Chapter 155 Erik's Dilemma

Of course, Erik wasn't being kind; he was just worried that President Pei would suddenly change his mind halfway through the event preparations.

If President Pei reneged midway, then Erik's preparations would be for nothing, and nobody wanted to waste their time.

And if President Pei verbally agreed to these terms without even finishing reading them, then the possibility of him changing his mind halfway was actually very high, even inevitable.

That's why Erik specifically reminded him.

"Well… alright, I'll take another look," President Pei said on the other end of the phone, sounding somewhat helpless.

Two minutes later, President Pei said, "Okay, I've read it again."

"Overall, there's really nothing wrong with these terms. I completely agree."

"Of course, if you absolutely have to say there's something inappropriate, there is one thing."

Erik breathed a sigh of relief.

That's more like it!

You should at least put on a show of haggling. If you just accept everything wholesale like that, who would dare to cooperate with you?

Who doesn't know that President Pei is treacherous and full of bad ideas?

President Pei paused slightly and continued, "The cooperation method seems a bit problematic to me, mainly because it's not written clearly enough."

"It says here: 'Register an account for another game through a section in this game and bind the two accounts.' So, does it have to be a newly registered account? Can't it be an old account from before?"

"As far as I know, many GOG players have IOI accounts, but they just haven't logged in for a long time."

"Considering that registering an account requires binding an email, phone number, and ID card, and this information cannot be used to bind multiple accounts, it might be a bit troublesome and unnecessary to register a new account if you already have an IOI account."

"In my opinion, players who don't have an IOI account can register a new one; if they already have an account, then they can just link their original account."

Erik was stunned for a moment, then carefully considered the issue raised by President Pei.

It seemed… that was indeed the case.

There used to be many players who played both GOG and IOI, but gradually, many of them leaned towards GOG.

But even so, their accounts on IOI were still there.

According to the current registration rules, email addresses, phone numbers, and ID card numbers generally cannot be used to bind multiple accounts, especially phone numbers, which are often used as the unique identifier for an account.

Once you lose your password, you can easily change it by sending a verification code to your phone.

So, if a GOG player already has an IOI account and wants to participate in this event, would they have to register again?

That obviously wouldn't be appropriate.

For those players who have already accumulated some wealth in IOI, it would be too inhumane to prevent them from continuing to play their old accounts and force them to create new ones in order to get the rewards. It would create a huge obstacle for them to switch from GOG to IOI.

This clearly went against IOI's original intention in participating in this event.

So, as President Pei said, they shouldn't limit the event to new accounts only, but should expand the scope to all accounts, so that those old players who had played IOI before could also take this opportunity to return.

President Pei's words made a lot of sense, but Erik was silent again.

Because he felt that something was even more wrong!

When President Pei said earlier that there was "something inappropriate," Erik had breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that President Pei was finally starting to haggle and things were becoming normal.

But now he realized that President Pei wasn't haggling at all! He was clearly thinking about things from IOI's perspective!

Things had become even more bizarre!

Based on Erik's understanding of President Pei, he felt that the most correct approach now was to not even study this plan, and not even think about President Pei's motives behind doing this, because that would most likely be meaningless.

He should just hang up the phone and refuse to cooperate!

But the problem was that Erik didn't have much autonomy now; he was just a mouthpiece.

What's more, this event was global in scope, and he was only the head of the Greater China region. Whether or not this event was held, and how it was specifically held, was not up to him; he had to ask for instructions.

Erik wanted to persuade the higher-ups to give up on this cooperation, but he couldn't think of a suitable reason.

After struggling for a while, Erik said, "Okay, President Pei, I'll give this suggestion to the higher-ups for feedback."

"If there are no problems, we'll formally sign the agreement and start the cooperation."

Erik had also figured it out. Since he was just a mouthpiece now, he should be aware of his role as a mouthpiece.

Report the situation truthfully and let the higher-ups make the decision.

If something really went wrong, the blame couldn't be placed on a mouthpiece, right?

…

After hanging up the phone, Pei Qian breathed a sigh of relief.

Fortunately, there was finally some good news!

Every time it came to this critical juncture, he had to rely on his good brother Erik.

Last weekend, *Eternal Reincarnation* unexpectedly became a hit.

Although Pei Qian had prepared for the worst, Qiao Laoshi's fancy operations had forcefully pushed *Eternal Reincarnation*'s evaluation up another level, causing it to repeatedly teeter on the edge of Pei Qian's tolerance!

But for Pei Qian, these things were no longer important.

A misfortune happening once is a tragedy, but happening ten thousand times becomes routine…

The only thing Pei Qian cared about now was whether *Eternal Reincarnation* could fulfill its initial mission, which was to reduce the sales of *Islands of Salvation* to less than one-fifth of its sales in the month after its release, so that Pei Qian could happily make *Islands of Salvation* free.

Originally, Pei Qian was full of confidence, but now it seemed that the situation was unclear again.

It was all Qiao Laoshi's fault!

In his video, Qiao Liang had closely linked *Eternal Reincarnation* and *Islands of Salvation*, saying that they were two sides of the same coin and were complete only when combined.

This directly led to many players who had not yet purchased *Islands of Salvation* buying both *Eternal Reincarnation* and *Islands of Salvation* together.

And the official platform also launched a bundle at a very opportune time, making Pei Qian's situation even worse…

In short, whether *Islands of Salvation* could be made free depended on that one last push next month.

Pei Qian now wanted to directly issue an announcement, telling players that as long as they didn't buy *Islands of Salvation* this month, it would be free next month!

But this matter involved the system's internal rules and couldn't be explicitly stated.

Today was Monday, and Pei Qian was originally quite despairing about the current state of *Eternal Reincarnation*. Fortunately, good news came from Erik.

The higher-ups of the Dayak Corporation had made some outrageous demands.

But this was exactly what Pei Qian wanted!

In particular, the fact that "GOG players have to play IOI for a certain amount of time and make a small amount of purchases before they can receive specific rewards in GOG" made Pei Qian particularly satisfied.

In simple terms, players spend money in IOI to receive rewards in GOG.

This was equivalent to GOG paying out of its own pocket to encourage players to recharge and spend money in IOI.

The great art of monetary transfer!

Therefore, Pei Qian had agreed without hesitation, and had even considerately pointed out a small bug to the other party, making the event's effect even better.

Erik had to ask for instructions, and it would take at least tomorrow for both parties to reach a consensus.

After that, they would have to sign an agreement and develop the corresponding event sections on their respective clients, as well as connect some data between the two games, including account information…

Fortunately, these things were not particularly complicated. By the end of the month or the beginning of next month, this GOG "blood transfusion" event to IOI should be up and running.

If he could help his good brother hang on for a little longer, Pei Qian himself would be able to hang on for a little longer as well.

"Well… Dawn Games Platform won't be issuing a work report, but according to the previous plan, the Appraiser system seems to be officially launched today."

"There's no need to be nervous. It's still in the preliminary preparation stage. The first batch of Appraisers will have to be selected, and that won't happen until next month at the earliest."

Two weeks ago, Dawn Games Platform had released an announcement about the Game Appraisers and started to make major changes to the platform's recommendation mechanism.

Many players were eager to try it out, and started to grind game time on the platform and write game reviews in private, waiting for the platform's update to be completed before uploading these game reviews.

The selection of Appraisers mainly used three standards: game time and quantity, number of game trophies, and number of likes received for game appraisals.

These three standards had an undisclosed algorithm behind them, mainly to filter out those players who maliciously inflated their ratings.

For example, if a player kept a niche game running and used it to grind a high amount of game time, but they didn't have any valuable trophies and their game review articles were ignored, then their game time would be useless no matter how long it was.

For those serious players, the way to obtain Appraiser qualification was actually very simple: play more of a certain type of game, grind for trophies and get rare achievements, and write more high-quality game reviews.

And today, Dawn Games Platform's update was officially completed, and it should usher in a peak period of player activity and a large amount of game review content being uploaded.

"The initial popularity is actually expected."

"After all, the Appraiser system is a system that looks very good, and it's impeccable in all aspects."

"The key is, after operating for a period of time, whether people's nature will be exposed under the temptation of benefits, whether the powerful authority to arrange recommendations will cause internal strife among players, and then cause the entire platform's rules and systems to become unbalanced and develop in an uncontrollable direction…"

Pei Qian decided to take a look at the current situation of Dawn Games Platform.

He didn't expect it to be "unattended," but only hoped that the platform's popularity could be within a reasonable and controllable range.

As long as there were no problems, even if the popularity steadily increased for a period of time, that would be a minor issue.

"Well, the number of active users on the website has obviously increased, and the average online time has also increased."

"New players are pouring into each game, which may lead to more games being listed on Dawn Games Platform… but there shouldn't be too many obvious changes in the short term."

"So many review articles have been updated. How many reviews have these players written during this time? Are they all so free?"

"Fortunately, there aren't many really reliable reviews. Most of them are just filling the numbers."

"Hmm? Wait, what the hell is this!"

Pei Qian had been constantly reassuring himself that everything was within expectations and was not a big problem.

However, after seeing this last message, he couldn't stay calm.

"Famous game zone up-loader, game review expert Qiao Laoshi, and 37 other famous game reviewers have joined Dawn Games Platform!"