Chapter 1368 New Champion Skins (Bonus Chapter for Monthly Tickets!)

The question hung in the air, plunging the room into silence once more.

Though unpleasant to hear, everyone knew this extreme scenario was a real possibility.

And a possibility that might soon become reality.

Already, the Chinese servers of ioI were sparsely populated. After this latest fiasco, the player base would plummet further. Could it even sustain an entire server?

The mass exodus of players would exacerbate the breakdown of matchmaking and ranking systems. Players would struggle to find balanced matches, leading to a worsening gaming experience and a further exodus, creating a vicious cycle.

With fewer players, viewership would naturally decline.

Lower popularity would diminish the commercial value of the entire iCL league.

If major investors lost faith in the iCL and clubs could no longer see profits from their ioI teams, could the iCL league even continue?

One senior executive from Finger Corporation stated, “If this happens, we’d have to merge servers, transferring player data and merging with the newly opened Southeast Asian or Korean servers to form an Asian server. We’d cancel the iCL league, merging its teams with those from nearby regions to maintain its commercial value.”

Another executive frowned. “But that’s practically shutting down the server, which would lead to further player loss. Most people don’t want to play with players who don’t speak their language, and they don’t want the hassle of transferring their data.”

Kredditian sighed. “It can’t be helped. We’ve already suffered a crushing defeat in the Greater China market. No matter what we do now, it’s just about choosing the least embarrassing way to end things.”

Kim Young-soo understood this predicament all too well.

It was like many games in their later stages. Players naturally dwindled, and whether or not to merge servers was a lose-lose situation.

Without merging, many players would complain that the server ecosystem had stagnated, lacking competition and making the game boring, leading them to quit.

Merging, on the other hand, would provoke resentment from players who just wanted to casually farm and relax. They used to rank highly on the old server, but now they were getting bullied on the new server, feeling like weaklings again and potentially leaving immediately.

And while the server merge might be a big event at first, it would stimulate activity for a short time, but would soon stagnate again due to player loss.

Players would then clamor for another merge, which would lead to another wave of player loss, creating a vicious cycle.

In other words, once a server merge started, it couldn't be stopped, and was ultimately a temporary fix.

The Chinese ioI server was in a similar situation. No matter what they did, they would lose players. Different solutions would only result in different ways of losing them.

But if it really came to that, they would have no choice but to merge servers, because they might not even be able to guarantee players a basic gaming experience.

Kredditian looked at Kim Young-soo. “You haven’t said anything since the beginning. What do you think we should do?”

Kim Young-soo couldn’t help but shrink back.

Don’t ask me! How would I know!

In this situation, only President Pei could save them!

But everyone was looking at him, so Kim Young-soo had no choice but to bite the bullet and answer, “I think, the new FV champion skin should be made faster, and look better…”

He didn’t dare to discuss major issues like server mergers. He wasn’t qualified to voice his opinion on those matters.

Whether to merge servers or not would likely be decided after the higher-ups at Finger Corporation discussed it and reported it to the higher-ups at Dayak Corporation.

So, Kim Young-soo could only say something inconsequential.

At least I spoke at the meeting, so please assign me a smaller share of the blame, thank you.

However, Kredditian's eyes lit up, and he said approvingly, “Hmm? That’s a very important point that we overlooked!”

“The FV team’s champion skin this time really should be innovative and clearly different from last year’s. No matter what, it will definitely be useful for retaining players and FV team’s fans. It’s also a relatively easy and risk-free measure.”

Everyone in attendance nodded in agreement.

Making skins could still make money from the Chinese ioI server, so Dayak Corporation’s higher-ups would definitely support it.

If they made the skin look good, it would be easy to explain and would also show that Finger Corporation respected and valued FV team’s hard-earned championship.

Kredditian said to Kim Young-soo, “You’ll communicate with the FV team about the champion skin and meet all of their requests as much as possible.”

If they directly had the skin designers at Finger Corporation communicate, there would still be some language and cultural barriers. So Kredditian wanted Kim Young-soo to act as an intermediary, promoting the production of the champion skin and ensuring that the FV team members were satisfied as much as possible.

Kim Young-soo nodded. “Okay, I’ll prepare to start pushing this forward as soon as I get back!”

…

Meanwhile, the FV team members were shopping at the largest mall in the area, happily enjoying their victory.

FV team’s boss Wu Yue and captain Pan Ying were a little tired of shopping, so they found a coffee shop to sit down and rest for a while.

“Did you see the discussions online? What do you think?” Wu Yue asked.

Although the competition was difficult, the team members were still very excited after the game. They were all glued to their phones for a long time, so they must have seen the trending topics.

Pan Ying thought for a moment. “About switching to GoG? I think everyone’s intentions are good, but it’s a bit too idealistic.”

“The five of us have always played ioI. Switching to GoG means starting from scratch. We’re already at this age, I’m afraid we wouldn’t even be able to compete in the secondary league, let alone the main league. We might as well just retire.”

“Besides, FV team has won two ioI world championships after all. Switching to GoG would sound bad, wouldn’t it?”

“President Pei bought FV team in the first place to have us infiltrate ioI. If we switch to GoG, would President Pei agree?”

Wu Yue said, “I called President Pei and he said that he would respect the team members’ decisions. Whether FV team continues to stay in ioI doesn’t matter to President Pei.”

“President Pei is very open-minded in this regard, so you can rest assured.”

Pan Ying still shook his head. “Let’s think about it carefully. Although Finger Corporation is terrible, we still have some feelings for ioI. I can’t make this decision yet.”

Wu Yue nodded. “Well, there’s no rush. We can think about it carefully.”

“By the way, have you decided on the theme for this year’s champion skin?”

Pan Ying shook his head. “Not yet.”

“We don’t like the heroes we used, and they all look weird. There’s really nothing to choose from.”

The strong heroes in this version were the signature heroes of some European and American teams. As everyone knows, games made by European and American companies have some weird-looking characters, which European and American players particularly like.

So, FV team had to grit their teeth and practice for a long time, starting from the group stage. They didn’t dare to slack off in any match, so the heroes they could choose were basically ones they didn't like.

Naturally, they weren’t interested in making champion skins for heroes they didn’t like. They could only pick the least bad option from a group of bad options.

Wu Yue thought for a moment. “Hey, I suddenly thought of a way.”

“Can we make the champion skins for these heroes look like your favorite heroes?”

Pan Ying was stunned. “Huh? A skin within a skin? Can we do that?”

Wu Yue said, “Just ask the official, whether they agree or not is their business. Besides, it’s completely within the rules, so why can’t we do it?”

Pan Ying didn’t expect that there would be such a method, and couldn’t quite process it for a moment.

Wu Yue meant that they could make these heroes they didn’t like look like their signature heroes, so wouldn’t they look much more pleasing to the eye?

As for what they would look like specifically, that was the job of the skin designers at Finger Corporation. They had to trust the professionalism of Finger Corporation.

After considering it, Pan Ying said, “That… seems like a solution. I’ll talk to the other team members later, and if they agree, we can try it.”

“For example, we can add some elements of our favorite heroes to these hero skins, such as weapons, styles, and characteristics. I think it would be quite interesting.”

Pan Ying thought about it and suddenly felt that this approach was quite interesting. After imagining the scene, he thought it would be quite fun, so he agreed to this plan.

…

At the same time, it was already evening in China.

Pei Qian turned on the TV and opened the TV version of the Aili Island website, waiting for *Successor* to start while browsing discussions about *Successor* on his phone.

The good news was that although the world championships for GoG and ioI were over, everyone’s enthusiasm for discussion was still very high and would still occupy the internet for a period of time.

Including on the Aili Island website, there were also a large number of content creators making videos analyzing and summarizing the world championships. Whether it was professional analysis or joking and teasing, it was basically a state of universal celebration. In many game videos with even the slightest connection, you could see comments about the GoG world championships.

For Pei Qian, this was a blessing in disguise. After all, the higher the popularity over there, the less popularity *Successor* would receive, which played a good role in sharing the attention.

As for everyone’s discussion about *Successor*, there was nothing new. Obviously, everyone was waiting for the premiere on the Aili Island website.

There were even many posts from people who didn’t know the truth, expressing their expectations.

Pei Qian smiled slightly. Everyone, please continue to look forward to it. Anyway, after these three episodes are broadcast, the viewers who should leave will probably be gone.