Chapter 1367 The Worst-Case Scenario for IOI

December 16th, Sunday.

Pei Qian woke up and was completely dumbfounded by the trending topics on various hot search lists.

“#Support FV Team Transitioning to GOG#???”

“How did this even become a trending topic?”

“This is too outrageous!”

Pei Qian went to sleep after watching the FV team's match yesterday and didn't pay much attention to the discussions on the forums.

The only thing that made him feel gratified about yesterday's match was that the FV team finally didn't say "Thank you, President Pei" after winning the championship.

As for whether the FV team won or lost, Pei Qian could accept either outcome; it wasn't a big deal.

But after waking up and casually browsing his phone, seeing this trending topic, Pei Qian couldn't keep calm anymore.

What's going on?

Why support the FV team transitioning to GOG?

At first, Pei Qian thought that this topic was started by GOG players to stir up trouble and undermine IOI.

But after clicking into the topic and looking at everyone's discussion, he realized that he was wrong.

After yesterday's match, GOG players were enthusiastically discussing the wonderful civil war between the two domestic teams at the Global Invitational Tournament. They didn't pay attention to the FV team at all at first.

Only some informants ran to the GOG forum to congratulate President Pei on winning both the GOG and IOI championships again, celebrating the universal joy.

The first to change the tone were the IOI forums.

If the FV team had lost, digging up the old grudges of Finger Company changing the version and secretly giving balance masters to other teams would have seemed a bit sour, but now that the FV team had won, then the new and old grudges had to be properly addressed!

Because in e-sports, only winning gives you the right to speak, and you can scold people with confidence.

The FV team had proved that they could still win the championship under the version targeting of the organizer, Finger Company, but this also meant that they would be targeted even more next year.

So IOI players were unhappy and felt it wasn't worth it for the FV team, so they started a topic hoping that they would switch to GOG, and as players, of course, they would switch with them.

This topic was originally only being hotly discussed in the IOI circle, but when many GOG players saw it, they thought, this is a good thing! We welcome it with both hands!

You IOI players have clearly made a wrong decision, and the mistake is that you decided too late!

You should have switched to GOG last year!

So, GOG players naturally happily added fuel to the fire, pushing the topic #Support FV Team Transitioning to GOG# to a hot topic overnight, even surpassing the championship topics of the two world competitions of GOG and IOI.

Even under FV team's Weibo celebrating the championship, the top few hot comments were unanimously feeling that it wasn't worth it for them and hoping that they would switch to GOG sooner.

Seeing these contents, Pei Qian was dumbfounded.

This was completely an unexpected event!

What would happen if the FV team really switched to GOG?

You should know that the FV team is a two-time world champion in IOI, with two sets of champion skins.

If the champion skins haven't even been made yet and they've already switched to GOG, wouldn't that be equivalent to rubbing Finger Company's face on the ground?

What to do? Should he do something?

Pei Qian was, after all, the boss of the FV team. Whatever he said, whether it was to let the FV team come to GOG or stay in IOI, the FV team would mostly listen.

But Pei Qian considered it and decided to ignore it.

If the FV team wanted to switch to GOG, then they could switch; if they didn't want to, then they didn't have to.

This matter should be up to them.

If the FV team really felt wronged staying in IOI, then Pei Qian couldn't bear to force them to stay there.

Even if the FV team really came to GOG and brought over a group of players, it would mostly be some players from the IOI national server, and there weren't many IOI national server players left anyway.

So Pei Qian didn't continue to dwell on this matter.

Since the GOG and IOI world competitions were over, then this matter could be turned over, and he should continue to worry about other things...

...

2 PM European time, 8 PM domestic time.

In the hotel where the Finger Company staff were staying, Christian, Kim Young, and several Finger Company executives were holding an emergency meeting.

Logically speaking, Kim Young shouldn't be attending this level of meeting, but the problem was that the issue to be discussed mainly concerned the national server.

After the FV team won the championship yesterday, the online舆论 (yúlùn, public opinion) exploded domestically, but the activity of national server players actually decreased!

Today, the operations staff of the IOI national server had already sent a message saying that the player activity on the second day after the championship had plummeted compared to the same period!

This was even with the IOI national server already having various benefits such as half-price champion skins and extra experience for playing games.

And today was Sunday, so there should have been even more players.

For other regions, it was fine that the championship was snatched away by the FV team, making it difficult to stimulate the players' enthusiasm, but why did the activity of the national server players also plummet? Even more severely than other places?

This was completely unacceptable!

You should know that there weren't many IOI national server players left anyway. If it continued like this, it would be hard to say whether there would be enough people to start a game on the national server.

If it was a single-player game, it wouldn't matter how many online active players there were, because everyone would be playing their own games without affecting each other; but in MOBA games, the player's gaming experience completely depended on the total number of players. If there were too few people, it would be impossible to match opponents of similar strength, and low-level players would easily be crushed, which would further accelerate the collapse of the entire pyramid structure from the bottom up!

If it continued like this, the national server might have to shut down in a few months.

Even if they gritted their teeth and stubbornly held on, it wouldn't make sense. It would take ten minutes to queue for a game, which was essentially no different from shutting down.

This emergency meeting was to solve these two main problems.

First, how to prevent IOI national server players from continuing to leave?

Second, how to resolve the negative comments online about encouraging the FV team to switch to GOG?

Christian and Kim Young, as the heads of the IOI national server, naturally couldn't escape and were pulled into the meeting immediately.

Kim Young sat in a corner of the conference table, listening to the Finger Company executives and Christian chattering in English, feeling a bit hopeless.

His English was quite good, but he still felt uncomfortable in this kind of situation.

He had originally thought that the IOI World Championship was over, and he could take a plane back tomorrow, and there wouldn't be any major tasks in the near future.

He never expected that the pot would fly over before he even flew away!

He wasn't even in the country, but he still had to take the blame for the problems in the IOI national server. It was ridiculous.

Kim Young felt that he was really unlucky.

Before, he felt very lucky to be selected into the IOI cooperation department, because it was a key project designated by the senior executives of Longyu Group, but now he had deeply realized that this was a bottomless pit!

Since joining this department, he had never had a moment of peace!

Serious problems would always appear in unexpected places.

It was impossible not to deal with them, but it was also impossible to handle them!

Take this matter as an example. Kim Young couldn't figure out how to deal with it even if he racked his brains.

The only solution he could think of was for Finger Company to honestly admit defeat, and then in the next version, adjust the content that had been cut from the FV team back, making it look like "we are indeed seriously doing data balancing, not targeting the FV team."

But was that possible?

If Finger Company did this, it might be possible to win back some IOI national server players and keep the FV team, but it might also cause another series of losses.

Would foreign players and teams think that this was succumbing to the power of domestic players, and would they feel that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"? What if foreign players also threatened to quit the game?

If the heroes that the FV team was good at were strengthened again, and the FV team really got a three-peat next year, would other regions still play?

You should know that Finger Company's current strategy was to let the IOI national server coast along, focusing on the European market. This time, they had finally supported a CEM, who was only one step away from the championship. If they changed everything back, wouldn't all their previous efforts be wasted?

The current situation was that the IOI national server players felt that they had been treated unfairly and didn't want to play with you anymore; but the European and American players, who couldn't get the championship year after year and couldn't see any hope, were also very unhappy.

If there was only IOI in the world, then they could only blame themselves for being too weak.

But GOG's expansion in the European and American markets was also very strong, and the leagues had also been established. The European and American teams had gone from being crushed last year to entering the top four this year, which was also a significant improvement.

Since they couldn't get the championship anyway, what difference did it make to European players where they went?

GOG was ahead of IOI in many aspects, and its momentum in recent months was obviously much stronger than IOI's. It looked more worthy of investment and more promising than IOI.

So, a very strange situation appeared in IOI: everyone felt that they should be taken care of.

If they continued to target the FV team, the national server players wouldn't do it; if they changed it back, the European and American players wouldn't do it.

This fundamental contradiction could not be solved at all. From the moment Finger Company specifically cut the FV team's heroes in order to let the European and American teams win the championship, this ending was already doomed.

If the CEM team could win the championship, it might be possible to keep the European side. But now, they couldn't please either side.

After everyone discussed it back and forth, they were all talking about some very superficial solutions, such as making the champion skins look better, doing more activities to promote the FV team in the country, and changing the heroes that the FV team was good at back a little in the spring split version before considering whether to cut them in the World Championship.

But everyone present was very clear that these measures couldn't fundamentally solve the problem, and even if they could have an effect, the effect would mostly be limited.

After a period of silence, Christian said, "Maybe we should prepare for the worst in advance."

"If the national server players are lost to the point where it is difficult to operate normally, and the value of the ICL League is on the verge of collapse, what should we do?"