February 25th, Monday.

Pei Qian arrived at his office as usual and briefly went through the current situation of each department.

This Thursday would be the settlement day. None of the departments had any new products coming out, and the arrangements for rushed spending had already been made. Whether they could actually lose money would depend on this final push.

All he could say was that, so far, the prospects for losing money weren’t particularly secure.

Pei Qian first checked on the situation at IOI.

Since the four-person team had gone to negotiate with the Dayak Group, Pei Qian hadn’t heard any news from them for some time.

This was mainly due to the time difference, and Pei Qian felt he couldn’t be of much help anyway, so he’d left the four of them to handle everything, with Meng Chang making the final decisions. As long as they could reach a deal, that would be fine.

While internal news was unknown, external news was hard to ignore.

Last Tuesday, Finger Company had been hit with a series of negative news, such as plans to merge the Asia server and implement pay-to-win activities on April Fools’ Day, which triggered a sharp drop in the company’s stock price.

After a week, this downward trend was almost over.

Then this weekend, Finger Company stirred up new trouble.

First, they announced rework plans for some heroes with lower win rates, and second, they made certain adjustments to the ranking rules.

These two announcements weren’t made at the same time but were separated by two days. However, without exception, both triggered negative public opinion!

First was the rework plan. This should have been a good thing, since as the game had developed, many previously designed heroes had mechanics that no longer matched the current game pace and had no chance of being selected. Simple numerical balancing couldn’t solve the problem, so a rework seemed reasonable.

But the issue was that Finger Company was releasing new heroes too slowly!

When IOI was previously in heated competition with GOG, Finger Company had been quick to release new heroes. But as IOI declined, they spent a lot of time and energy creating various skins, greatly slowing down the production of new heroes.

Under these circumstances, they still formulated such a large-scale rework plan.

Players naturally wondered: Can you even release new heroes anymore?

While reworking old heroes could bring some freshness, how could it compare to new heroes?

This gave people the impression that IOI was in its twilight years, had lost its ambition, and was now just coasting on past achievements.

The adjustment to ranking rules also drew criticism.

Finger Company claimed that to provide a better gaming experience for all players, especially newcomers, the new ranking rules would make adjustments to the matchmaking mechanism, more dynamically balancing both sides of the battle and the number of players at different ranks.

At first, players thought this was good news, but soon internal information leaked, revealing that this new ranking system would maintain most players’ win rates at around 50%!

Why? Because this would maximize player retention and ensure a stable player base.

With most players’ win rates maintained at around 50%, plus additional victory points, it would ensure that playing more games would definitely lead to rank advancement. Even relatively unskilled players could experience being carried to victory after losing several games, improving their overall experience.

For IOI, they were facing the severe situation of losing their “fish pond” players.

The loss of these less skilled players would cause the entire ranking pyramid to collapse from bottom to top, leading to a collective decrease in all players’ ranks, with very serious consequences.

For games like GOG that maintained player growth and had a large player base, this wasn’t a major problem. But for IOI, it clearly related to its survival.

The earlier announcement about merging the Asia server was also based on this consideration, to better ensure the depth of the “fish pond.”

But this approach brought a new problem: it would be very frustrating for players who were relatively skilled but not at a professional level!

Because the system needed to ensure that even terrible players could maintain about a 50% win rate by being carried, it had to sacrifice the gaming experience of some skilled players.

After a player went on a winning streak, they would inevitably encounter bad teammates to forcibly lower their win rate, ultimately maintaining everyone’s win rate at around 50%. Even if skilled players had slightly higher win rates, they wouldn’t be much higher.

Unless they were exceptionally skilled players or professional players who could dominate under any conditions—carrying the entire team as one versus nine or two versus eight—they might maintain a win rate of 70% to 80%. For generally skilled players, breaking through the 50% win rate would be difficult; the most likely outcome would be a page full of SVP (Super Valuable Player) designations.

From the game company’s perspective, this seemed like a win-win solution.

For less skilled players, they wouldn’t be discouraged by constant losing streaks. As long as they played enough ranked games, they would see their rank slowly increase. For relatively skilled players who could carry, though the 50% win rate was frustrating, at least they were getting SVP recognition—they were just being held back by bad teammates. This alone wouldn’t be enough to make them quit the game in anger.

Originally, this rule was planned to be updated secretly. Players probably wouldn’t notice it immediately, which could effectively boost retention.

However, unexpectedly, this rule somehow leaked out!

This caused an uproar.

From Finger Company’s perspective, this new ranking mechanism could indeed improve the gaming experience for new players and prevent further loss from the “fish pond.” But for relatively skilled players, this was hard to accept.

Why should they be matched with terrible teammates to forcibly bring their win rate down to 50%?

Ranked games should be based on skill, but if carrying the team required the same number of games to rank up as being carried by others, what was the point of working hard to improve skills and trying to win?

After putting in so much effort to practice techniques, was it all for nothing?

The ideal might seem perfect, but it directly violated the consensus of most game players, so it was heavily criticized!

These consecutive negative events caused Finger Company’s stock price to fall again, giving people the impression that they were on the verge of collapse.

Pei Qian watched all this with alarm.

What was going on? When it rains, it pours?

What had happened to Finger Company’s leadership? Had they given up? Why had they started making collectively stupid decisions?

Where was Finger Company’s CEO? Couldn’t they do something about this?

But… looking on the bright side, perhaps this would make the plan to acquire Finger Company go more smoothly?

Pei Qian couldn’t understand whether Finger Company’s leadership had collectively lost their minds or if it was just fate working against them. Either way, he found the company’s situation increasingly incomprehensible.

As he was pondering this, there was a knock at the office door.

Looking up, he saw Lü Mingliang had arrived.

“Mr. Pei, I’ve come to apologize. During Saturday’s debate with Nie Yunsheng from Shengrun Group, I got emotionally charged and unconsciously said some things that weren’t particularly appropriate, and I’ve attracted quite a bit of hostility. I’m willing to take full responsibility.”

Lü Mingliang’s meeting with Nie Yunsheng in Shanghai had indeed been arranged, but much of what he said on the scene was improvised.

Some parts were planned, meant to expose Shengrun Group’s hypocrisy, but others were improvised in the heat of the moment.

Now, the livestream recording had caused a heated response online. From the results, it could be said that Lü Mingliang had made a name for himself in one battle, greatly boosting Headwind Logistics’ reputation and causing their delivery business to skyrocket.

But undeniably, Lü Mingliang hadn’t requested permission from Pei Qian before making some of those statements, and he wasn’t sure whether Mr. Pei would support his claims or whether these claims would affect the future development of Headwind Logistics and the entire Tenda Group.

So Lü Mingliang waited until Monday to report to Mr. Pei.

Pei Qian was silent for a moment, then said, “Did you claim your overtime pay for Saturday? Did you reimburse yourself for the high-speed rail ticket?”

Lü Mingliang was stunned for a moment: “Uh… yes, I did both.”

Pei Qian immediately broke into a smile: “Then that’s fine! As for the rest, it’s not a big deal. I watched the recording of you rebuking Nie Yunsheng, and you spoke well—no problems there.”

“Most importantly, announcing to everyone that Headwind Logistics won’t raise prices for ten years and will provide large-scale subsidies—that’s exactly what I wanted! You said it perfectly!”

“As for attracting hostility… those companies deserve to be criticized, and you did it well! I actually hope they unite against Tenda, to create some challenges for me!”

“Also, your on-the-spot recruitment of that courier was very well done. Combined with the recent special recruitment exam, it’s given me a brand new idea.”

“I’m going to give you a certain quota for targeted recruitment!”

“You’ll get a separate quota specifically to poach employees who previously worked at Shengrun Group. Since we’ve already torn off the mask of civility, we might as well make the break more thorough!”

“If this recruitment drive yields good results, we can extend this approach and have other departments follow suit!”