Chapter 1 Becoming the Richest Man Starts With Losing Money in Games

3 PM.

Pei Qian was lying on the sofa in his living room, watching TV. The afternoon sun was pleasant, streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows and bathing him in warmth.

Suddenly, his phone rang.

Pei Qian glanced at the caller ID. It was Min Jingchao.

"President Pei, are you watching the Finger Company and Longyu Group's press conference?" Min Jingchao's voice held a hint of worry.

Pei Qian was taken aback. "No, why?"

Min Jingchao quickly said, "Finger Company and Longyu Group seem to be making some big moves. They're coming for us."

"According to the information we have, Finger Company is going all-out to promote the IOI national server. The content of this press conference includes the IOI mobile version, exclusive heroes and skins for Chinese players, and a series of promotional activities."

"In addition, according to some rumors, Dayak Corporation and Longyu Group don't intend to limit the money-burning war to the gaming field. It seems that internet trolls are ready to attack other industries and products of our company. The primary target should be the phone we just released this month. The fitness equipment that is about to be released may also soon be targeted…"

Hearing Min Jingchao's anxious voice, Pei Qian couldn't help but be overjoyed. "Oh?"

Finally, it's here! I've been waiting so long!

Since founding Tengda Group, Pei Qian had been constantly looking forward to the emergence of such a powerful nemesis, one that could comprehensively attack all of Tengda Group's industries and start a money-burning war to the death with Tengda Group.

Originally, Pei Qian thought that General Manager Li would be this nemesis, but he didn't expect General Manager Li to quickly retreat and instead start cozying up to him. How infuriating!

Including Dayak Corporation, Pei Qian had provoked them five times, three times, but Dayak Corporation seemed to have always been very restrained and instead surrendered first, so that Pei Qian's provocations led to rapid progress, which made him very uncomfortable.

Now that Eric had made a comeback, Dayak Corporation and Finger Company had finally seen the light and were going to play the money-burning game!

And there was even more optimistic news: the other party was coming on strong, not only putting the money-burning war in the gaming field but also extending it to all of Tengda's industries.

Obviously, in Eric's view, it was very unwise to only fight Tengda to the death in the gaming field.

Tengda Group was a group company spanning multiple fields. Its greatest strength lay in forming a commercial closed loop in Jingzhou, with various industries supporting and supplementing each other, and then slowly radiating to the surrounding areas.

If it was just a deathmatch in the gaming field, then President Pei could mobilize the power of other industries to support it and continuously infuse blood into the game, which would not be very likely to win.

Therefore, Eric chose the gaming field as the main battlefield while spreading the secondary battlefields to other industries, so as to distract Tengda Group as much as possible, making it difficult for various industries to take care of themselves and support the gaming department.

Moreover, this was a very efficient method.

Eric didn't need to actually enter these fields, didn't need to develop products to compete with Tengda, he just needed to buy more trolls and cooperate with Tengda's competitors in these industries to find ways to smear them.

It was easy to dodge a spear in the open, but hard to guard against an arrow in the dark. Now Tengda was equivalent to being in the open, with the situation of all its industries being thoroughly investigated, while Eric was hiding in the dark, secretly launching cold arrows to make Tengda's departments overwhelmed.

Take the phone for example, Eric only needed to unite with other mobile phone manufacturers to constantly smear and attack OTO phones online, which would have a very good effect.

After all, it was easy to spread rumors, but hard to refute them. It was easy to create negative points, but too difficult to eliminate them.

Min Jingchao obviously understood this as well, so he immediately felt a huge threat and hurried to report to President Pei.

But for Pei Qian, this was exactly what he wanted!

What Eric was worried about before was also what Pei Qian was worried about.

Pei Qian couldn't wait for one of his industries to fail completely, so that he could continuously lose money, but these industries always inexplicably linked together, pulling some industries back from the brink of losing money, instead bringing them back to life and turning them into big earners!

Now that Dayak Corporation was willing to spend a lot of money to hire internet trolls to launch an all-round, no-dead-angle attack on Tengda Group's various industries, allowing Pei Qian to complete the loss without doing anything, what kind of spirit was this?

Pei Qian felt that if he could really lose a big sum this time, he should set up a statue of Eric at home and worship him every day.

Thinking of this, Pei Qian said with emotion, "It's finally here!"

Min Jingchao on the other end of the phone was slightly stunned.

Judging from President Pei's words, it seemed like he had expected this?

Moreover, President Pei's tone seemed relieved, with a little bit of joy.

Could it be that…

President Pei had already predicted that Eric would act in this way, and had already prepared a response in advance. Now that he saw Eric taking the bait, his preparations could finally be put to use, so he reacted in this way?

As expected of President Pei!

Planning strategies in the tent, winning battles thousands of miles away. Only President Pei possessed such wisdom and mind!

Since President Pei had already made arrangements, then he could rest assured.

Min Jingchao had been a little panicked before, but after talking to President Pei, he immediately felt relieved, hung up the phone, and went to do his own thing.

Pei Qian immediately turned on the TV, found the live broadcast of Finger Company and Longyu Group's press conference, and watched it with great interest.

…

Nearly three hours later, the press conference finally ended, close to 6 PM.

Pei Qian yawned as he turned off the TV.

The content of the press conference was okay, but it was too long-winded!

They forcibly stretched something that could have been explained in more than an hour to three hours, putting Pei Qian to sleep.

He strongly suggested that all press conferences should be like OTO Technology's press conferences, regardless of how much content there was, they should forcibly compress it to within one hour and not waste the audience's precious time!

However, although this press conference was long and boring, it was still quite informative.

Zhao Xuming and Eric, two important figures, both took the stage and introduced their respective business areas.

In general, the content of this press conference was mainly divided into the following parts.

First, they introduced the changes in IOI's global data, as well as the various achievements of the national server since its launch, and various exclusive benefits for national server users, including the data changes since the iCL league was held.

To sum it up, it was a summary of previous achievements, the usual bragging session.

After that, they introduced the version update content of IOI.

In addition to fine-tuning the game's balance and gameplay, the more important thing was the launch of a set of Chinese-style skins, a new hero called Yunxiao Xianglong (Cloud Dragon) for the domestic market, and a series of discounts, half-price, and promotional activities.

The game's version update content was synchronized globally, and foreign players could also enjoy these contents, but the Chinese-style skins and new heroes obviously still had the meaning of pleasing domestic players.

Of course, Longyu Group would definitely spend a lot of money to promote this new version, and would buy a lot of online and offline advertisements. These were not mentioned at the press conference, but they were definitely essential.

After that, there was news about the IOI mobile game.

This part was personally introduced by Eric, who praised the IOI mobile game to the heavens, claiming that it could "perfectly reproduce the details of the PC game" and promising that data would be interoperable between the two platforms, and that all assets from the PC game could be brought to the mobile game.

Here, Eric actually played a little trick.

He only said that "all assets from the PC game can be brought to the mobile game," but he didn't say that there were some unique charging items in the mobile game.

But if you were to nitpick, there was no problem with saying it that way, and it could only be considered a small play on words.

It was the players' own problem if they misunderstood, and at most they would curse a few times online, which shouldn't cause too much opposition.

However, except for Eric and Zhao Xuming and a few others, no one knew this.

After all, the IOI mobile game would have to wait until after the press conference, that is, at the earliest next week, before it would be officially launched.

Pei Qian was very satisfied with the content of this press conference.

Obviously, Eric had finally seen the light. After so long of forbearance and silent preparation, he finally revealed his true colors and made a killing move!

Looking at the comments in the live broadcast room and the discussions online, it was clear that the vast majority of players had shown a positive attitude towards this press conference.

After all, the content of this press conference could be summed up in one sentence: Dear players, you are my fathers!

From the Chinese-style new heroes to the new skins, to the IOI mobile game's dual-platform data interoperability, including various operational activities with extremely favorable discounts, it could be seen that Finger Company and Longyu Group had lowered their posture and were completely licking up to domestic players.

As the saying goes, you don't hit a smiling face. Game manufacturers offered so many benefits with both hands, how could players refuse?

Just like some game platforms, no matter how bad they were, as long as they persisted in giving players free games every month, as long as they gave enough, players would collectively forget their bad deeds and help them clear their name.

After all, manufacturers engaged in price wars, and the players were the beneficiaries.

As a result, everyone was very happy.

Finger Company and Longyu Group were ambitious and wanted to burn money to win back the domestic market; domestic players cheered and jumped for joy, and could get a bunch of good skins for free; Pei Qian was even happier, this Eric was simply a lucky star sent by God to reduce the difficulty of losing money for him!

As the saying goes, it is impolite not to reciprocate.

Since the other party had already expressed this, it would be a bit unreasonable for Tengda not to do something.

Pei Qian immediately began to prepare Tengda's plan to give back to the players!