"What should we do, Mr. President? Should we really apologize to them and beg for forgiveness?" a staff member asked timidly.
"That's absolutely impossible. How can we, the WCg organizing committee, apologize to a club!" Li Xianghe refused without hesitation. His worldview and values did not allow them to apologize to a Chinese club, even if there was a super conglomerate behind that club.
As long as that conglomerate was Chinese, he would never apologize. How could they apologize to a country inferior to their own Republic of Korea!
"Everyone can brainstorm and see how to solve the problem!" Li Xianghe decided to use the wisdom of the masses. Could they not solve this problem!
"President, I think we should first confirm one thing: is Blizzard's statement really justified? Can they really ban us from using Blizzard games with just one statement? After all, the games were purchased as genuine copies by our organizing committee, so we seem to have the right to use them to host competitions!"
"That's right. Our competition is not a commercial activity. If it's not a commercial activity, then it shouldn't be affected by copyright protection. Perhaps we can ignore Blizzard's prohibition and continue to use Blizzard games for the competition!" a member of the organizing committee suggested.
"That makes sense!" Li Xianghe nodded, but felt something was not quite right. "But shouldn't we consult with legal professionals and get detailed information from them!"
So, a staff member immediately found the head of the legal department. After communicating for a while, the person in charge pondered and said, "First of all, copyright is definitely protected. It's not that we can use Blizzard games without restriction just because we purchased legitimate software. Blizzard will definitely have restrictions on the commercial use terms of the purchased games. This is a restriction that a mature enterprise must have!"
"In other words, we can play the games normally without any problems, but if we stream it to the audience, such a commercial act, then it will definitely infringe on Blizzard's rights. This is beyond doubt!"
"We said it was a competition, not a commercial activity, and we even gave prizes to the contestants!" some staff members quickly said.
These words made the head of the legal department laugh. He couldn't help but say, "Did we receive sponsorship fees? Did we sell tickets? Unless we don't make any money at all and it's a purely public welfare activity, otherwise it's a commercial activity, and Blizzard has the right to refuse our use. We can't win on this point!"
"It's impossible to not make any money, otherwise what are we doing this for!" Li Xianghe sighed, and was about to let the head of the legal department leave when a member of the organizing committee continued to ask, "Then what legal punishment will we face if we forcibly hold the competition? Will we go to jail?"
"Going to jail is definitely impossible, but we will definitely have to pay money! We will have to compensate several times the amount of money we earned through this event!" the legal head said.
"Then that's great, anyway, we are currently losing money to run the competition, and we haven't made a cent!" Li Xianghe laughed.
"President, it's not calculated like that. Compensation is calculated based on our operating revenue, not our profit. All the sponsorship fees and ticket money we received must be paid to the other party," the legal department quickly said.
"Then we'll have to go bankrupt!" This member of the organizing committee immediately cowered.
"Okay, then let's go bankrupt!" Suddenly, Li Xianghe slapped the table and said, "Anyway, our organizing committee has always been operating at a loss. After this WCg ends, our organizing committee will directly declare bankruptcy, and then sell WCg as a healthy asset. The money from the sale will be used to pay all our salaries, and whatever is left will be paid to Blizzard!"
"Then there won't be a penny left!" a member of the organizing committee couldn't help but laugh when he heard this. Indeed, the entire organizing committee actually had more external debt than sponsorship income. Once it went bankrupt, all external debts would be offset.
And because the WCg organizing committee is a social organization without an actual legal person, it will not be like a company where the president's personal assets are used to compensate after bankruptcy. At that time, it will be a complete bad debt, and everyone can walk away clean.
"Moreover, we can sell the WCg brand to companies familiar to us. These companies will then establish a WCg organizing committee, and we will still be members of the organizing committee, and WCg will still be ours, but at that time, we will be free of debt!" Li Xianghe said triumphantly. Everyone who heard it couldn't help but praise, "Ruthless enough."
"Then it's decided. I'll pretend to be constantly negotiating with Blizzard to delay the time and prevent Blizzard from discovering our plan. You immediately go and talk to all the clubs, reassure them, and say that we have some misunderstandings with Blizzard, the competition will proceed smoothly, and everyone must come and participate!"
"As long as we delay for a week, until we successfully launch the competition, and then use three days to finish all the Blizzard-related competitions. By then, no matter how capable Blizzard is, even if they sue us immediately, they won't be able to interfere with us finishing the competition within three days!"
Upon hearing Li Xianghe's plan, everyone applauded excitedly, praising their president as a person full of wisdom.
In fact, Li Xianghe's plan was highly feasible. As long as he shamelessly continued to hold competitions, Blizzard really couldn't do anything to them.
Historical Koreans did the same.
Back then, after Blizzard launched StarCraft 2 and the esports careers of League of Legends developed rapidly, Blizzard, which had always looked down on the meager income from esports, immediately announced that it would invest in the esports industry. The first thing it did was to reclaim all the esports rights of games under Blizzard and then have its own company host esports competitions.
At that time, Blizzard's hottest esports game was naturally the StarCraft league, which was being held vigorously in Korea. Thus, Blizzard sent a statement to the Korean esports league OGN, demanding that the latter immediately stop hosting StarCraft competitions or hand over the management rights of the competition to Blizzard.
OGN naturally refused. Blizzard demanded an immediate stop to the competition, while OGN dragged out the legal proceedings and continued to hold the competition. As a result, they managed to delay for half a year, completed the entire season, and only then were forced to hand over the hosting rights of the StarCraft league.
Compared to OGN, a purely commercialized event league, WCg was still more inclined towards public welfare. Therefore, as long as Li Xianghe wanted to delay, there would be no problem in terms of law and technology, and WCg could be successfully held.
It's just that our Boss Huang knew this better than anyone else, so the second blow, like a thunderous storm, arrived as expected.
Here, while the staff of the WCg organizing committee were desperately calling clubs and players to reassure them and ask them to continue participating, the club representatives who were talking to these staff members suddenly asked them with a very stiff tone, "What if participating in the WCg competition means completely cutting off their professional careers?"
"What's going on?" The WCg staff were all dumbfounded. Then, the club members read out a statement they had just received over the phone.
This statement was from Blizzard headquarters. Blizzard stated very bluntly that if they found any player or the club behind the player participating in the WCg competition, even if they just logged into their account, they would immediately blacklist these players and clubs and prohibit them from participating in any Blizzard-related events in the future.
"Contact us again after you have resolved this issue!" Whether it was the clubs or the professional players, they all hung up the phone without hesitation, giving these staff members no chance to speak.
It couldn't be blamed on their heartlessness. After all, this statement was too powerful. As long as these professional players and clubs wanted to participate in competitions, win prizes, and engage in commercial activities in the future, they had to respect Blizzard's statement. After all, not everyone could go bankrupt and rebirth like the WCg organizing committee.
They didn't need to gamble their entire commercial income for the rest of their lives for a WCg competition.
Upon receiving this news, Li Xianghe's arrogant expression disappeared. He understood that this move by Blizzard was an insurmountable trump card. After all, even if WCg could continue to hold the competition stubbornly, without professional players participating, it would be a complete joke.
"Let's just give up on Blizzard's competitions. There are plenty of other competitions, and we won't die if we leave Blizzard!" a member of the organizing committee said. This sounded tough, but Blizzard games accounted for 80% of the traffic of the entire WCg. Who could withstand that.
"There's actually one more move!" said a staff member. "Since we can't negotiate with Blizzard, let's just make a big fuss about it, make it known to everyone, and ruin Blizzard's reputation!"
"We can write a long post online to accuse Blizzard of its tyranny. And then state that if the competition cannot be held, then a year's effort by all professional players and a year's wait by the audience will all turn into nothingness!"
"We must not underestimate the power of public opinion. Currently, hundreds of millions of players worldwide are paying attention to our WCg and planning to watch the competition through live broadcast. If they suddenly learn that all their waiting has turned into nothing, and it's all because of Blizzard's ban, do you think Blizzard will bear how much public criticism!"
"Then Blizzard will probably go from being the world's number one gaming company to the world's worst gaming company! If we can't hold the competition, their reputation will be completely ruined, and their sales will plummet. At that time, they might even beg us to resume cooperation to quell public opinion!"
"This is a good idea!" Li Xianghe said decisively after hearing this. "Let's do it. Korea has plenty of everything, but there are countless internet trolls, inexhaustible. If we mobilize them a little and involve national honor, these trolls will immediately help us stir up trouble all over the world!"
At that time, who would beg whom would still be uncertain!