Block Valley (6)
The founders of Block Valley looked at my explanation with utter disbelief.
“You want to promote a fashion brand through a game?”
“A luxury brand selling clothes inside a game?”
“Ah, come on. Isn’t that a little much?”
Surprisingly, it was possible.
There was no law saying a game had to be only a game.
Even though Block Valley had become a runaway smash hit, the founders still didn’t seem to understand what kind of possibilities their creation really held.
I called the same friend back in Korea and told him the exact same thing.
Even the founders had been skeptical, but Sunwoo didn’t find it strange at all.
“Oh! That’s a great idea. In a game, you can only implement the design, but with fashion, design is everything.”
“Exactly.”
Even if you recreated the shape of a hamburger in a virtual world, you still couldn’t let anyone taste it. Fashion, on the other hand, was all about form.
That was why fashion brands were so aggressively pursuing the metaverse.
“Well, if there’s a Ferrari Land in the real world, there’s no reason there can’t be a Nike Land.”
“So I was hoping you could make something like that for me.”
“Huh? You want me to make it?”
“Then why would I be telling you all this?”
The plan was to sign a commissioning contract with the brand and split the revenue generated inside Block Valley.
“This market is bigger than you think. We can start with fashion brands, then later build things like K-pop Land too.”
“I haven’t even started making my own game yet.”
“That’s a long-term project. Think of this as a warm-up. Something for the team to get in sync.”
We didn’t absolutely have to make money in the meantime, but it would be better to have some kind of revenue structure. It would also help spread the company’s name.
“I could make something quickly if I just slapped it together, but if we do it properly, it’ll take a fair bit of time.”
“Then why not hire more people and split the team up? An MMORPG development team and a Block Studio development team. If you do it well, it’ll become a good reference, and then other brands will start placing orders too.”
I could always funnel the work their way.
After thinking for a moment, Sunwoo seemed to find the idea amusing and accepted my proposal.
“Okay, got it.”
With the business talk out of the way, we relaxed and chatted comfortably.
Come to think of it, it was strange.
I’d known she was Sung Yoon-ah’s close older sister, but I never expected to become this friendly with her too.
Min Ah-reum had short bobbed hair. There probably weren’t many people who wore that style as well as she did.
“About what Dongho said back then,” she began.
“About what?”
“Todd and Na-young.”
“Ah! What happened? Did they actually start dating?”
“They’re getting married, apparently.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I was surprised too. I asked Na-young, and she said that when she looked at him, she just thought, this is the one.”
From what I could gather, Todd was one of the employees Edward had brought over from headquarters, and Park Na-young was an MFW employee Min Ah-reum had hired.
People had been gossiping for ages about whether the two of them were together, and now they’d announced they were getting married.
“Wow. When you see things like this, I guess soulmates really do exist.”
“Exactly. Na-young is usually incredibly picky about men. Who would’ve thought she’d fall in love at first sight and decide to get married?”
I didn’t know Todd or Na-young, and I wasn’t interested in them either.
More than that, I was a little surprised they’d become this close in my absence. I almost felt left out.
Still, watching them chat so comfortably, I couldn’t help thinking they suited each other.
Min Ah-reum was a member of the Yoo Seong family, the top chaebol family in Korea.
Chairman Yoo Jae-ho doted on her like she was his own little sister. Add her looks and style on top of that, and there was no shortage of men from politics and business trying to get close to her.
Still, Lee Dong-ho wasn’t exactly lacking either.
He was the head of Continue Capital’s Korean branch. At that level, he outranked most bank presidents and securities firm CEOs.
If they ever did get married, I could even provide the Korean branch of Continue Capital as part of the wedding trousseau.
Just as I was thinking that, Dongho’s phone rang.
“I’ll take this for a second.”
He answered it and stepped outside.
“Ah, Representative Yoo. I’ve reviewed the contract you sent.”
I asked her,
“When did you two get this close?”
Min Ah-reum answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“We work in the same building.”
And yet I never would have guessed they’d become this close.
Sipping her coffee, Min Ah-reum said,
“You two look good together. Like brothers, or maybe old friends.”
“We did spend a lot of time together.”
At school, he’d been my senior. At the company, he’d been my mentor.
Aside from my family and Sunwoo, the person I’d spent the most time with was Lee Dong-ho.
“You seem to think very highly of Dong-ho.”
I nodded.
“I owe him in a lot of ways. I learned a lot from him too.”
If it hadn’t been for Dongho, I probably never would have thrown myself into stocks and investing in the first place. Back in freshman year, I’d been lured into the investment club by his sweet talk, and that had been the beginning of my investing life.
After I got a job, he taught me everything from how to write reports to how to draft incident statements.
Thinking back to my first life, I said,
“He’s the kind of person I’d call my lifesaver.”
I said it like a figure of speech, but in truth, he really was my lifesaver.
If it hadn’t been for him, I would have died back then. And if that had happened, I might never have regressed at all.
“There’s something I wanted to ask you.”
“What is it?”
Min Ah-reum asked it as casually as if she were merely making conversation.
“Are you planning to give the Korean branch to Dong-ho?”
“Pfft.”
I almost spit out the coffee I’d been drinking.
“What do you mean?”
“I just had that feeling. If I’m wrong, then never mind.”
It felt like she’d seen right through me.
I asked carefully,
“Why would you think that?”
“It feels like you’re building up the Korean branch. Entertainment investments are mostly centered around Korean companies, so even if the Korean branch handles them, the fashion brands are mostly foreign companies. Headquarters could have invested directly, but you deliberately had the Korean branch do it instead. I wondered if you were already thinking about splitting things up later.”
“……”
I was genuinely impressed.
She had read my intentions with perfect accuracy.
The sectors the Korean branch was currently investing in were entertainment and fashion.
They made up only a tiny slice of the overall portfolio, and they were far removed from our core businesses like cloud, platforms, and games.
I was intentionally stuffing those miscellaneous little businesses into the Korean branch.
Instead of denying it, I answered honestly.
“How did you know?”
That actually startled Min Ah-reum.
“Oh! It’s true?”
“Why are you so shocked when you were the one who said it?”
She composed her expression and said,
“W-Well, yes, but… when you think about it, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Giving a trillion-won company to someone who isn’t even family.”
The Korean branch alone was already investing around five trillion won.
Realistically, where else would you find someone handing over an investment arm of that size to anyone but blood relatives, let alone an acquaintance?
Well, by the time I actually handed it over, it would probably be worth tens of trillions.
“Splitting and merging companies is practically daily life for chaebol families. How the group will be divided, which affiliates each child will inherit…”
“Ah…”
To judge how a company would be divided just by looking at relationships between people.
So this was what it meant to be a chaebol.
“Have other people noticed too?”
“No way. At that level, they wouldn’t even hand it to their own children until they were dead. If I didn’t know your personality, I never would have guessed it either.”
“What kind of personality do I have?”
“Hmm. Someone who gives generously to people they know?”
“Is that so?”
“You gave me this opportunity too. If it weren’t for you, I’d probably just be watching my older brother and sister from the sidelines and feeling jealous.”
“And now?”
She smiled brightly.
“Now I’m going to make my brother and sister jealous of me.”
I liked the confidence in her voice.
“Don’t tell Dong-ho.”
“Why not?”
“If he finds out, he might die of pressure.”
Until now, he’d been able to invest freely because he’d thought it wasn’t his own money. But the moment he started thinking of it as his own, wouldn’t he start trembling every time he had to make an investment?
At my words, Min Ah-reum burst out laughing.
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Not at all.”
“I’m jealous.”
“Of Dong-ho?”
“No. Of you, Miru.”
“Why?”
“It’s easy to receive kindness. It’s hard to give it. The fact that there’s someone who wouldn’t even think it wasteful to hand over a company worth trillions of won—that’s admirable.”
I let out a quiet snort of laughter.
“That’s true.”
I was genuinely glad I’d gotten the chance to repay the debt I owed from my previous life.
More than that, in this life I absolutely had to get this senior married. I couldn’t let him live and die as a lonely old bachelor again.
Someone with Min Ah-reum’s sharp, decisive personality would suit soft-hearted Dongho perfectly, wouldn’t she?
Tim Keaton.
He was the CEO of Enple, the world’s largest company, and the very man who had brought Enple to where it was today.
When Stevie Shiller, Enple’s founder and innovator, died of cancer and Tim Keaton, then COO, rose to the CEO position, many people predicted that Enple would collapse.
But contrary to those expectations, Tim Keaton’s outstanding management ability only drove Enple to grow even larger than it had under Stevie Shiller.
After Enple broke through the one-trillion-dollar market cap barrier and then soared past two trillion dollars as well, he earned the praise of shareholders and the public alike.
Tim Keaton was currently in a very bad mood.
The reason was a certain game released not long ago.
Right now, the big tech companies were locked in a game war.
NS’s third CEO, Satya Sharmalan, had not only acquired Majeong, the studio that made My Craft, for two billion dollars, but also declared that he was going all-in on games and launched GameFirst, a subscription gaming service.
Guble had also rolled out its own subscription service, Stepia, and AMZ had acquired the world’s largest game streaming company, Twwitch, while throwing itself into game publishing as well.
Not to be outdone, Enple launched its own subscription gaming service, Bazaar.
For just $4.99, you could play every game inside it with no additional charges.
As the world’s number one company, Enple had succeeded in every business it had entered so far. That was why experts predicted Bazaar’s launch would reshape the gaming industry.
And yet…
Almost no one cared.
In fact, there were even plenty of people who didn’t know the service existed at all.
The reason for its failure was simple. There weren’t any games worth playing.
So Enple poured enormous sums into buying game IPs and building up a lineup, then relaunched the service on a massive scale.
Tim Keaton personally stepped forward to announce it, confident of success.
“Bazaar will spark a revolution in mobile gaming! There’s only one thing that has changed. Everything.”
And in truth, everything had changed.
But once again, nobody cared.
The reason was that right around the time of the relaunch, some indie game had been released.
Tim Keaton received a report from Vice President Johnny Myren, the man in charge of Enple’s app market, Enstore.
First came the report on Bazaar.
Even after the announcement he’d made himself, the number of subscribers had barely budged, to the point that it was embarrassing.
“Block Valley is currently number one on both the NOS and Andromeda app stores. Because of Block Valley’s runaway success, revenue from other mobile games is trending downward.”
Last year, Enstore had brought in eighty-five billion dollars in revenue.
More than seventy percent of that came from games.
But as teenagers spent more and more time in Block Valley, revenue from other games fell, and with it the commissions Enstore collected.
He might have thought they could simply take a cut from Block Valley instead, but there was a catch: there were no in-app purchases in Block Valley.
“Block Valley uses a game currency called Rox, which can only be purchased through external payments or with the stablecoin Penny. Not a single cent of commission comes to us.”
Enple took a thirty percent cut of payments made within games downloaded on the Enphone. But Block Valley had found a loophole and neatly sidestepped it.
“Penny…”
Enple collected information on every payment made through NOS and used it aggressively for marketing.
But if payments were made in stablecoin, Continue Capital and Snow Crash could take the transaction data, while Enple was left with no access at all.
Tim Keaton clicked his tongue inwardly.
If only we’d bought a game like that instead of wasting money on some useless title.
If Block Valley had been included in Bazaar, it might even have caught up to NS’s GameFirst.
“Can’t we acquire Block Games?”
“Continue Capital is the majority shareholder with seventy percent. They won’t sell.”
In truth, Block Valley itself wasn’t the real problem.
The real problem was Snow Crash and Continue Capital standing behind it.
His instincts as a manager were already sounding the alarm.
At this rate, they’re going to become a serious threat.