If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them - 3
Just before the collaboration proposal.
Arc Network's Production Headquarters, Investment Strategy Team 2, carried out its own analysis for the sake of the Big Plan Risk Report.
One of the team members looked puzzled.
"An emergency-response posture...? Isn't that overreacting, considering the size of the VTuber market? It's not even the smallest project we handle..."
"…"
He caught Jeong Yu-ri's expressionless face and quickly dropped his gaze.
"Ah—s-sorry, Team Leader."
"Then let's begin."
Working with her team, Team Leader Jeong Yu-ri calculated Big Plan's projected financials.
What she was able to infer about Big Plan was only approximate, based on the public activities it had shown over the past month.
Even so, the scale it revealed was shocking.
Showcase food-truck promotion, in-house merchandise production, PC café rental events. On top of that, outsourced staff to shorten distribution and broadcast-prep time...? Each round would require at least two hundred million won.
Two hundred million a week.
They were pouring in at least that much every week just for event execution, then turning around the next week and dumping the same amount into brand-new content.
…Are they insane?
It was the kind of thing no sane person could do.
It was pure madness.
The speed at which they spent money was less "spending" than outright burning it.
And judging from the size of the online store, at least five hundred million won's worth of merchandise had already been rolled out. Even if she kept labor and warehouse costs to the bare minimum, that was still the number she arrived at.
As the figures kept stacking up, Yu-ri let out a quiet sigh. It was someone else's wallet, and yet she was getting a headache from the guilt alone.
"Hoo…."
So they're just dumping money in blindly, without thinking about ROI or anything like that…
The projected monthly spending came to 1.2 billion won.
But given how chronically infrastructure-starved small and midsize companies were, she would have to add a little extra on top for outsourced labor.
Yu-ri wrote the final number on the whiteboard.
Then, in the end…
…at least 1.5 billion won.
For a moment, silence fell over the office.
One of the team members stared at the whiteboard and muttered blankly, "They spent 1.5 billion won in a month."
1.5 billion.
That was more than enough for even a decent quarterly budget on a major project.
But this wasn't a quarterly budget. It was a monthly budget. And that was before even counting the operating expenses and various facility maintenance costs hidden in the company's internal materials.
This wasn't some ten-year IP planning cycle or giant innovative new business, either. It was the amount they were pouring into running a VTuber operation, a subculture niche market.
"1.5 billion a month on a VTuber business...?"
If she sent this financial sheet up to an Arc Network executive, being exiled to Ulleungdo the next day would be the least of it.
The team members were flabbergasted.
This wasn't a matter of capital scale.
The speed and purpose of the money-burning were insane.
They were faster at draining funds than a daughter emptying her father's wallet. The man at the very top who held the cash hose wasn't sane either.
Bigman was completely out of his mind.
They weren't doing this to make money.
They were doing it because they wanted a decent VTuber, and for that one goal alone, they were setting money on fire.
What's more, the public was cheering for it.
From their point of view, the situation felt like this.
Nothing was more provocative than a billion won being thrown around in the middle of the market, even if a rational ten billion won came out of a vault. People were going crazy for that ten billion.
The market's balance had begun to warp completely.
These weren't a normal customer and seller.
They were capitalism wearing a mask,
nothing more than a fanatical religion.
"…Damn."
Faced with that beyond-imagination display of money being thrown around, Yu-ri and the team lost all words.
No matter how many hundreds of billions a conglomerate had, it didn't spend them like this. Budgets were drawn up and executed within the limits allowed by ROI and systems.
Companies existed to make money,
not to spend it.
But Big Plan had been built to spend.
It was a market variable from birth.
Trying to respond to it at all was a risk.
Yu-ri bit her lip.
…A suicide squad that showed up among people who came here to fight without getting hurt. Maybe it's a relief that they're only messing around in the VTuber market.
Just as that thought crossed her mind, one of the team members cautiously offered a suggestion.
"Could we take a legal approach? If the market gets distorted to this extent, maybe we could rally public opinion and hit them that way. Of course, we'd only stir up sentiment from behind the scenes."
"!"
"Once they're isolated in the market by public opinion, we could gradually slip in with a collaboration proposal…."
…
The other team members looked tempted.
The one dumping money around was the bad guy.
There were plenty of people in the industry who surely felt that way.
In a capitalist society, there was no envy more futile than cursing capital itself. And yet human emotions clearly worked that way.
Isn't this...exactly the kind of method we use when we're trying to make a rival project's wheels fall off?
They exchanged looks.
"Could… maybe work?"
But Jeong Yu-ri immediately shot it down.
"Based on what? There are plenty of creators who buy attention by spending their own money. Even a U.S. creator with one hundred million subscribers on HighTube makes that kind of content."
"W-well…"
"And unlike the competitors we've dealt with so far, Bigman has already cemented a brand that consumers can easily understand: indiscriminate goodwill. If we try to provoke a legal response now, all we'll do is add more fuel to Bigman's provocation."
…
Indiscriminate.
For everyone, "indiscriminate" was Bigman's identity.
Yu-ri let out another deep sigh.
"And of course Bigman had to go and throw another donation at Romantic Drive in the middle of all that, making the mood even weirder."
"Ah…."
He hadn't demanded anything from the broadcaster in exchange for the huge sum.
He had just barged in and stuffed one million won into their pockets before leaving.
By normal standards, that was called good luck.
So inside the fandom, instead of hating Bigman, a strange current had formed—people were suddenly eager to be claimed by him. It would have been odd not to welcome him.
The idea of confrontation had sailed clean out to sea.
Bigman….
That guy was a kind of contagion.
He robbed people's heads of their capitalistic rationality and bound them tight with emotion. There was no religious philosophy or grand theory in the process.
Only money… a capitalist infection that buys people's hearts with cash.
Yu-ri muttered coldly, "M&A is off the table. The moment we make a move from our side, we'll be branded as the public enemy and everything will sink. And Big Plan itself is structured in a way we simply can't handle."
…
…
…
They scrapped the acquisition strategy.
Bigman Countermeasure Strategy
1. No ROI design
2. No budget-execution delay
3. Monopoly on buzz through indiscriminate spending
4. Influence exerted through its own distribution network
5. No legal response possible
The whiteboard was full of nothing but bleak notes.
It was, in every sense, an impregnable fortress.
…
…
…
Was she supposed to just stand there and watch? Yu-ri refused to accept that.
"There is still a method."
"What method is that?"
Instead of answering, she wrote on the whiteboard.
Possibility of internal division?
Offer of recruitment → identify internal structure
"Winning over Bigman. And bringing him into a structure we can control."
"!"
"For that to happen, internal observation is essential. We need to figure out what kind of person he is, and why he entered the market."
"Then…."
"The only way is to learn their structure through a collaboration with Romantic Drive. We'll track Bigman's true nature by watching what surfaces during the partnership process."
Yu-ri made up her mind that way.
No matter how big Bigman is, he won't be willing to cover another company's production costs too. For a sudden collaboration proposal, he'll demand investment from our side. In the middle of the contract paperwork, we can investigate from outside….
But Bigman didn't need any of that.
The very next day, what flew to Jeong Yu-ri was a proposal that said the broadcast setup was already complete and they could come whenever they wanted.
The broadcast is already set up, so come anytime.
— Hey, big brother. Big brother doesn't do complicated stuff.
That was how the document read to her.
In the end, there was only one thing left to do: go there and see for herself.
The mission, naturally, went to Romantic Drive as a whole. But the members were not particularly thrilled about it.
"Hoo…."
For the sake of prior coordination, the large vehicle heading toward Aurora Prism Entertainment was wrapped in silence.
All four members, including Haerin, who was currently on a business trip in Japan, had spent over a year together, so they were fairly close even off-camera. That had been deliberately cultivated to some extent, of course, for the sake of the "chemistry" the market wanted.
But right now, only a tense quiet hung in the air.
One of the former local-announcer-turned-VTuber members, Danhwi—Seo Eun-hwa—muttered weakly. Her voice was thick with skepticism.
"What is this, a noir movie? We go there and look around, and somehow that's supposed to change anything? I want to broadcast quietly, and now they're telling us to go to someone else's house and shoot a political drama."
…
…
The other two members exchanged glances. The manager, the planning-team leader, and the staff member driving all flinched as well. Still, no one said anything back to Seo Eun-hwa.
They, too, found the order from the strategy office deeply suspicious.
— Learn Big Plan's internal decision-making structure in as much detail as possible. In particular, if you identify any connection to Bigman, report it immediately.
What that order brought to mind was not a sense of mission.
It was irritation and pressure.
...That woman is at it again.
After all, the people above were the ones obsessed with results.
From the perspective of the people actually doing the work, they didn't honestly feel like strangling anyone. Wasn't this all the same industry, after all? If anything, the stories about those people rising in such an unusual way were just interesting.
Oh, they rented a PC café this time?
Wow… amazing. I want to do something like that too.
Should we ask to be included?
It'd be hilarious if we suddenly showed up and did a dance battle.
How about making the loser shout, "Big-man!"
Are you crazy? You'll be writing a statement if you do that.
Romantic Drive was already an established group with an average of more than 200,000 subscribers on domestic platforms. So a strange sort of fatigue had settled over them.
There's no getting much bigger in the domestic subculture market anymore, and now it's time to maintain what we have. It'd honestly be nice if everyone just grew together and the market itself got bigger.
Besides, once you got past the 100,000- and 200,000-subscriber marks, there were so many variables that you couldn't even compare the numbers with a simple calculation anymore. That was why they didn't feel any particular hostility toward ABCD.
Just some curious people who had debuted around the same time.
That was about the extent of their vague goodwill.
They just didn't show it inside the company.
If everyone grew together and expanded the market on HighTube, that would be better….
But it seemed the higher-ups had other ideas.
As those thoughts passed through the members' heads, the large vehicle slowly slipped into a narrow alley. Then the planning-team leader, who had been checking her phone, looked back and said, "We've arrived. The small building in front of this parking lot is Aurora Prism Entertainment's office."
"!"
Seo Eun-hwa looked out the window at Aurora Prism Entertainment's building and was visibly startled.
"I-it's really a tiny little company? There are tons of places like this in Daegu."
"Eun-hwa unnie…."
"!"
Seo Eun-hwa clapped a hand over her mouth and panicked.
"S-sorry. I said it without thinking. Sorry for cursing."
But no one could honestly blame her.
The same thought had gone through everyone's head.
Damn, the company building really is small. And Bigman is holed up in a place this tiny, pumping out massive projects like it's nothing…?
What kind of person was Bigman?
A middle-aged guy with a belly?
A grinning old man?
Or maybe, unexpectedly, some rich auntie?
They climbed the stairs into the Aurora building with those expectations in mind. But what emerged beyond the worn gray steps was not the hidden mastermind they'd imagined.
Four bright voices greeted them.
"Hello! I'm Aki! Nice to meet you—!"
"Hello. I'm Clara from ABCD. Thank you so much for coming all this way."
"Ah, so this is the famous Romantic Drive? Then I extend my special welcome. This is the world's strongest gamer, DoDa."
"DoDa, don't do that…! Ah, hello. I'm Berry! P-please don't take it the wrong way! He's not being mean, he just…!"
Then, from the corner, a middle-aged man who smelled faintly of perfume stumbled out holding a can of coffee. Why he insisted on preparing it himself instead of having an employee do it was a mystery.
"Oh! You're here already. Welcome. I'm Baek Su-cheol, CEO of Aurora Prism Entertainment."
He was sloppy, but human.
For a moment, the members of Romantic Drive found themselves thinking, Ah, they're really fun people after all.
But seriously… why did the place still smell so much like a tiny crappy company?
...And where is Bigman?
Yet even during the prior coordination, Bigman never showed his face to the end. After two days of preparation, the broadcast finally went live that Thursday.
Thursday had come at last.
The long-awaited joint stream between ABCD and Romantic Drive finally began.
The broadcast was on ABCD's shared channel, not a personal one.
And the moment I turned it on, I fell silent for a second.
Live viewer count: 62,211
…
On a domestic platform, at this rate, they're practically brushing up against the top monthly live-viewer numbers.
One thought came to mind: the promotional effect was going to be excellent.