On top of that, Pei Qian also bought the most expensive Customer Service Team, which offered the best service and best at Tai Chi[1]. Although Pei Qian still did not need to pay that much money each month, at least he could increase the company’s spending.
Even so, Pei Qian felt helpless!
Pei Qian felt completely suicidal.
He could not finish spending the seventy to eighty thousand yuan left in the System Funds.
Over these two weeks, no matter how hard Pei Qian tried to spend the money, the System Funds still exceeded a million yuan!
There was some good news: as the number of new players kept decreasing, Ghost General’s income finally fell drastically after three months. This week, it only made about two hundred thousand yuan.
The bad news was that Ocean Stronghold was starting to make a profit. This week alone, it made more than four hundred thousand yuan!
There was even worse news: this could just be the beginning.
Ocean Stronghold was not the same as Ghost General; both of these games were vastly different!
Ghost General was only popular among the people who played mobile games. What’s more, because it was priced so low, the most people could spend was thirty yuan on the permanent card. That was why the income did not last long.
Ocean Stronghold was different.
As a successful FPS game, Ocean Stronghold now attracts the largest group of gamers: those on game clients!
What’s more, it was free-of-charge and extremely easy to share with others.
The in-game price of the Red Kilin was also extremely high. Although not many players bought the weapon—as long as one person bought it, it would match the amount of money spent by 88 ordinary players of Ghost General.
The income that Ocean Stronghold would generate would probably only increase.
Pei Qian had thought about updating Ghost General and Ocean Stronghold and then spending a load of money to buy a bunch of art resources for the games. This would allow him to get rid of more money.
However, if he updated the games, he needed to introduce new paywalls as well. That was the System’s rules.
Furthermore, in the week before settling the accounts, there could not be any unannounced products. Otherwise, the settlement date would be postponed.
Thus, if he wanted to update the games or do anything similar, he had to wait until the following week.
The System permitted other types of expenses such as for celebrations or bonuses. However, there was a limit. He could only spend a reasonable amount on these things!
In other words, was it possible to achieve a loss within two days?
It’ll be extremely difficult!
Still, Pei Qian did not lose all hope.
He had already thought about it before. Now, he only had two choices:
First, he could stop spending System Funds and wait for the accounts to be closed.
The benefit of this was that he could transfer about six thousand yuan into his Personal Wealth.
However, the drawback was that the target quota to hit before the System Funds would provide supplementary funds was about a million yuan or so. Now, there was already that much money in the System Funds. That meant… there would be no need for the System to provide supplementary funds. This would result in the same outcome as the previous time the accounts were settled.
The second choice was to continue spending System Funds as much as possible without affecting the settlement date.
The benefit of this was that no matter how much Pei Qian spent, the System Funds would definitely provide System Funds. That was comforting.
The drawback was that it could result in a reduction of Pei Qian’s Personal Wealth. Five thousand could reduce to three thousand or two thousand yuan.
However, if he could spend to the point that he had less than 494,000 yuan left remaining, he would be able to make more profit than he was making now!
After spending a long time thinking about this, Pei Qian finally figured it out.
He had to continue spending!
As for how he would do so…
He had to think of new methods!
…
Over time, Pei Qian understood more and more about the system.
According to the rules of the system, the System Funds could only be used for the maintenance and management of the company. On the other hand, there were no limits imposed on spending Personal Wealth whatsoever.
Still, there was no one set way of using the System Funds either. Pei Qian was free to do whatever he wanted within the rules and boundaries set out!
Take a simple meal, for example.
When Pei Qian was eating his own meals or treating his friends to meals, he could not use the System Funds.
However, when he organized an employee gathering, he could use the System Funds.
Nevertheless, he could not organize gatherings very frequently. He could not turn every meal into an office gathering; neither could he exceed the set limit.
For instance, they just had an office gathering the day before, and so they were not allowed to have another gathering that day… unless there was a good reason.
It was just like the reasons that Pei Qian had come up with previously: learning exchange, celebrating the research and development of a new game, etc. All of these were valid reasons.
Pei Qian performed relatively well in this aspect. The judgment of rule violations and limitations on the use of System Funds were all very situational.
There was no hard restriction on many things. Sometimes, if framed in a certain way, he would be able to do supposedly restricted things.
In the same way, he came up with excuses for the house and car that he rented as well as the high-class suit and high-end Alienware that he bought. He found ways to change his personal desires into the needs of the company.
Of course, these excuses were not omnipotent.
Did Pei Qian want to buy a pair of sports shoes for tens of thousands of yuan? Did he want tickets to one of his favorite singers’ concerts? Did he want to buy high-end cosmetics or an expensive sports car? Did he want to tip a female anchorwoman?
Since he could not do any of the above under the company’s name, the System would not allow him to pay for them using System Funds.
Now, Pei Qian had 1,100,000 yuan in the System Funds. He pondered for a moment and then made the decision to spend as much as he could!
Pei Qian was helpless the last time they settled the accounts because he was alone.
Now, things were different. He had his loveable employees!
Pei Qian had already come up with a detailed plan.
Once he confirmed it, Pei Qian called Assistant Xin into his own office.
“Have you edited the salary standards?” Pei Qian asked.
Xin Hailu nodded and said, “Yes, Boss Pei. I’ve already done everything according to your instructions.”
“First, I adjusted the salaries of all employees according to their ranks. The supervisor’s salary has been increased by 60%, and the others have all been increased by 30%.
“Apart from this, I’ve also rolled out the project bonus system. 15% of the net profits we earn from games would be distributed as a project bonus to all employees involved in the research and development of the game.
“We have also added employee welfare benefits. Each month, every employee will get a shopping card worth a thousand yuan.”
Pei Qian nodded and said, “Very good.”
All these expenses, from the salary adjustments to the project bonuses, were all the maximum amounts that the System permitted at the moment.
Pei Qian wanted to give the employees even more money, but the System would not allow it. This was the best he could do.
Before Ocean Stronghold was published, Pei Qian thought about distributing project bonuses and shopping cards. However, he could not justify such expenses.
This was because Ghost General was created entirely by Pei Qian. There was no w
ay he could justify distributing the profits earned from Ghost General to Huang Sibo and the others.
However, this time was different. Ocean Stronghold was created by Huang Sibo, Bao Xu, and the design team. They slogged their guts out for the game. It would be completely reasonable for Pei Qian to distribute bonuses!
What’s more, now that the company was earning so much profit, it was understandable that he would use the resources to distribute shopping cards to the employees in order to take care of their welfare.
Assistant Xin held onto a little notebook and said, “The salaries should be paid out by today. Do you have any other instructions?”
Pei Qian looked relieved. Once the salaries were paid out, the System Funds would be reduced by more than three hundred thousand yuan.
Now that he had given out the project bonuses, every employee was earning to the tune of over ten thousand yuan!
Was there anything else he could spend on?
[1] This is an analogy for being good at pushing the blame to others.
Chapter 71 - Special Expense
Pei Qian suddenly thought of something else. “Wait, I got another idea. I’ll give every employee an expense limit; they could spend a certain amount of office supplies and necessities within one cycle. As for the exact sum… en…”
“One cycle every three months, every employee can get an expense limit of 3500 yuan.”
Pei Qian actually wasn’t considering this; he was testing the system.
If the cycle was shorter than three months and the expense amount was more than three thousand five hundred, the system would not allow it.
Xin Hailu found this slightly obscure, “Boss Pei, currently, we do not set a limit for expenses for reimbursement for our employees. Including overtime taxi fees, business trips, etc; they were all reimbursed fully. What specifically was this three thousand five hundred referring to…?”
Pei Qian explained, “This is called a special expense. This money can be freely used to purchase anything related to work.
“For example, doesn’t Bao Xu like games? This money could be used to buy some cards or equipment.
“Or perhaps some employee already has a pair of decent earphones; however, if he feels that a better pair of earphones could allow him to hear the game sound quality better and would be beneficial for game development, he could use this sum of money to buy gaming earphones.”
Xin Hailu nodded and said, “I understand now, Boss Pei.”
Pei Qian also realized this recently.
Although some things might all be considered expenses, the system had a different tolerance for different things.
The original expenses reimbursement had been a uniform decision for all employees. For example, everyone could claim their taxi fares in full for overtime; that was the same for all. As for a work computer, everyone had a mechanical keyboard and dual-view monitors, etc; they all were adequately equipped.
However, for some special requests, the system would not recognize them. For example, Bao Xu said he needed to charge money to experience a certain game and its gameplay.
The system would not allow this amount to be claimed.
Or if Huang Sibo said that he wanted a two-thousand yuan mechanical keyboard or a three-thousand yuan gaming earphones that would help him in experiencing the games he was developing; was that allowed?
The system would not approve of that. These slightly far-fetched reasons were originally not accepted by the system. The system had a different benchmark for what everyone ‘needed’ in order to complete their work.
Pei Qian’s standards as a boss were very high; even buying a high-class suit had been approved. This was probably a special privilege of an owner or a boss. As for restrictions, the owner as a boss could not give himself a salary.
For other employees, they could only claim what was necessary for their work.
This was very reasonable. If the system allowed expenses claims for ‘charging money to a game’ or ‘high-tech earphones to better experience gameplay’, Pei Qian could easily result in losses for the System Funds just by asking all his employees to play domestically-produced games with paywalls and throw money in the game.
The system naturally wasn’t stupid.
However, Pei Qian had deftly circumvented its restrictions. He realized that the system actually had a certain tolerance for ‘non-necessary expenses’. The premise was it could not be unlimited and a limit had to be set. Hence, by giving everyone a fixed limit, they could then openly spend the System Funds in the name of their company and work!
Pei Qian counted using his fingers.
By the looks of it—based on this ‘special expense’ component, he could actually increase overhead by another thirty to forty thousand yuan! What’s more, these monies would not interfere with production; this was strictly a company benefit given to employees according to its rules!
That meant that the settlement date would not be pushed back!
Pei Qian couldn’t help it as he was internally very happy; he praised himself for being a genius!
…
…
Office…
Recently, the entire office had been immersed in a sort of crazed joy.
The design team was almost daily refreshing the gaming statistics as they saw Ocean Stronghold gaining in popularity; it had already superseded Bullet Hole! Although everyone couldn’t see the exact statistics for Bullet Hole—from the official games platform and the follow-up recommendations, Bullet Hole was suffering badly this time.
It was doing worse by the day!
Although Bullet Hole’s charging format was more reasonable than Ocean Stronghold, that did not have any impact at all.
For a game to make money, it did not depend on its charging format; it focused on the number of gamers! Even if one’s charging format was the most reasonable—if gamers fled and stopped playing, what use was that?
Ocean Stronghold’s quality beat Bullet Hole’s hands down. Hence, the former had exerted all sorts of pressure and had slowly poached the gamers from Bullet Hole! As the players spent less and the Ocean Stronghold earned more, the only one who suffered was Bullet Hole.
Huang Sibo sighed exhilaratingly; Boss Pei really had the foresight and was unfathomable!
Perhaps when he had successfully completed his study with Sun Strike Studios, he had already predicted this would happen?
He had purposely announced Ocean Stronghold at the same time as Bullet Hole, so that the latter would be publicity for the former and Ocean Stronghold could ride on Bullet Hole’s coattail?
This was such a harsh move; it had crushed Bullet Hole!
Actually, everyone was very curious about what it was like over at Sun Strike Studios now. However, no one dared to ask. To ask now would easily be seen as boasting and showing off; hatred would brew, and enemies would be formed on the spot.
However, thinking from another perspective—even if they didn’t ask, the amount of hatred Sun Strike Studios would have for them would already be rather huge.
Forget it, forget it. Since money had been earned, no point thinking about all these.
Huang Sibo was just thinking about this when his phone buzzed.
He looked at it, and it was a message regarding his salary!
“…what? Why is it so much?”
A huge question mark formed over Huang Sibo!
He actually hadn’t worked overtime this month, and by right, he shouldn’t have earned so much in overtime.
However, taking a closer look, the figure nearly scared him witless!
His base salary had been four thousand yuan; after a sixty-percent increase, it was six thousand four hundred now!
As the project bonus was fifteen percent of Ocean Stronghold’s profits, it was around a hundred and thirty thousand yuan for two weeks. As the project’s chief planner, Huang Sibo took slightly more than the rest; that was around eight thousand yuan.
As such, his salary for this month had reached fifteen
thousand yuan!
Of course, he still had to deduct housing and insurance, as well as taxes. Even so, for his monthly salary for the Year 2010 to be more than ten thousand yuan; that was something he could comfortably go out and boast about!
Furthermore, as Ocean Stronghold became more and more popular and the revenue from the game increased, Huang Sibo’s bonus would grow as well. If he calculated this way, his pay for the next month could only get higher!
The project he was responsible for had done well while Boss Pei had been generous in giving out bonuses.
That was a double blessing and joy!
However, this was not all.
Xin Hailu entered the office and started to give out shopping gift cards. Everyone had a faint-golden shopping gift card; it had the symbol of Jinzhou City’s largest shopping complex on it. After distributing to all, Xin Hailu came to the middle of the office workspace, smiled slightly, and spoke.
“Don’t lose this gift card in your hands; a thousand yuan would be credited to them every month; you can go to the shopping complex and purchase some daily necessities.”
“Besides that, from today, Boss Pei has created a new ‘special expenses’ system. Every quarter, the company will reimburse up to 3500 yuan for these special expenses. What is included is as follows…”
Assistant Xin simply explained what the ‘special expenses’ were all about as well as its restrictions. For example… charging up to play a game was counted as well.
Everyone heard her speak and was stunned, especially Bao Xu. They were all baffled.
Such a good thing existed?
Didn’t that mean that from now on—whenever Bao Xu played games, he didn’t have to top-up using his own money anymore?
Chapter 72 - Paid Shopping Trip?
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Everyone was feeling a little abashed!
The company had arranged for high specification computers, given overtime pay, project bonuses, snacks; their normal expenses claims were already significant.
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