May 25th, Saturday.

Director Ding arrived at his office with a gloomy expression and called his assistant over.

“Get Jin Yongren for me.”

The assistant showed a troubled expression and said, “Director Ding, it’s Saturday today, Jin Yongren didn’t come to the company.”

Director Ding was momentarily stunned.

He felt like this scene had happened before?

Since Min Jingchao arrived, Jin Yongren was no longer the company’s workaholic.

His work hours had become regular, and like other operations managers, he would leave immediately after work, not staying a minute longer.

Director Ding was silent for a moment, then his voice rose by eight octaves: “Then get Director Kang here!”

He was puzzled why Jin Yongren was never around whenever he looked for him!

Actually, this was very normal, because Director Ding always chose to find him during non-working hours.

For executives, specifically choosing rest time to find subordinates was a common routine.

During work hours, employees were all working diligently, so they certainly couldn’t be disturbed.

But during lunch, evenings, and weekends, many employees might slip away, so finding employees at these times both checked attendance and didn’t interfere with employees’ daily work—something executives and bosses loved to do!

Many bosses had even formed a special work schedule.

The boss would certainly not come in the morning, whether resting at home or going out for meetings. After all, there was a clock-in machine watching employees at the company, so the possibility of absenteeism was very low.

But when it was time to leave work, these bosses would all come in one by one, pretending to work overtime at the company until late at night.

The reason was simple: they wanted to see which departments weren’t enthusiastic about working overtime!

Director Ding followed the same pattern. On the surface, it seemed like he worked overtime at the company until after ten every night, but in reality, he wasn’t there most of the day.

Only he knew what he was doing during the daytime!

Once Jin Yongren strictly followed Min Jingchao’s requirements and worked normal hours, wasn’t it normal that he couldn’t be found?

Director Ding could only call Director Kang.

Strictly speaking, as HR Director, Director Kang was in charge of human resources matters and wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about game operations.

But there was no choice, as the knowledgeable people hadn’t come to work!

Director Ding called Director Kang over just to vent his frustration; he didn’t expect him to solve any substantive problems.

“Old Kang, the operation improvement plan is out, the new version is online, and the data is also out. The result is that all metrics are declining!”

“There must be a problem here!”

“Not to mention anything else, on the second day after the new version went online, not a single person came to work, isn’t this too much?”

Director Kang rolled his eyes internally and prepared to deflect: “Director Ding, why don’t you call Min Jingchao and have him call everyone back?”

Director Ding’s mouth twitched, immediately choked by the responsibility Director Kang had just shoved at him.

Because he knew clearly that calling Min Jingchao would be a waste of effort, and might even bring humiliation upon himself!

“We can’t just… sit by and do nothing!” Director Ding’s indignation refused to dissipate so easily.

Seeing that Director Ding had also backed down, Director Kang laughed inwardly and said patiently, “Director Ding, since this matter has been handed over to Min Jingchao, he must have his own plan. Short-term data doesn’t show much, after all, it’s only been two weeks, let’s wait a bit longer.”

Director Ding nodded helplessly again and waved his hand, signaling Director Kang to leave.

Director Kang hadn’t taken two steps before being called back by Director Ding.

“Wait, Old Kang, I feel something’s not right.” Director Ding pondered for a moment, “Why do I have a feeling that you’re all working together to sideline me?”

Director Kang was taken aback: “Why would you have such a thought?”

Director Ding said somewhat angrily, “No matter what I say, whether I find you or Jin Yongren, you directly push the problem to Min Jingchao.”

“So are you listening to me or to Min Jingchao? Or do you think I’m afraid of Min Jingchao?”

Director Kang smiled slightly: “Of course we’re listening to you! If not… you can just fire Min Jingchao directly, then we can make whatever changes we want, it’s all just a word from you!”

Director Ding was speechless: “I…”

Actually, there was no need to fire him; they could just terminate the cooperation agreement with Tenda.

But terminating the agreement required unanimous approval from all senior management, and Director Ding couldn’t make that decision alone!

The key was that the current extent of data decline and the resulting changes in financial reports were not enough to convince all senior management to make this decision.

Director Ding could only align his personal grievances with the bigger picture, pretending to be deeply concerned: “Sigh, this approach is not going to work!”

“I said before, Min Jingchao has become arrogant now, this is seeking the boat by the marks on the river, blindly copying! He doesn’t understand Longyu Group’s objective situation but forcibly implements Tenda Group’s on-time work schedule.”

“You’ll see, many players are hypocritical; they claim to welcome it, but in reality, they still prefer gameplay that forces grinding and spending!”

“I dare say, within a week, this data will definitely drop further! Because after the initial improvement enthusiasm passes, most players will start to lose interest. Pure goodwill can’t retain players!”

“I’m just worried that Mr. Pei’s undefeated myth will be ruined by Min Jingchao, so I wanted to give him a reminder!”

“And what does he do? He’s stubborn as a rock, won’t listen to a word of advice. I ask you to pass on messages to him, and you also drag your feet. If this continues and things go wrong, whose fault will it be?”

Director Kang smiled slightly: “Don’t worry! If it really goes wrong, Mr. Pei will suffer the greatest loss, what are you worried about?”

Director Ding sighed helplessly: “Fine, we’ll see next week!”

……

……

May 27th, Monday.

Unprecedentedly, Director Ding arrived at the company during morning work hours.

Previously, he would only come when it was almost time to leave work, resulting in missing people every time.

This time he deliberately came in the morning, just to see what these employees were actually doing!

Could Min Jingchao’s plan actually be effective?

At the company entrance, Director Ding saw everyone orderly clocking in at exactly nine o’clock.

Director Ding shook his head slightly, sighing inwardly: With this work attitude, there’s no hope!

He now somewhat regretted bringing in Min Jingchao, as it didn’t seem to be a correct choice.

If Min Jingchao had only offered advice on improving operation plans, that would have been fine. But now Min Jingchao had completely disrupted the entire company’s work atmosphere!

When Min Jingchao left, wouldn’t Director Ding have to clean up this mess himself?

Thinking about this made Director Ding uncomfortable.

Despite feeling uncomfortable, Director Ding didn’t immediately act out, but just went to his office and glumly drank his tea.

Before he could finish his tea, there was a knock on the office door.

Jin Yongren entered from outside.

The frustration that Director Ding hadn’t yet resolved suddenly surged into his chest!

Well, it sure wasn’t easy to see Jin Yongren!

He had assigned Jin Yongren to assist Min Jingchao because he felt Jin Yongren was reliable, hardworking, and a trusted long-time employee of the company.

Sending him over was in hopes of constraining Min Jingchao somewhat, at least preventing him from being completely led by the nose.

But Jin Yongren had directly sided with the outsider, wholeheartedly accompanying Min Jingchao in his foolishness!

As Jin Yongren’s direct supervisor, Director Ding couldn’t even assign him tasks, let alone find him.

This was the first time since Min Jingchao came to Longyu Group that Jin Yongren had taken the initiative to report to Director Ding.

Director Ding thought Jin Yongren probably came to make excuses because the data didn’t look good.

With this in mind, he immediately put on a serious face and stood on ceremony: “What’s the matter?”

Jin Yongren naturally didn’t know Director Ding’s thoughts and went straight to the point: “Director Ding, regarding the recent operational data issues of our games, I wanted to report to you in person.”

Director Ding’s expression remained unchanged, but he laughed coldly inside: “Hmm, go ahead.”

Jin Yongren handed over the pre-prepared report: “Based on the situation since last weekend, these games have seen a slight decline in players’ online duration and average recharge consumption data.”

Director Ding nodded slightly, with a cold smile appearing at the corners of his mouth. This was completely consistent with his expectations.

But Jin Yongren’s next words wiped the smile off Director Ding’s face.

“But the growth of new players, discussion rate, retention rate, and other data for these games have all seen significant increases!”

“And all games have seen noticeable improvements in ratings on game stores and app stores.”

Director Ding was stunned: “Hmm??”

He somewhat incredulously opened the report and carefully examined the relevant data, only to find that Jin Yongren was telling the absolute truth!

What did this mean?

Although there was a slight decline in players’ online duration and average recharge consumption data, the games’ reputation had significantly improved. With the improvement in reputation, there was an influx of new players and retention of old players.

In other words, the games had become more vibrant!

In Director Ding’s understanding, this situation was too unscientific!

Because after players had already become accustomed to grinding and spending gameplay, suddenly reducing their burden might not be well-received.

Players were used to playing 10 hours a day, and now it was suddenly changed to 6 hours—what were they supposed to do with the remaining 4 hours?

They could only play other games!

Going back and forth like this, wouldn’t players easily be taken away by other games?

The improvement in game reputation was even stranger.

Longyu games had been criticized for a long time, but being criticized didn’t affect their profitability. This bad reputation had accompanied Longyu games for a long time, so how could it be reversed in such a short period?

The only explanation was that Min Jingchao and his plan had a much greater impact than Director Ding had imagined.

This improvement plan not only reversed players’ impression of Longyu Group games but also developed in a positive direction!

Director Ding couldn’t help but recall his complaints to Director Kang last Saturday.

At that time, he had very confidently said that within a week, the data would definitely continue to drop. He had also said that Min Jingchao was seeking the boat by the marks on the river, forcibly applying Tenda’s work model to Longyu Group, and it would definitely not adapt well!

But now, the new data had slapped him hard in the face!

Although some data was still declining, most data was rising, and with the influx of new users, the revenue level would sooner or later return to its original height.

For a continuously operated game, what’s most important? Of course, new players are most important!

Without new players, the game would be water without a source, a tree without roots—dying would only be a matter of time.

Moreover, according to the report, this improvement plan wasn’t only effective for those popular games.

Several games that were almost completely cold had shown significant data improvement under the bold reforms.

Director Ding was very dissatisfied with these results and felt something was wrong, but he couldn’t find a reason to refute because data doesn’t lie!

When he used data to choke operations by the neck, forcing them to make games more grinding and pay-to-win, he never thought that one day, operations would also use data to choke him by the neck and tell him: what we’re doing is right!

This left Director Ding momentarily at a loss.

He had originally planned to use the opportunity of declining data to teach Jin Yongren a lesson, but faced with such data, he could only hold it in his throat.

He looked at Jin Yongren, then at the data report in his hand, and his inner turmoil made his expression quite fascinating.