Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Chapter 1096: FV Team’s Champion Skin

June 13th, Wednesday...

Shanghai, Long Yu Corporation headquarters.

Zhao Xuming carefully knocked on Eric’s office door and asked rather cautiously, “FV Team’s champion skin has been completed. Can we prepare the publicity plan?”

Eric looked like he was worried about something else. He was not interested in the champion’s skin. He waved his hand casually. “Boss Zhao, you make the arrangements.”

Zhao Xuming nodded. “Alright.”

He was just about to leave when Eric said, “It’s almost summer. Finger Games is planning to continue promoting it globally. The publicity of the champion skin can also be included in summer promotion.”

“The discount can be slightly higher, especially in the ICL competition zone. It’s the championship zone after all. I think the other competition zones won’t have many opinions.”

Since it was the championship zone, the discount on the champion’s skin had to be greater.

The other regions were not convinced?

Then bring back a championship zone. You can enjoy this treatment if you get it.

Zhao Xuming quickly nodded. “No problem. I’ll warm up for the summer promotion event as well!”

With that, he carefully closed the door and left.

Zhao Xuming knew very well that Eric was not in a good mood recently. He had to be careful.

Eric had been in an anxious and helpless state ever since he lost to Tengda at the 515 Games Festival last month.

Obviously, this matter had dealt him a huge blow.

Eric had thought that his plan was about to succeed when he heard that Tengda was going to sell the building. He had almost wanted to open champagne to celebrate.

However, he did not expect the situation to change in just one or two days!

Once news of Tengda Corporation’s capital chain having problems spread, many companies lent a helping hand. Tengda’s loyal users were also spending crazily. They were buying games and cell phones. Even the smart fitness drying rack was selling crazily!

In the end, Boss Pei survived the crisis without spilling blood.

Not only that, Tengda’s 515 Game Festival event completely crushed Finger Games and Long Yu Corporation’s activities in terms of influence, discounts, and final reputation.

Tengda had spent a lot of money, but it had achieved its goal.

That was not the case for Eric.

He was burning a lot of money as well. He might not burn as much as Tengda but it had already made the upper echelons of Dayak Corporation very dissatisfied with him. The worst thing was that the burning of money did not achieve the effect he wanted.

Burning money might have attracted many users and won some reputation, but this was far from what Eric wanted.

Eric was now faced with internal and external difficulties.

After IOI’s global finals, he boasted in front of Dayak Corporation and Finger Games’ upper echelons in order to replace Chrétien. He had analyzed it logically. However, he had taken over IOI’s domestic server for less than half a year now, but he had still not achieved any substantial results.

That was too awkward.

Of course, Eric felt wronged about this.

He was not slacking, but there was not much he could do!

GOG had already occupied a dominating position in the domestic MOBA games market. All sorts of publicity had already penetrated into various corners through online and offline channels. It was almost impossible to snatch people from GOG in a traditional way.

Unless IOI’s game quality was obviously better than GOG.

However, the problem was that IOI’s quality was not better than GOG. It was even worse in terms of players’ habits, hero identification, cultural identity, detailed gameplay, client-side gameplay, and many other aspects.

That way, no matter how much publicity funds he invested, it would be equivalent to throwing it into a bottomless pit. It was useless!

Therefore, Eric’s idea was to compete with Tengda in burning money while advertising. When Tengda’s capital chain could not take it anymore, he would be able to welcome a turnaround and turn defeat into victory!

He did not expect that this would be the outcome.

He felt that he was almost going to kill the boss, but the boss made a pose and his health was full again!

This made Eric seem very naive and even a little ridiculous.

The impression that he gave outsiders was that he was as fierce as a tiger but his results were zero to five.

Therefore, dissatisfaction with Eric appeared in Dayak Corporation and Finger Games. In order to protect his position as the person-in-charge of the Chinese area, Eric had no choice but to communicate with headquarters frequently. Many times, he had no choice but to compromise and make concessions. He could not focus all his energy on work.

Eric could not find a way to break out of the situation to outsiders.

Tengda looked too scary.

Not only did Tengda recover quickly after a small problem with the capital chain the last time, but all their work seemed to be completely unaffected.

The snack market, large-scale experience shops, and many other projects were still advancing in an orderly manner. They did not show any mercy when spending money.

It was as if the money-burning war with Eric did not exist.

Eric was confused, doubting himself.

Was there any point in continuing to compete with Tengda in burning money?

He had been thinking about this question for half a month and had not thought it through clearly.

Thus, at the moment, Long Yu Corporation’s publicity for IOI’s local server was basically at a standstill. Apart from the daily publicity activities, such as the publicity for the ICL league and the game’s updated content, there were no more large-scale publicity activities.

Until now.

However, he still had to live.

Now, the skin of FV Team’s champion that had been produced since March was finally done. Eric and Zhao Xuming both felt that they had to use this opportunity to publicize it.

After all, this was the first set of champion skins for IOI and it was the countrymen’s championship. If this publicity event was done well, it would be beneficial to attract more new players to the local server.

Given the rate at which the game was developing in this world, it was obviously a long time to make a set of champion skins every three months.

However, there was a reason.

During the process of making this skin, Finger Games’ designers repeatedly communicated with FV Team’s members, hoping to make it as perfect as possible. Not only did they listen to their opinions at the beginning of the production, but they also modified a few versions during the production process.

After all, there was a difference in culture between the East and the West. There was also a certain barrier between the designers and the team members. Thus, they spent a lot of effort communicating.

In addition, this set of skin had to be made as exquisite as possible, so it unknowingly took such a long time.

Finger Games’ designers and Eric were very satisfied with the final product.

This black-gold style skin was absolutely cool. It was definitely the best skin in IOI and GOG!

Eric and the upper echelons of Finger Games had also been conflicted about what the skin should look like.

Some even expressed that they wanted to deliberately make this skin ugly. FV Team was Boss Pei’s team after all. Wouldn’t it be letting their competitors benefit if they made the skin too good?

However, this voice was quickly rejected.

That was because this was IOI’s first champion skin. Wouldn’t it be even more embarrassing for Finger Games if it was not done well?

It was a dilemma.

If they were ugly, they would lose their faces;

If they were done too well, it would promote their rival.

That was unbearable!

However, after weighing the pros and cons, Finger Games could only swallow this loss and work hard to create it, benefitting FV Team.

Now that the skin had been made, they naturally had to publicize such a handsome skin.

Zhao Xuming returned to his office. His subordinates had already submitted a preliminary skin publicity plan.

After taking a closer look, he added the relevant contents of the summer promotional event.

According to Finger Games’ arrangement, the last week of this month, which was June 26th, would start summer activities.

At that time, IOI would have a strong discount around the world. It would be a good opportunity to make a more favorable discount for the champion’s skin to earn some reputation.

What’s more, the ICL league would also welcome the Spring Competition finals this month.

The start of the game was much later than the GPL league, but there were fewer teams in the ICL league. The competition schedule was also shorter. The finals would be held at the end of this month, a week later than the GPL league. It happened to be during the summer holidays.

Finger Games was considering to decide the champions of the various competition zones during the summer rush. They would also start a series of discounts on the tail of the summer rush.

If these three activities could be gathered together, the spread would definitely be very good.

However, there was a small problem. The champion’s skin had already been made. It would be equivalent to wasting two weeks if it was released during the summer rush. It was not worth it.

Zhao Xuming thought about it carefully and suddenly had an idea.

The champion’s skin would be sold immediately, but the starting discount would be the same as the summer promotional event!

That would be killing two birds with one stone: He could make use of the two weeks to let the heat of the champion’s skin ferment sufficiently and achieve a good publicity effect until the beginning of summer. At the same time, it would not affect the interests of the first players to buy players because of the summer discount. He could also warm up the huge discount of the summer promotion in advance so that players would be filled with expectations for the summer promotion.

That was because the starting discount of ordinary skins was relatively low. It was about 2-30%. However, the summer promotional activities were more intense. It might even reach 50-60%.

If the champion’s skin was sold at a 20% discount for two weeks, and the summer rush was reduced to a 50% discount, the players who bought it first would definitely be anxious.

However, it would be strange if the champion’s skin did not have a discount or only 20% during summer.

Thus, he decided to do it in one go. The first discount for the champion’s skin would be the same as Xia Jincheng’s. That way, gamers would look forward to the other skins during the summer after buying the champion’s skin. The publicity effect would be the best.

What’s more, the publicity could continue until the end of next month’s summer and ICL’s Spring Competition. It looked like a perfect plan!

The more Zhao Xuming thought about it, the more appropriate it was. He immediately changed the publicity plan submitted by his subordinates and showed it to Eric.

Eric agreed very much with this plan. After all, this was the most reasonable and efficient publicity plan in the current situation.