Three days later, at Xu Meng's home.
He welcomed Xu Lu and her colleague into his home, fighting off his sleepiness.
Xiao Meng, looking quite the part, brought over two cups of hot tea and placed them in front of them.
Xu Lu subconsciously reached out to take a cup, but was elbowed by her colleague, making her realize her mistake, and she quickly withdrew her hand.
— She had been a little tired these past few days and had accidentally treated Xiao Meng like a real person.
Xu Meng noticed their actions and felt slightly embarrassed, so he stood up and asked, "Would you two like something to drink?"
Xu Lu and her colleague shook their heads simultaneously.
They weren't here as guests, so after Xu Meng sat back down, they handed him a document.
"What's this?"
"Among the frog people outside your company that day, there were some with ulterior motives. We investigated and caught a few."
Xu Meng already knew about this.
He casually opened the document and asked, "Did you catch any big fish?"
Xu Lu and her colleague exchanged glances, and the colleague gestured for her, as the one who experienced it firsthand, to speak.
So Xu Lu told Xu Meng, "We caught eight people in the end. Five were just small fries, not very valuable."
"Of the remaining three, one is a spy from the Izumo Foreign Ministry's International Intelligence Bureau, one is a Xia countryman hired by Mossad, and the other is a Xia countryman hired by the CIA."
"CIA?" Xu Meng looked up, thinking of the organization he had clashed with before.
He had only blown up the servers of the CIA's cyber attack division and hadn't rashly attacked CIA headquarters.
But now, he suddenly felt a little restless.
Seeing his interest in the spy, Xu Lu began to explain the details to him:
"Initially, he tried to use his identity as an employee of Shiny Summer Country branch as cover, saying he was just assigned by the parent company to see what kind of person you are up close."
"So we gave him a shot of Dreamwalking Agent and designed a 'reporting to superiors' dream for him."
"Although the dream design had some loopholes and didn't extract much valuable information, it was easy to confirm his identity."
"They have no wariness or resistance to dreams."
Xu Lu's voice revealed a hint of joy as she said this.
Xu Meng exclaimed, "Wow, that's something."
Users who haven't undergone special training easily encounter a problem when using the original version of the [Dream Maker] — they don't realize they're dreaming.
In Xu Meng's opinion, this was a problem that needed to be solved, and he did solve it quickly.
But in the eyes of the National Security, this wasn't a problem at all, but a huge advantage!
They couldn't wait to use it.
What he cared about now was: "Shiny again?"
Three national-level intelligence agencies, not easy to mess with.
— It's not that he can't mess with them at all, but getting involved means a lot of messy things, why not pinch soft persimmons easily and happily?
Xu Lu didn't expect that Xu Meng's first reaction would be this, and smiled helplessly, "According to the interrogation results, Shiny is indeed trying to make peace with you on one hand, and also trying to target you on the other."
However, they came to find Xu Meng not to talk about these commercial matters.
After mentioning it briefly, they quickly skipped the topic of Shiny and continued to talk about the main business: hoping that he would strengthen some awareness of prevention and not casually contact a large number of players in reality like this.
"If you have to contact them, the game world is also fine!"
"You can also contact players all over the country, and even the world, at the same time, isn't this more in line with your concept?"
"Look at those days during the Spring Festival, you interacted with so many players all over the world, everyone was very happy."
… …
Xu Lu is also a young person, and can understand Xu Meng's mentality of liking to interact with players up close.
So she didn't advise Xu Meng not to contact players, but earnestly advised him: try to interact with players in the virtual world as much as possible.
It wasn't until Xu Meng nodded to indicate that he would seriously consider it that they completed their mission and left.
Xu Meng then leaned back and collapsed on the sofa.
Xiao Meng also smiled and leaned lazily on Xu Meng's body.
Xu Meng thought for a while and said, "Why don't we put in a little more effort and just kill Shiny?"
Xiao Meng was ultimately corrupted by Xu Meng, and didn't love peace at all. Hearing Xu Meng's words, she immediately nodded vigorously: "Okay, okay!"
"Xiao Meng will go and delete their database now?"
Xu Meng rubbed her head: "There's no need, this kind of method can't be used indiscriminately."
"Help me notify the person in charge of the International Affairs Department, terminate all negotiations with Shiny, and drive them out."
"Then… let me think."
Xu Meng recalled the current situation of Shiny.
Don't even mention 《Wolf of Fear》.
The reputation was already mixed, and it barely sold more than one million copies relying on the old players of the previous work. They could only hope that the subsequent updates or DLC could revive it and take a long-term strategy.
As a result, the server crashed and the player data jumped back to a month ago.
Not to mention game saves, many people's games were gone from their libraries.
These troublesome things not only made Shiny overwhelmed, but also annoyed Shiny's players to death.
The follow-up plan for 《Wolf of Fear》?
No one cares about it anymore.
The mass layoffs of Shengcai Entertainment have already begun.
Two consecutive highly anticipated masterpieces flopped, seriously dragging down Shiny's software business revenue.
After the server had a big problem, the revenue in this area plummeted instantly.
Software is like this, and hardware is the same.
Shiny's latest generation console was originally hoping for first-party masterpieces to escort it and boost sales.
Now it's good, two consecutive flops.
Players have no reason to buy a more expensive console with few adapted games.
Sales are so ugly that they can't be shown at all.
Software and hardware sales have plummeted at the same time, and there is no turnaround in the future. The confidence of users and employees has been greatly打击.
This is the current predicament faced by Shiny Interactive Entertainment.
— But even so, they still want to target Zh Meng.
Xu Meng had to call them awesome for being so stubborn.
In that case…
—
As soon as Xu Meng arrived at the office after breakfast, he called the director of the game platform operation department.
"Contact the studios that have game release plans this year, especially those with more famous and anticipated works, and tell them: as long as they don't log in to the Shiny game station, Zh Meng's channel share can be reduced by 10%."
Xu Meng hoped to further cut off the third-party game lineup of the Shiny game station.
But he didn't like to engage in exclusive agreements to force developers, so he chose to lure them with benefits.
— With the benefits of 《Evil Ghost!》 here, developers all over the world couldn't possibly not be tempted.
Next is the director of the marketing department.
"I want to do a Mirage Game Kit promotion."
Xu Meng said straight to the point.
Marketing Director Zhang Baiquan was stunned when he heard this, and even subconsciously confirmed it:
"What?"
"Hardware promotion."
Xu Meng repeated.
Zhang Baiquan couldn't understand: "Our hardware is selling very well, especially the holographic equipment, which is completely in short supply."
"Our main problem is not that the equipment can't be sold, but that the equipment produced is not enough to sell."
"Doing a promotion under this circumstance?"
Xu Meng nodded: "Yes."
Zhang Baiquan was confused.
The situation where he couldn't keep up with the boss's thinking completely appeared again.
Past experience told him: when this kind of situation occurs, just listen to the boss and do as he says.
So he said: "Okay, I understand, boss, what kind of activity do you want to do?"
"Trade-in."
Xu Meng replied.
Zhang Baiquan breathed a sigh of relief.
He was afraid that the boss would come up with something too outrageous that he couldn't understand.
Hearing that it was a conventional marketing method like [trade-in], he immediately felt relieved.
He even understood why the boss did this: "Is it to make it easier for our users to upgrade from VR glasses to holographic equipment, reducing the upgrade cost for players?"
"No problem, I'll do it right away."
Zhang Baiquan praised in his heart: As expected of the boss, he's too considerate of the players!
But to his surprise, Xu Meng shook his head and said, "Widen your horizons a little, don't always limit yourself to our users."
"Mutual assistance and common progress between friendly merchants can promote the healthy development of the industry."
"What do you mean, boss?"
Xu Meng's words made Zhang Baiquan even more confused.
"What I mean is…"
Xu Meng stopped beating around the bush, "Hardware trade-in, don't just focus on our own products."
"The Shiny game station is completely outdated."
"Continuing to leave it in the hands of players will only take up space, why not exchange it for vouchers and use a more favorable price to exchange for advanced Mirage Game Kits."
"This is not only convenient for players, but also helps friendly merchants screen out 'disloyal' users, isn't it a win-win situation?"
"What do you think?"
What do I think?
Zhang Baiquan slowly widened his eyes.
I think this trick is too ruthless!
This is not a trade-in at all? This is simply "eliminating" Shiny's users!
The expression on Zhang Baiquan's face quickly changed from shock to excitement: "Boss, are we going to kick Shiny out of the Summer Country market?"
"It's kicking them out of the global market."
Xu Meng corrected, "But in the beginning, we can start with the Asia-Pacific region first."
"Understood!"
Zhang Baiquan patted his chest and assured Xu Meng that he would complete the event plan as quickly as possible.
He did do it —
In less than five days, the event was launched on the market along with the latest batch of holographic equipment.
This immediately caused an uproar in the gaming circle!
