The employees of Wearsoft knew better than anyone why the company was crumbling.
It was simply because the game company wasn’t making any decent games.
Amidst the ominous atmosphere where Wagal could be completely torn apart, Josh, the youngest employee in his fifth year at the company, asked his seniors a question.
[Josh: What do you do these days when you come to work?]
[▶Mark: … Making planning documents and PPTs for reports.]
[Josh: Ah…]
This was the usual situation.
As employees climbed the ranks within the organization, they ultimately reached positions that revealed their incompetence.
According to Peter’s Principle, most positions end up being occupied by individuals who are incompetent for that specific role.
From what Josh recalled, the last turning point for the hapless Wearsoft was five years ago.
When Resonance Corporation integrated all games on Earth into a single platform.
Of course, there was an offer made to Wearsoft as well.
But modifying a vast open world with a new game engine and graphics was a daunting and tiresome task.
The executives weren’t interested in unprofitable ventures, which ultimately became the catalyst for decline.
Josh started to worry a bit about the future.
His college peer, who foolishly joined Resonance Nova Studio to create an SF game, now had a team whose game was adapted into a film, receiving a budget on par with Star Wars.
Meanwhile, Wearsoft was consumed by the pressures of restructuring, with everyone focused solely on internal politics.
Josh recalled a senior’s words from his first year, who had left through a baton touch.
[You should just scope things out and leave. That Chairman Wang is a guy who knows nothing about games.]
When the top brass is incompetent, the entire organization rots.
Mark, once known as a skilled VR game developer, had become a pampered employee who just watched streams during office hours.
[▶Mark: Oh, NoName Wagalㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ]
[▶Mark: Seriously, this guy says the game is fun. You have to watch it.]
[▶Mark: Wow, was that rumor about NoName acquiring it true? Shocking.]
[▶Mark: Such a pity. With money and game development knowledge, he would have been perfect as the owner of our company.]
Unable to resist temptation, Josh turned on the internet broadcast.
In the blazing warzone, Wagal pros were lamenting just like them.
In the final moments of the game.
Na-me cut down all the enemies and smiled faintly under the starlight.
[I hope that after this night, a more wonderful tomorrow comes. This has always been the ending of Wagal.]
It was an empty statement with no solutions in sight.
But for some reason, it had a genuine resonance that touched the emotional strings.
[I think it’s okay to hold onto hollow hopes when no answers are in sight. After all, no one knows how the future will turn out.]
The pure desire to create a beautiful game.
[But we have to do something. If we do nothing, nothing will change. Wouldn’t it be better to pioneer an uninhabited island instead of sinking with the ship? With fierce tenacity.]
The spirit of exploration in carving out an uncertain future.
[Can we, who have done nothing but games, really do it?]
[If we’re together with our colleagues, what can’t we do?]
“Oh, this is…!”
Josh covered his mouth with both hands.
-Pure, exploration, and the last remaining thing is comradeship-
At least for the employees with deep affection for the World of Arseria, this catchphrase couldn’t be unknown…
NoName was openly saying,
‘I haven’t given up on Wagal yet.’
It had to be NoName; if it wasn’t NoName from the beginning, this game had no hope whatsoever.
When such judgments settled in,
Josh realized he wasn’t the only one thinking that way.
[WearSoft Community]
[Watching the NoName broadcast while slacking off]
[Wow, NoName is crazy; NoName is GOAT]
[What are you all doing not workingㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ]
[Why should such a fun game go down?]
[Please, Master NoName, buy this trashy company]
[You don’t have to buy it all; just take me with you]
(…)
[Shouldn’t we threaten to quit if we’re not acquired by Janjeol?]
After all, the Wagal engine and ASI are ancient so now we’re the only ones who can use it.
If we don’t budge, they’ll have no choice but to push the open world either.
[Comments]
-A genius?
-Huh? Weren’t we supposed to switch to the Resonance engine?
└ No wayㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ They wouldn’t let us because it’s too costly.
└ Seriously legendary business decline.
-But what if they really push it? Then we’re done for too.
└ There are so many lunatics among the executives that it’s actually a possibilityㄷㄷ
└ Would the shareholders stay quiet if they were burning their property?
└ After all, if the company is going bankrupt, we must take that chance.
Although the number of employees didn’t even reach 100,
Janjeol was an unprecedented mega-corporation with monthly sales of 5.6 trillion won.
With the saying “If you’re going to be a servant, do it at the big house,” the strike became a reality.
With the start of the Wearsoft development team’s strike, countless acquisition hopefuls pulled out.
The possibility of a malicious employee turning the open world into scraps.
There was no reason for them to willingly take that risk.
As the situation developed where the IP (intellectual property rights) of Wagal was likely to yield less than 1 trillion, even the creditors fell into panic.
On the day of the Intelligence Wearsoft bankruptcy auction.
Na-me, who peeked around and had briefly left, appeared once again right at that moment.
Wearsoft’s total debt was 1.8 trillion won.
Coincidentally, the acquisition amount Na-me proposed for the Wagal IP and business division was.
“1.8 trillion won. I will repay all the debts with interest in cash.”
It was a moment where the creditors and shareholders’ expressions diverged.
*
“Wowwwww!”
Creditors cheered at the resurrection of the company.
The bankruptcy administrator selected me as the successful bidder with the highest bid.
Michelle Badiou, the former head of Wearsoft’s entire business division, now excluded from all decision-making, shouted in rage.
“You could have acquired it before going bankrupt! You intended this from the start…!”
“Ah, let’s leave the theme park out; please continue the auction.”
“Definitely, you incited the employees’ strike! It can’t be otherwise!”
The woman was dragged out of the courthouse foaming at the mouth.
The executives’ severance pay is prioritized lower than other debts.
Michelle Badiou’s severance of approximately 100 million dollars became a thing of the past.
‘The bankruptcy of the company, leaving thousands of employees on the streets, is entirely the CEO’s fault. With everyone getting fired, how can she think of running away with money?’
Even now, quick-witted bio companies had formed strategic alliances with Janjeol’s R&D and had mostly recovered their falling stock prices.
Enduring companies… well, as long as they have their own capabilities, they’ll survive on their own.
My goal was to acquire as many companies or key divisions intact with minimal waste.
‘What’s more important is to carve out the rotten apples.’
How do I determine if this employee truly has a negative impact on the company?
With insufficient time to conduct in-depth interviews for all, asking around about their reputation could easily make me the victim of office politics.
An idea popped into my head.
Money never lies.
Even those rooting for the underdog wouldn’t easily bet on them if asked to.
I conducted 160 hours of intense retraining for all employees, including Wearsoft developers, and added 5 million won as a completion fee to their salaries.
To the team leader complaining that the spending on completion fees was excessive, I showed a way to recover that.
“There’s just one person. If you name exactly one person to have their completion fee waived and not allowed into Janjeol, I will personally vet them. Not anonymously, but with real names. If it’s an erroneous identification, I’ll instead vet the ones pointed out.”
It wasn’t just a mere 5 million won, but a sum that encompassed 160 hours of brutal labor time.
Not many people could engage in petty politics knowing they had everything on the line.
A nagging boss or a somewhat unlucky subordinate could easily be ignored by transferring departments without seeing them again.
But if it was genuinely serious, someone would willingly sacrifice 5 million won for their future.
Through this method, 280 employees refunded their completion fees, and a total of 33 became targets for elimination.
The accuracy was significant.
Except for about three, they were all figures deserving of tongue-twisters.
“So, your subordinate didn’t listen, so you grabbed them by the hair and kicked them? Why?”
The team leader who used physical violence just because of their high rank.
“On July 14, 2051, you went to both the US and France, and also Egypt, and even Japan, all in one day?”
The section head who snatched the project results from employees and continued to climb the ladder.
“What’s your Wagal nickname? You don’t have one?”
The sub-director who never played even once while demanding pointless PPTs from all departments every week.
The villains who had only existed in my imagination until now were thrown out with severance pay.
To be honest, I had been unsure how Wearsoft could collapse, but now…
I found myself wondering how they hadn’t gone bankrupt until now.
After cutting out 30 rotten apples and purging 15 others who were wrongfully targeted,
It took exactly four weeks and two days from the day I acquired Wagal’s IP and Wearsoft’s key business unit to normalize the company.
In November 2053, on a day when the first snow fell.
[Shall we hit the thumbs up if everyone likes the overtime NoName makes us do?]
The developers were as focused on their work as a border collie who hadn’t been for a walk for a week.
