Chapter 183
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Chapter 183: The Legendary Honey Trap
After settling Tina in, Ye Xiao took Shen Yunchu back to the company.
Watching the two walk away, Tina couldn’t help but smile. She had thought it was just her being one-sidedly interested, but it seemed the relationship between that little assistant and Ye wasn’t so simple after all.
As a woman herself, besides work, what she was best at was judging whether another woman was suitable as her target—whether the other party was also “like her.”
“Xiao Xiao, are we really just going to leave her hanging like that? Not doing anything at all? Isn’t that kind of… not right?”
Back at Yun-Xiao, walking into Ye Xiao’s office, Shen Yunchu finally voiced her thoughts.
“Yunchu-jie, you’re still too young. ‘My World’ is selling tens of thousands of copies every day right now. That’s several hundred million in revenue over a month. We haven’t even launched on the Steam platform yet. There are even overseas players using VPNs to break through the firewall just to buy the game on Huaxia Game. What’s the rush? If anyone should be anxious, it’s GiantSoft.”
Shen Yunchu knew Yun-Xiao’s financials inside and out. “So, Xiao Xiao, you’re not planning to sell ‘My World’?”
Although it was just like Ye Xiao said—“My World” was basically a golden goose—eventually, even golden geese stop laying.
Since you never know when it’ll stop laying, wouldn’t it be smarter to sell it early while it’s still seen as a golden goose?
Even if you don’t know how many golden eggs it’ll lay in the end, turning it into a massive fortune now isn’t a bad outcome at all.
Besides, there was no guarantee “My World” would bring in more than $2 billion USD in the future for Yun-Xiao.
So Shen Yunchu really couldn’t understand Ye Xiao’s way of thinking.
“I’m not not selling. I’m just not selling everything.”
“For the domestic market, Yun-Xiao can handle it through Huaxia Game on our own. President Zhu offered 3.5 billion yuan for the rights to “My World” because of its potential within the domestic market. He probably didn’t account for its global potential.”
“So just the domestic market alone is a huge cake. If we sell the rights outright, it’s like handing someone else that unknown-sized cake way too early.”
But even if others don’t know My World’s value, would Ye Xiao not know?
In her past life, “Minecraft” sold over 200 million copies worldwide—that’s just the base game, not even counting all the later DLCs and expansions.
Microsoft paid $2.6 billion USD just to acquire it.
So in this world, if someone offers anything less than that, Ye Xiao has no interest in even talking.
Besides, she had an even better plan.
GiantSoft, just like Microsoft, would struggle breaking into the Chinese market. Foreign game companies always faced massive difficulty expanding in China.
Because piracy had run rampant for years, Chinese gamers generally lacked the habit of paying for games. Deep down, a lot of them still believed games should be free, and always looked for ways to freeload.
Although this mindset had been improving in recent years—some even paying out of nostalgia—freeloaders and “student version” users hadn’t really decreased much.
Even with stricter copyright awareness in this world, many people had already found pirated or early-access versions through foreign websites.
The domestic game market was huge, but paying customers for single-player AAA games were still a minority.
Thanks to Huaxia Game, this trend had started to improve, especially for local games. But for foreign games, Huaxia Game’s revenue share was extremely low, which made many foreign developers suffer. Still, they couldn’t give up the Chinese market and had to press on.
If Ye Xiao sold all the rights, GiantSoft might gain the Chinese market, but they wouldn’t necessarily make more profit than if they let Yunxiao handle it.
What then? Would Yun-Xiao end up buying back the operating rights from GiantSoft? Or worse—cut ties with “My World”?
Sure, the pixel blockmen were just something Ye Xiao whipped up casually, but it was still her first released game in this world. She had feelings for it.
Plus, out of respect for the users who already bought the game, Yun-Xiao couldn’t just walk away from it.
“So Xiao Xiao, what do you plan to do?”
“Sell GiantSoft the global publishing rights—excluding the Huaxia region.”
“You think that’ll work?”
“Why wouldn’t it? Just sell them the overseas buyout rights. We keep China. It’s not like they’re getting ripped off—this is what they really wanted anyway. The Chinese market’s more trouble than it’s worth for them. So once the game sells, we still do what we’ve always done and collect a lump sum for free. Guaranteed profit. We don’t even have to stress over international operations.”
“You think GiantSoft will agree?”
“If they don’t, we just won’t sell. It’s not like GiantSoft is the only foreign company interested in ‘My World’. We can sell it to someone else.”
“Then… Xiao Xiao, what do we do now?”
“You mean that foreign horse?”
Glancing at her chat thread with Tina, Ye Xiao couldn’t help but sigh. The woman was seriously coming on strong. In just this short time, she had already sent Ye Xiao a bunch of selfies, saying she needed help picking out an outfit to wear while sightseeing in Binhai City.
But just look at those clothes—bare here, missing fabric there. Were those even appropriate for this season?
Actually, even in summer, you couldn’t walk outside in those. They were practically lingerie.
This was outright seduction.
Looking at the photos on her phone, Ye Xiao felt a sudden rush of heat.
GiantSoft really went all-out trying to acquire this game—sending a bombshell who wasn’t shy at all.
She’d always heard foreigners were more open and flirtatious. Seeing it firsthand now, it really lived up to the reputation.
She was clearly back at the company now, a few kilometers away from the hotel, but Ye Xiao swore she could smell the pheromones through the screen.
Who the hell sent someone like this?
Clearly, they’d done deep research on her preferences. Could this really be the legendary honey trap?
Since when did foreigners start studying Chinese military strategy?!
Ye Xiao rubbed her nose, making sure she wasn’t getting a nosebleed, then took a deep breath.
She didn’t want to fall for this, but damn it, this plan hit her right in the soft spot.
Truthfully, she wasn’t explaining all this to Yunchu to justify herself. She could’ve said nothing at all. She just needed to strengthen her own resolve—to stop herself from making a mistake.
Right on cue, just after sending those sultry selfies, the seductress sent over an invitation.
“Ye, to ensure our cooperation goes smoothly, I’d like to invite you to dinner tonight. Please don’t bring your little assistant. Just the two of us.”
Looking at the message, Ye Xiao felt another headache coming on.
So far, GiantSoft had been surprisingly agreeable.
In her heart, Ye Xiao had basically already chosen to cooperate with them.
Even if Tina was outrageously flirty, she was a future business partner. This kind of dinner invitation… would be hard to refuse.
Translator’s Note: I reach the end of the Raws that I currently have and want to focused on my other Projects. Any other Translators is free to pick this Novel up. Also, changed Microhard to GiantSoft.
