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Chapter 295: 293: Unexpected Coincidence

The unstoppable arrival of the new work week approached.

Today was the last day of September, and Cloud Dream inevitably convened its own monthly summary meeting.

As usual, the department heads reported their progress one by one.

If there were problems, Lincoln helped to solve them.

If not, it served as a means for the teams to share information.

First, Randall introduced the formal competition arrangement for “Assassins’ Alliance.”

He briefly talked about the coordination with various parties, especially the early communication with clubs and determination of schedule.

The competition would be divided into three stages: preliminary selection round, group stage, and finals, with a total time of no less than one month.

The champion prize was set at 3 million, with the runner-up receiving half that amount, and the third place receiving half of the runner-up’s prize.

This was the industry standard for top-level competition prize pools.

Lincoln was not very satisfied with the prize pool and wanted to double it to draw more attention to the competition.

However, he felt that doing so recklessly might damage the market, making it difficult for other game companies to host their own events, and in the long run, it could be detrimental.

So, Lincoln asked, “What is the highest prize pool for a domestic competition?”

“3-5 million,” Randall knew this well, “It was the prize pool for the ‘Blaze 2’ National Open Competition.”

Randall looked around at his former subordinates from the Blaze production team, “Everyone here participated to some extent.”

Impressive! Lincoln exclaimed internally.

He had originally planned to just match the existing record, but since that record was established by Randall’s team, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make some waves.

He looked at Randall, “How about it? Want to break your own record?” Randall shook his head, “There’s no need to waste a budget on such a false name.”

“How can it be a false name!” Lincoln replied seriously, “The highest prize pool record cannot remain with NetDragon! Trust me, 4 million!”

In Lincoln’s mind, simply increasing the prize pool was akin to being a foolish big spender.

But if the prize pool were increased while also stripping NetDragon of an honor, then that would be a great bargain!

Even if it was just an insignificant title, Lincoln felt it was worthwhile.

He could be so hot and cold!

Having no choice, Randall glanced at Lincoln, who was acting like a child, and sighed, “Alright.”

After all, Cloud Dream was not short on money, and the increase was not so significant that it would completely disrupt industry norms.

Besides, increasing the prize pool would be beneficial to the game’s publicity, the competition’s influence, and Cloud Dream’s brand image.

Since that was the case, if the boss wanted to add it, then they would!

Only then did Lincoln nod in satisfaction and gesture for Randall to continue.

However, that was all the input he had regarding the competition. Afterwards, he remained silent and even seemed to drift away in his thoughts.

It wasn’t until Randall completed his report and Fred began to report on “Speed Chase” progress that Lincoln snapped back to reality.

With the company’s move, the team’s expansion, and the completion of the rating review, Fred confidently guaranteed-

“The game will be online by the end of October!”

With that said, Lincoln looked at Randall, “In ‘Assassins’ Alliance,’ the mainland hotel event involving protagonist John Wick can begin.”

Randall nodded, “The related quest line has already been completed, and can be initiated at any time.”

“Alright, coordinate as needed,” Lincoln nodded and continued listening to reports from other departments.

The casual game team led by Little Chun was officially divided into two groups. One was responsible for the long-term operation of “Light Encounter” and the other for the development of “My World.”

The HR team led by Quentina operated at high speed for a week, quickly and efficiently filling the new office space.

Cheryl’s small team also joined in reporting on the situation of the “Cloud Dream Office Daily” video account.

Things were generally going well. After the number of fans increased thanks to the cat and dog videos, Cheryl decisively sought new opportunities.

While filming the cats and dogs, she pretended to “accidentally” pan the camera over a display showing the latest development of “Night City,” giving the audience a glimpse of the “latest” Night City information.

As expected, this was effective. The slowing rate of fan increase immediately sped up once again.

The more she did this, the faster the fan increase grew. Many fans had already tagged her as the “Cloud Dream Official Insider.”

Every time there was a leak in the video, there would be tens of thousands of likes on comments concerned about Cheryl being fined or even dismissed in the comment section.

But how could that be possible?

Please, Cloud Dream conducts all its business in the virtual world!

Everyone communicates and completes their tasks directly in the virtual world, so there’s absolutely no need to have a display in the real world showing the game development process in the virtual world. That would be doing too much, right?

— And it’s not like we’re allergic to the virtual world, and we have to develop in the real world.

There isn’t even such a development tool available!

In reality, all these “leaked images” were taken by Cheryl with the help of the operations team, and then went to the marketing department to be photographed.

There was no choice: only the marketing and human resources departments at Cloud Dream were still using real-world habits and had office computers, while the other departments were working entirely in the virtual world.

Meanwhile, the human resources department was busy recruiting new employees, working non-stop.

Most of the marketing department was on business trips, so workstations were vacant. Cheryl had to plead for them to use it as a shooting location.

Various topics were discussed, with everyone talking about their own department’s issues.

Luke even mentioned the progress of suing the video uploader, “Old Man Talks about Games,” saying that they’d already entered the pre-trial mediation stage.

Even though he wasn’t very interested in the content, Lincoln patiently listened to everything.

Finally, he simply encouraged everyone and urged the finance department to speed up the process and try to pay everyone’s salaries by tomorrow.

The monthly summary meeting of Cloud Dream officially ended amidst the cheers of the young employees.

On the other hand, NetDragon was also holding its monthly summary meeting.

Unlike Cloud Dream’s virtual meetings that allowed all employees to attend, NetDragon’s monthly summary meeting was still held in that familiar meeting room, with only mid-level managers and above attending.

Moreover, the atmosphere was completely different from Cloud Dream’s relaxed environment. The air in the meeting room was extremely tense.

“Sales of ‘Flying Dragon 3rd Generation’ have dropped significantly, with a month-on-month decrease of 30% ” Wesley reported with a serious expression.

“Flying Dragon 3rd Generation” hadn’t been on the market for very long, so if they followed the sales curve of the previous two generations, its monthly sales should still be growing steadily at this stage.

However, the emergence of virtual reality games had completely disrupted this trend.

Following a 50% plunge in sales last month, sales fell another 30% this month. Even though they had anticipated this and significantly reduced production capacity, a lot of inventory still piled up in the warehouse.

— The decline was much more severe than initially expected.

“In addition, the resignation of several key researchers has significantly slowed down the development of ‘Flying Dragon Fourth Generation.’ Whether it should be halted altogether, is up to you, boss.”

Having reported the problems faced by the marketing department, Wesley proceeded to report on the R&D department’s situation.

The reason for this situation was straightforward— he was temporarily acting as the department supervisor!

Normally, having a person with no scientific research background lead a research team would be completely absurd.

NetDragon could do this now because they simply couldn’t find any suitable candidates internally. With able candidates leaving one by one, they struggled to hire outside talent.

Since Cloud Dream had completely risen to the top, NetDragon’s recruitment difficulties had been growing!

This resulted in delays in the effort to crack the Mirage Production Line, causing Richard to regret that he had acted on Wesley’s suggestion.

Wesley sensed Richard’s anxiety and wavering, but there was no turning back now, especially since the production line had already been moved to the R&D center. Wouldn’t it be a wasted effort to give up at this point?

Left with no choice, he volunteered to use his “management” skills to select some researchers, reward them handsomely, and have them sign agreements to work on cracking the technology.

Even now, he still believed that Lincoln kept the technology secret and didn’t apply for a patent.

After all, they couldn’t find any relevant patents at the patent office.

So as long as they could crack it and obtain the most crucial microchip instruction set and matching software code, and then let the technical staff rewrite a new, less similar version based on the logic, as well as design a different UI interface for the software, NetDragon would have its own virtual reality console!

In Wesley’s view, as long as they had the existing answer, how hard could it be to write a different solution process?

As long as they maintained good confidentiality, not only would they avoid risks, but they might even be able to register the patent first!

Richard was aware of these things, but his managerial training prevented him from placing all his hope into an unknown outcome. So he said, “If it’s slower, it’s slower, but don’t stop.”

“Understood,” Wesley nodded, not saying anything more.

He’d report more in private.

After Wesley’s report, Jason, who had successfully taken over the position for two months already, began his work report.

“The development of ‘Blaze 3’ DLC is progressing smoothly and as planned,” Jason said confidently.

“Barring any unexpected issues, it should be online by the end of October!”