Super Spender

Chapter 408: 402 Shut Your Mouth

The next morning, Finn turned up at WY’s Celeston City Headquarters, a place he hadn’t visited for quite some time. Seeing Finn reappear almost brought Yuri Johnson to tears. This guy was relentless. Still, following such a boss did give one an incredible sense of achievement. Finn accomplished things that Yuri had aspired to do but had never been able to, either because he didn’t get around to it or couldn’t muster the power to.

But could you really delegate a task and then vanish? Surely there were some things we, as your underlings, couldn’t handle and required your attention?

“Boss, the bonuses have been paid out, but are you sure you want to help the winner pursue a movie release?” Yuri asked, somewhat helplessly, when he entered Finn’s office.

“Of course, words once spoken, like water once poured out, cannot be taken back. Say what you do and do what you say.” Finn responded succinctly.

“But it’s not that simple.” Yuri sounded exasperated.

“What’s not simple?” Finn looked at him quizzically.

“Firstly, the video made by our winner certainly has the requisite length, 100 minutes, which is the length of a movie. Also, the quality, with the rendering from our company’s game engine, is not at all bad. But, to screen it, we’re just a gaming company, not a movie distributor. We don’t have the right to distribute movies—we need to find a distribution company that’s willing to distribute it for us. Secondly, we must pass the Culture Ministry’s review. Lastly, we have to find a cinema chain willing to schedule showtimes for our movie.” Yuri rubbed his temple as he spoke.

Finn scratched his head, “Is it really that troublesome?”

Yuri sighed, he knew his boss just got carried away without considering the difficulties involved in movie releases. Now that they’d done the promotions, they couldn’t just end it ignominiously now, could they?

In fact, the procedure Yuri had described was a simplified version. The process for releasing a movie is even more complex than that. However tedious, they had to continue with it.

“Definitely troublesome. And this is not even the hardest part, what’s most concerning is that our company’s stock has been declining dramatically.” Yuri voiced his frustration.

Finn Lewis looked surprised, the stock was falling? He was puzzled. Seeing Finn’s confused expression, Yuri felt even more speechless. It dawned on him that Finn hadn’t been paying any attention to WY at all recently. God knows what he’d been busy with. Even though WY wasn’t the highest-valued company under his name, its market capitalization was close to 400 billion Federal Coins, right? Was he just going to let it be?

“Although our latest game, ‘World of Warcraft,’ is now prepared for official beta testing in the Southern Federation, and our largest online player count in our home country has surpassed 7 million and is steadily climbing, our company’s various strategies have led many in the media to accuse us of frivolously wasting funds.” Yuri stated in a gently reproachful tone.

Although he chose his words cautiously, Finn saw right through them. So, they were calling him Prodigal. Damn, was it their business if he squandered his wealth? On reflection, Finn realized he hadn’t been paying attention to what the media were saying at all recently. At that thought, he became somewhat restless. He plopped down into his office chair, switched on his computer, and said to Yuri, “Just hang tight for a bit. If you have things to do, go get them done. I need to check the recent news.”

Finn’s words rendered Yuri speechless. Finn really hadn’t been keeping his eye on WY, or any of his other companies for that matter. What on earth had he been up to recently? Had he been frolicking around on a deserted island?

“I’ll sit for a while.” Yuri didn’t actually have a ton to do every day. While Finn was the big boss, he was the boss of the parent company of WY. Within WY, Yuri was the CEO, Finn was just the largest shareholder. So, Yuri wasn’t that busy on a regular basis. Of course, recently he’d been quite occupied, thanks to all the mishaps stirred up by Finn. Now, the first batch of max-level players had gradually started to appear.

WY couldn’t possibly wait for all players to reach the maximum level at once before sending them off to the Malya Kingdom. They sent out a flight every time they had 100 maxed-out players for an extravagant trip to Malya Kingdom.

All these matters needed Yuri to handle. But these events had their silver linings. Thanks to the largesse of their profligate young master, Finn’s reputation was getting WY well-regarded among players. Now, WY was known as a conscientious gaming company, the one in the industry that best rewards its players. Otherwise, could other gaming companies really pull off the same stunt?

Extending the luxurious trip to the Malya Kingdom to two family members of each of the 30,000 players brought the total costs to hundreds of millions. This was a sum equal to one full year’s revenue for many gaming companies—certainly not a splurge that all could afford.

While Yuri sipped tea on the sofa, Finn opened up a web page and started checking out recent news. To his surprise, he found that, even setting aside foreign news, most domestic news was directly or indirectly related to him. However, these were not exactly glowing appraisals.

For instance, take the prominent micro-researcher Davis, a minor celebrity on the internet with over 3 million followers. His claim to fame was mainly his biting criticism of anyone and everyone, supported by arguments that seemed logical. Now, he’d set his sights on Finn Lewis, the newly-minted world’s richest man. Finn clicked open Davis’s latest micro research post. “…I must say, I can’t stand all these PR stunts on the Internet lately. I don’t know what’s wrong with society today—PR stunts are everywhere. Haha, some video created by a game developer, and first prize award of over 100 million. Fine, I won’t mention that. The person behind it is rich, and as the saying goes, ‘Money talks,’ right? We can understand that. But WY, you may be the largest shareholder, the controlling shareholder, but what about the other shareholders? Aren’t you being irresponsible to them by spending money so recklessly?”