T/N: This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and storylines in this novel are entirely fictional. Any public agencies, institutions, locations, or historical figures mentioned are used solely as fictional backdrops and do not represent their real-world counterparts.
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These executives, like Dylan, fell silent. They had already run out of options.
Although they acknowledged that Honkai: Star Rail had become a disaster capable of destroying the current entertainment industry, they did not know what to do. Or rather, they had already done everything they could.
Olympus
That was their final struggle.
"I think we have reached a moment of survival or ruin."
"When streaming was first introduced, we may not have felt such an urgent sense of crisis."
"But gentlemen, we must now admit that we are standing at the edge of ruin."
After a long silence, seeing that no one spoke, Dylan gritted his teeth and said:
"Although Olympus did not meet expectations, Herdo was the one responsible for it."
"Whether it succeeds or fails, the pressure is not on us."
"But we are not entirely without weapons. At the very least, regarding global platforms, I hope to receive your support."
As soon as he finished speaking, the meeting room fell into a strange atmosphere.
The traditional giants, the traditional film studios. The companies led by these people appeared energized, believing this was a workable plan.
They voiced their agreement one after another. But the other group of executives wore ambiguous expressions and remained silent.
Dylan's heart sank. He swept his gaze around the room.
Among those silent people, he even saw people from his own company.
Finally, one of them spoke first. She was a woman in her forties, dressed in a sharp black suit, with short hair and a professional smile on her face.
She was one of his subsidiary company Flix's, Chief Content Officer, Fain.
"Dylan, I understand your anxiety."
Fain spoke calmly and unhurriedly. "But what exactly do you mean by support from global platforms? Do you mean removing MiHoYo's content from our platforms? Or downgrading their series in the algorithm?"
By the end of that sentence, Fain herself was amused.
Obviously, the methods used against ordinary shows, downgrading, algorithms, and so on, were useless against MiHoYo.
This series had become so terrifying that it no longer needed your recommendation. As long as it existed somewhere, it would naturally form a horrifying traffic black hole.
It had nothing to do with your platform.
Hearing Fain's words, Dylan's eyes flickered.
"I know that won't work. But at the very least, we can coordinate our release schedules, avoid putting out major content during Amphoreus' broadcast window, weaken the entire ecosystem that week, and reduce their momentum."
Fain's smile did not change.
"Oh? So you mean we should voluntarily give up prime-time slots and redirect advertising resources and traffic support elsewhere?"
Although Fain kept smiling, Dylan somehow felt an immense pressure coming from her.
This woman had practically built Flix's global market with her own hands, bringing the entertainment industries of multiple countries under one umbrella. Over the past few years, she had, in every sense, beaten these traditional studios into the ground.
"I didn't mean that."
Dylan tried to explain, then said with difficulty, "What I mean is that, at the very least, we can each contribute through content acquisitions and joint productions. Of course, the suppression of Honkai: Star Rail should also continue. It may not work, but we have to do it."
Fain interrupted him. Her tone remained gentle.
"Dylan, have you read Flix's quarterly report?"
"Amphoreus accounts for twenty-three percent of our platform's total global traffic."
"You're a shareholder. Of course you understand what that number means. If MiHoYo announced tomorrow that it would stream exclusively on its own website, even for only one day, our share price would immediately lose tens of billions-"
"-of dollars."
Fain delivered those final two words in a crisp tone carrying considerable weight.
Then she looked at Dylan as if he were an idiot. What traditional cultural glory? What cultural hegemony?
Bullshit. Their company value had only one thing.
Money.
Making money.
Making a great, great deal of money.
For that purpose, they could rob, scalp people, or commit crimes. But no matter what, their final goal was always to make a great deal of money.
In the face of tens of billions of dollars, Dylan daring to make such a request of these streaming platforms made Fain think he was either insane or simply a complete idiot.
Dylan choked on his words.
Tens of billions of dollars.
The moment that number was mentioned, it represented Fain's unmistakable refusal. And that wonderful number also carried a hint of threat.
After all, money had never been connected only to profit, and its unit of measurement had never been merely "money."
It was also the equivalent exchange rate for lives and bullets.
A dispute worth tens of millions could make two old film studios tear each other apart in court for years.
A dispute worth a few hundred million could draw the stock market's predators in, following the scent and forcing their way into the matter.
And tens of billions, at that scale, it was no longer something that appeared in ordinary people's news feeds. It would only show up in classified documents, or in the statement announcing some senator's sudden retirement.
Not to mention hundreds of billions.
As Dylan thought of that figure, one thought instinctively surfaced in his mind:
The interests involved when Kindy's head was blown open were only worth a few hundred billion dollars.
And a few tens of billions would be enough to have him run over by several trucks at any intersection between Los Angeles and New York, or perhaps have a gunman spray him with bullets in the street, leaving him dead.
And the insurance company would pay out promptly, the coroner would write it up elegantly, and the news would report it very briefly.
No one would stand in the way of tens of billions of dollars.
And it was not only Flix's tens of billions.
Dylan swallowed, then subconsciously loosened his tie again. It was already loose, yet at that moment it felt like a noose around his neck.
Not far from where he sat were executives from Mazon, Ney itself, and Partner's streaming divisions.
What chilled Dylan more than Fain's warning was the expression on their faces.
There was no anger, no shared sense of outrage, not even a trace of embarrassment. They merely listened to Fain's words with calm, unreadable expressions.
The person in charge of Mazon finally had no choice but to remind Dylan:
"Actually, we've conducted internal estimates."
"During Amphoreus' broadcast period, more than sixty percent of our platform's new subscribers came specifically for Honkai: Star Rail."
"In other words, while Amphoreus was airing, MiHoYo wasn't stealing our users, it was helping us bring in new ones. Without Amphoreus, no one would subscribe to our services."
"And on the board, at least half the people sitting next to me are likely opposed to putting pressure on MiHoYo."
Then Mazon's representative spoke.
Partner's streaming chief also spoke helplessly, looking Dylan directly in the eye.
"The second episode of Dragon House aired at the same time as the third episode of Amphoreus. What happened? Viewership dropped by sixty percent."
"But interestingly, our total subscriptions actually rose that week. A lot of people watched Amphoreus and subscribed to our service along the way. Then they discovered that Dragon House was good too, so they stayed."
One streaming executive after another spoke up.
Dylan stood there feeling awful all over. He could only place his hopes on the executive from his own company.
Little did he know that executive was just as uneasy.
By company affiliation, he and Dylan belonged to the same company. They were under the same roof.
But if you divided their positions more specifically, he was responsible for streaming, while Dylan was from the studio side.
Their interests were not aligned.
On the contrary, their streaming division had made a killing thanks to Amphoreus' popularity.
The board had praised him highly.
Sorry… It took the executive only one second to choose his side internally.
But he put it more tactfully.
"Same here." Dylan sat back down, his eyes vacant.
The executives from other companies, companies without streaming platforms, looked equally vacant.
Ironically, these people had also supported the Herdo plan. They were the big shots Herdo had spoken of.
The conference room fell into a second strange silence. Dylan opened his mouth, wanting to urge these people on.
How could they be so disgraceful and so lacking in spirit?
He wanted to explain MiHoYo's danger. He wanted to tell them that their current profits were merely sugar-coated bullets.
He wanted to say that MiHoYo, as a content company, had already become capable of holding these platforms hostage.
If one day MiHoYo decided to go it alone, he could do so at any moment. If they did not unite now, there would be no cure later.
All of this was completely true. But Dylan could not solve the most crucial problem.
If they did this never mind the future. Who would bear the hundreds of billions of dollars, or even more, in losses they would suffer right now?
Him? A tiny fraction of that money would be enough to buy his lifestyle millions of times over.
Did he have that kind of courage? This was the world of capital. For those at the top, the future might not even truly exist. The money they could get now was what was real.
By this point, the meeting had essentially ended in silence.
Everyone present understood perfectly well, miHoYo was indeed a problem, but they had deeper problems here.
People led by Dylan represented the studio side, the beneficiaries of a bygone era.
But with the development of technology, the streaming platforms created by people led by Fain had become the new beneficiaries.
The old and the new sat at the same table. But what they thought about, and the benefits they received, were entirely different.
Dylan wanted to eliminate MiHoYo, the most troublesome crisis that could threaten their survival.
But this was not something that could be solved just by holding a meeting.
After the meeting ended, Dylan sat alone before the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking at Los Angeles at night.
Amid the brilliant lights, he seemed to see this city's history over the past century.
It had witnessed cinema evolve from silent films to sound, from black and white to color, from cable television to streaming.
With every technological revolution, people had shouted that cinema was dead. Yet movies and studio's had always survived.
But what about this time?
Before leaving the meeting, Fain had said to him: "Dylan, do you know what is most ridiculous about this entire farce right now?"
"We're here discussing how to fight MiHoYo, while miHoYo's boss is probably discussing the content and plans for their next episodes with his team."
"Our battlefield was never here. It is in the content."
"You dance on the tune of a niche few and turn content into a tool. That means you are destined to lose. The most important thing about films and TV shows is not all that flashy nonsense, they need to be watchable. They need to be good!"
Thinking of those words Dylan found them almost laughable.
Not because of Fain. What she said made sense, but in Dylan's view, it was simply because their positions and interests differed.
If Fain were sitting in his position, she would become just like him. And if he were put in the position of Flix's streaming chief, he would likely have the same problems.
What made him feel both sad and amused was this: By now, the world had long accepted that Star Rail and Olympus were engaged in a life-and-death cultural war.
Everyone was waiting for the Olympus, and MiHoYo to fight until both sides were battered and bloody.
But what happened? Olympus's side had collapsed without even putting up a proper fight.
Even worse, some clever people chose to abandon ship at light speed.
That was even more ridiculous. Dylan could already imagine the discourse that would follow online.
Olympus would become a joke.
He wanted to bring back those who had jumped ship, at least so they could lose with some dignity. But he could not produce hundreds of billions, perhaps even trillions, of dollars to fill those huge mouths.
So there was nothing he could do. What a pity.
Xia Wen could not know what had been discussed in this meeting. But even if he did, he would not be surprised.
Because in his previous life, that same thing had occurred in the game industry.
At the time, a meme circulated widely.
It showed someone with a profile picture holding a sword and pointing at the camera, saying:
"You seem to have been unfaithful to miHoYo. I'm going to poke you."
Was it possible that this was not merely a joke, but a true reflection of what some people felt inside?
Just like people such as Fain now. The only difference was that, in that timeline, it was a game company, that shut people like Dylan up.
Now, it was these streaming executives. Either way, it was the same. Who the hell would turn against money?
Naturally, it would be the people who could not make any money.