure. Rewards they can avoid giving, they definitely won’t give.”

“And the reward they can’t reasonably withhold… is actually the champion skin.”

Zhao Xuming suddenly realized: “That’s right!”

Zhang Nan was currently preparing champion skins for GOG, so he naturally thought of this aspect.

Eric asked, “How long will it take for the champion skins to be released?”

Zhang Nan pondered: “GOG’s will be ready the month after next. Based on last year’s situation, ioi’s development speed is similar to ours, but this year ioi is probably eager to use this opportunity to win back players who left the domestic server, so they might release them next month.”

“I can check with FV Club to confirm; they’ll definitely have received information.”

Zhao Xuming nodded: “Then the timing matches up!”

“Next month when ioi releases the champion skins, they’ll definitely have a series of supporting marketing activities. But I boldly predict that these activities absolutely won’t include direct benefits to players like ours.”

Eric chuckled: “Do we need to boldly predict that? Dyaks Group and Finger Company could never give benefits to players without reason like Tenda does. It’s determined by the nature of these two companies.”

Zhang Nan: “So at that time, our concession activity will be a powerful weapon against Finger Company! They’ll have absolutely no way to defend against it.”

“Not only that, we can directly target ioi’s activities, greatly reducing their effectiveness or even causing them to backfire. Then, we can prepare to receive ioi’s last batch of refugees…”

After reaching this point in their analysis, all three fell silent.

After a while, Eric finally let out a long breath and said, “Mr. Pei is truly Mr. Pei.”

This was clearly the final move, preparing to completely eliminate ioi!

Although everyone understood the principle of pursuing a defeated enemy, actually implementing it was rarely done so decisively.

Because after achieving a stage victory, most people would feel they had earned enough and eaten their fill, and would quit while they were ahead.

But Mr. Pei’s thinking wasn’t like this at all. Whether to continue attacking didn’t depend on the results they had already achieved, but on the enemy’s movements.

So what if they had already achieved fruitful results?

With a little more courage, those results could be further expanded!

“I’ll prepare the plan right away!”

Zhang Nan turned and left, and Eric and Zhao Xuming quickly got busy as well.

Mr. Pei had issued the final attack order, and now the entire department needed to work together to complete this mission in one stroke!

…

…

January 17th, Thursday.

As soon as Pei Qian opened the official gaming platform on his phone, he received a notification message.

“Shangyang Games’ new work ‘Safe and Civilized Driving’ is about to be released! [Click to view]”

Pei Qian perked up immediately.

Finally, it was here!

Looking closely at the time, the game would be released at 8 PM tonight, yet promotional resources were only being deployed now. This further confirmed Pei Qian’s previous speculation.

It must be that Ye Zhizhou was responsible for the promotional plan for the first time, so he was in a fluster.

He quickly clicked to view it.

After the experience of developing many games, Shangyang Games was no longer the little follower behind Tenda Games. It had become a developer account that occupied an important position on the official gaming platform.

This time, the official platform gave them plenty of face, providing promotional resources quite generously.

Shangyang Games would certainly also buy some advertisements and such on other websites to promote the game.

Pei Qian was already accustomed to all this.

After all, this was something he couldn’t stop.

The key now was what kind of promotional materials Shangyang Games had prepared.

As long as the promotional materials were subpar, giving more promotional resources wouldn’t make much difference—they still wouldn’t gain traction.

Opening the game details page, Pei Qian quickly noticed some key promotional slogans.

“Anyone can become a driving god!”

“Enjoy the pleasure of driving without leaving home!”

“Diverse driving experiences, highly concentrated driving sensations!”

“A driving world of recklessness and limitless possibilities!”

And so on.

When he saw the first two lines, Pei Qian found them a bit tacky, but the style seemed normal.

Considering that Ye Zhizhou had no marketing experience whatsoever, coming up with such tacky promotional slogans was already quite good.

At least they honestly represented the game’s selling points.

But as he read on, Pei Qian became confused.

Something wasn’t right—he hadn’t given Ye Zhizhou any pointers, had he?