646 International Invitational Tournament

September 10th, Saturday…

The Management Trainees had their regular meeting, but there was no news worth taking note of.

Ever since He An posted that long post on Weibo about Struggle's deeper meaning, the game's sales and reputation had been ballooning.

Once Struggle was termed a Product of the Gods, many UP Masters on Aili Island began to give live commentaries on it. Due to the time difference, most UP Masters only uploaded one or two episodes. However, a couple of more popular UP Masters saw terrifying effects from their large fanbase. Almost immediately, their fans clicked on their pages and gave them millions of views.

Although many people were watching the playthroughs online, a significant number of people were also buying the game after watching those videos.

They each had different mindsets.

Some thought that, despite having watched others play it, the game had a variety of options. Thus, they could only experience it best if they played it themselves.

Others thought that it did not matter whether they played it or not, but they had to make sure they owned a classic game like that. That would make them happier about their game collection.

Still, others thought that everyone made choices based on the world that they liked more. If they liked a game, a film, or a book; they had to spend money to support it. The more supporters there were, the more such works would be created.

If they thought that something was not bad but didn't support it, there would be less of it in the future, and they wouldn't be able to complain.

Similarly, if they thought that something was not bad and showed their support, there would be more and more of such good products. The credit would belong to all supporters. Even if they simply praised the brand or product, they could still say that they did something.

On top of that, the official platform had done a lot to publicize Struggle.

Hu Xianbin and the others were rushing to create an English version and send it overseas.

That was because the game had an international background to begin with, and they spoke in English. All the characters inside had Western features, and so the game would be that much more acceptable to a foreign audience.

Of course, before it was released, no one knew whether a foreign audience would enjoy the game or not. No one knew if the foreigners would be able to decipher the meaning behind the game without a proper interpretation of it.

Still, there was no harm in trying. They could sell as many copies as they could.

If Tomorrow is Beautiful could succeed overseas, there was a chance that Struggle would be able to as well.

Pei Qian was helpless in all of this.

He could not bear to watch anymore!

The gamers insisted on buying the game, and the official platform insisted on recommending it. What could Pei Qian do?

If the game's domestic sales had collapsed and its reputation had fallen apart, perhaps Pei Qian could have persuaded Hu Xianbin not to create a foreign version and to admit that it had failed. However, the game had done exceedingly well in the local market. Why should Pei Qian disagree with Hu Xianbin about creating a foreign version to test the market…?

This was disastrous.

Pei Qian felt that he had fallen into a reverse Tacitus Trap.

The Tacitus Trap referred to something that Tacitus had said while critiquing a Roman Emperor: once the Emperor became someone that everybody hated, everyone detested whatever he did—good or bad.

Pei Qian was faced with the reverse situation: once Tengda became a popular corporation that everyone liked, everyone loved whatever it did—good or bad.

Of course, Tengda couldn't really do anything bad because its hands were tied by the system. It could not scrimp and save on material or produce shoddy work. It had to maintain a certain quality and ensure that its price was kept within an acceptable range that would be determined based on that quality.

So, Pei Qian could only think of different ways to dissuade everyone from buying Tengda's products. However, under the effect of the reverse Tacitus Trap, everyone was taking his ways as more meaningful than they were…

Pei Qian was exhausted.

…

After the meeting, Pei Qian immediately rushed towards Great World Shopping Mall in the center of the city. Today was the first official day of GOG's first global invitational tournament!

Before this, Pei Qian had been kept so busy by Struggle that he had not had the time to see the set-up even after it was done.

However, it did not matter whether he had managed to or not. In any case, the main purpose of the competition was to burn money. Pei Qian only cared that they achieved that as much as possible.

Before arriving at the competition grounds, Pei Qian checked the competition schedule that Wang Xiaobin had sent to him on his cell phone.

There were a total of sixteen teams taking part in the competitions this time. Eight were from China, and the rest were from overseas.

That ratio really did not make sense, but the organizing team had rushed to plan the competition, and so they had no other choice.

They had chosen the oldest teams from overseas to compete with. All of them were wealthy and managed well, and each individual member was strong.

The lousier ones had not been invited at all, for fear that the competition would become boring.

Foreign teams had only been invited to ensure that the competition gained a certain amount of attention from all over the world. After all, most players would support their own countries or states before anyone else.

The other half was local teams so that the competition would be worth watching.

Simply put, the local teams would be in charge of putting on a show while the foreign teams would be in charge of bringing in the viewers.

Compared to the previous competition, there was double the number of teams. Thus, the competition was to take longer this time.

The first round of games would be held from September 10th to September 13th.

The second round of games would be held from September 15th to September 18th.

The top eight teams would be determined from September 20th to September 21st.

The quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals would be held from September 23rd to September 25th.

From the point that the top eight teams are to be determined, the competition would take on a 'best of five' model.

Within two-odd weeks and three weekends, the entire competition would end. There would be time to rest between every round, but only for one day.

As for why they had to rush this… of course, it was because Pei Qian wanted to spend all the money on the competition before September 30th.

If he left it to next month, how would he deal with that sum of money? Would he still be able to incur losses during this cycle?

Still, most gamers were happy with the competition schedule.

The game would go on for sixteen days, with rest on the 14th, 19th, and 22nd. They could sit back and enjoy high-level performances!

Of course, once the scale of the competition increased and they changed venues, the rest time between the semi-finals and finals would likely extend up to a week. After all, that would keep the competition the hot topic. Putting the events on weekends as much as possible would also ensure more viewers.

Nevertheless, waiting one entire week to watch the next stage was torturous to the audience.

All in all, Pei Qian and the audience were all quite happy with the competition schedule.

Ten minutes later, Pei Qian arrived at the competition grounds.

Great World was a large shopping mall in Jingzhou, just like Huanyu Tianjie. It was different from Huanyu Tianjie in that it contained huge multi-purpose halls, where large-scale competitions could be held.

This time, GOG had rented the largest multi-purpose hall in Great World, which took up the entire top floor. Rent cost thirty thousand yuan per day. Although it was considered cheap compared to rent in first-tier cities, the price was enough to catch the attention of most companies in Jingzhou.

The multi-purpose hall on the top-most level of the shopping mall was about 4,500 square meters large and twelve meters tall. Its maximum capacity was 1,800 people. Since Great World was located in the most prosperous district in Jingzhou, transport was convenient and train stations were everywhere. On the whole, this place was the most suitable location.

Decorations had mainly been done on the stage, and they had begun about a month ago. Now, they were all done.

Pei Qian alighted from his car outside Great World and then looked up to see the gigantic promotional poster on the outside of the building.

On it were several iconic heroes from GOG, as well as the words 'GOG's First International Invitational Tournament'. Of course, Modest and Ruan, the hot favorite heroes, were featured among the heroes as well.

Pei Qian looked helplessly at Modest on the poster, feeling that the joke was becoming increasingly unbearable.

In the future, as GOG became popular in other countries around the world, he might see Modest everywhere he looked.

From the entrance to the hall, there were elements of the competition scattered around, directing Pei Qian to the right location. There were flags of the various teams and large posters of the various heroes. The audience only had to follow those elements to get to the competition ground, get their entry tickets checked, and enter.

The tickets were priced extremely low this time as well. Even tickets for the finals did not exceed a hundred yuan. After all, Pei Qian was here to spend money. The cheaper the tickets, the better.

Clearly, he had to put measures in place to prevent scalpers from taking advantage of the situation as well. After all, selling tickets at a low price would invite many scalpers to take action. Using information from TPDb and Tengda account data, Pei Qian could filter scalpers out as much as possible.

At the same time, all tickets were sold with the purchaser's name and were non-transferrable. If people could not make it on the day itself, they could ask for a refund. Others could look for spare tickets through official channels, but private transactions were prohibited.

Pei Qian followed the crowd into the competition ground and quietly walked to the back row, prepared to observe how GOG's international invitational tournament would go.

However, this time, Pei Qian felt more relaxed.

That was because he had no expectations of the game to begin with. Whether it became popular or not did not seem to matter. In any case, it probably would not be able to affect settlement.

The structure of the stage made him think about Fish-Catching Internet Cafe 3.0's Live Esports Museum.

Obviously, Xiao Peng had been organizing frequent competitions in the internet cafe while managing the Live Esports Museum. Thus, he had accumulated a lot of precious experience which he could apply to the international invitational tournament.

There was a large screen above the stage, which would project images of the competition. On either side of the large screen were two longer screens, which displayed each team's heroes and line-up.

There was also one small screen in front of the team members, which recorded each of their expressions.

At that moment, the competition had not officially started yet. Thus, Pei Qian whipped out his phone to check the situation on various platforms.

Local live-stream platforms had already set up a dedicated room for GOG's international invitational tournament. Larger streaming platforms like Waiwai and ZZ were already experiencing huge traffic because of how popular the competition was among the audience.

That was largely because GOG had organized a local invitational competition before, and ZZ had organized a Performance Competition as well. GOG had already gained a lot of traction within the live-streaming circle. Now that the international invitational tournament was taking place, GOG only needed a little extra publicity to draw in large crowds.

After all, this was akin to a huge carnival.

On top of that, Shang Yang Games had also contacted live-streaming platforms overseas to stream the international invitational tournament.

Although the game's popularity overseas could not be compared to that in China, it was still significant.

On one hand, it was because GOG had conducted aggressive publicity overseas. Ever since the Multifaceted Man was released, many foreign players began paying attention to the game. Gamers of both client-side games and mobile games alike were familiar with GOG. On the other hand, it was also because eight foreign veteran clubs were taking part in the international invitational tournament as well. Naturally, this had become a topic of discussion in the foreign esports circles.

On top of that, Shang Yang Games had specially produced a promotional video for GOG's first international invitational tournament.

In the promotional video, Lin Wan appeared as the Director of Shang Yang Games and the person-in-charge of GOG's overseas operations. With fluent English and a confident expression, she helped to win over many fans for the game.

"GOG's international invitational tournament is by far the biggest GOG competition yet, and it's about to become the biggest esports competition as well. We have esports athletes from all over the world, and a total of sixteen teams gathered in Jingzhou. They will fight for the most generous esports championship in history.

"Tengda's mission has always been to go all out and achieve perfection. We have invested a huge amount of money in this international invitational tournament to prove our determination to promote esports and build an esports ecosystem.

"Here and now, I promise this to GOG players all over the world: We will strive to build GOG into the strongest competitive online game in the future. Please be our witness!"

Lin Wan looked very natural and exuded confidence on the screen.

However, all the netizens overseas understood the hidden message in her words.

Obviously, she was declaring war against IOI!