"Wait, don't hang up yet. I'm telling you very clearly now, we at Blackberry are very dissatisfied with this contract. There are several clauses that we cannot accept. I must see your relevant负责人 immediately to renegotiate these contract terms!" Ackerman, afraid the other party would really hang up, shouted urgently.
"Sir, I'm very sorry about this. As I said before, you can use it normally by clicking the 'Agree to Agreement' button. The contract itself cannot be negotiated!" the customer service representative said.
"No, there's nothing that can't be negotiated! Do you know the enormous market behind me? Do you know..."
"This dear user, we haven't sent this software to just your company. More than 360 mobile phone companies worldwide have received this email, along with our cooperation agreement for the 00 Game Center."
"Everyone received the same contract. We cannot modify it for the benefit of any single user, otherwise, won't all contracts have to be modified in the future? This is not feasible in reality."
"Then we can talk privately. No one will know what our contract is like..."
"Sir, I believe you also wouldn't want our company to negotiate privately with other companies. To maintain the greatest fairness, we must refuse all negotiations regarding the contract! So, you don't need to say any more. The contract version has been carefully studied and confirmed by us, and it will not be modified in any way."
"If you are truly dissatisfied with the contract, you can choose to click the 'Cancel' button next to it. If you don't install our software, there will be no problem. Thank you!" the customer service representative continued in her sweet voice, leaving Ackerman completely speechless.
"Damn it..." Ackerman didn't remember his state of mind when he hung up the phone, but he felt like he had exploded. Clicking "Confirm" to install it was indeed convenient.
It was true that they often used such tactics to fool users, but when such a tactic was used against them, their entire mindset was shattered.
However, after calming down, Ackerman probably understood the intention of Jiangnan Group. They were using this overbearing method to tell all companies that the contract must be as they dictated, and they would absolutely not accept any changes in profit distribution. If it didn't work out, they wouldn't cooperate!
Ackerman knew this was something he could no longer decide. He immediately wrote a report on the situation and submitted it to the board of directors. That evening, the board of directors ordered Ackerman to attend a board meeting to report on the progress of this matter.
"Are you sure Jiangnan Group's attitude is so firm? They really cannot accept any modifications at all? Otherwise, let's reduce our share from 50% to 40%, and their platform's share can be increased to 40%, the same as ours. They should be satisfied with that," a director asked somewhat unwillingly at the board meeting.
"Sir, I don't think it's a matter of proportion. It's that they believe once they agree to negotiate with any company, all mobile phone companies will use this as a basis to demand negotiations with Jiangnan Group, and thus their plan will be completely disrupted."
"So they are simply making a blanket refusal, rejecting all negotiations to avoid the aforementioned problems!" Ackerman explained. He didn't understand games, so he could only guess this reason and couldn't see that Boss Huang was acting for the benefit of game developers.
"Can our technical personnel bypass this agreement and install the program directly?" another director asked an even more foolish question.
Ackerman rolled his eyes inwardly but could only explain helplessly, "Sir, technically, there is no problem with that. In fact, we don't even need to bypass the agreement; we just need to click confirm, and the result is the same."
"But the problem is, once we confirm the installation and use of the 00 Game Center for the system, we are defaulting to agreeing to the agreement. Because without agreeing to the agreement, installation is impossible. This logic is here, so whether we use technical means to bypass the agreement or not is meaningless. Jiangnan Group can also resort to legal means to sue us for copyright infringement!"
"And even if they don't sue, it's useless. Because according to the software's operating mechanism, all player payment behaviors are directly paid to Jiangnan Group's account, and then Jiangnan Group distributes the funds to us and the game developers according to the profit-sharing ratio."
"So, in reality, the proportion of payment is entirely controlled by Jiangnan Group itself. As long as Jiangnan Group pays us according to the 20% ratio, we have no way to do anything about it, after all, the entire platform is controlled by the other party!" Ackerman explained somewhat powerlessly.
"Bastards, these greedy guys, just for a platform, they want to take 30% of our profits!" another director said angrily, causing a stir of indignation among the other directors.
And Ackerman couldn't help but roll his eyes in his heart, thinking, "These fools, without Jiangnan Group's platform, we wouldn't get a single cent. The 50% of profits they are taking from us is our hard-earned money!"
"I think there's no need to say so much nonsense. Let's just refuse directly. This Jiangnan Group is actually using such methods to deal with ordinary people against us. They completely disregard us Blackberry. I think we should just not cooperate and be done with it. Jiangnan Group can't get a single cent of profit from us either!" one director said angrily.
As for this director's statement, Ackerman actually agreed and appreciated it immensely. Because this way, he himself would be freed from the work with the damned 00 Game Center. God knows how painful it was to deal with people like Jiangnan Group.
"No, we absolutely cannot give up. Otherwise, we will lose at least several million dollars in pure income with no cost!" The chairman flatly refused, "Moreover, if we give up on the 00 Game Center, but other companies' mobile phones choose to install it, it will inevitably take away a large number of users from us. This is absolutely unacceptable!"
"Yes, exactly. We really can't give up this game store!" Blackberry's directors nodded one after another, admitting their previous thoughts were wrong. This 00 Game Store must be installed on their phones. After all, installing this 00 Game Store requires no cost, and the money earned is basically like picking it up for free.
Most importantly, even a fool could see that this game store was an important bargaining chip to attract users. The most terrible thing in this world is not having something when others do.
"But Jiangnan Group's attitude is really too bad. I don't want to cooperate with such an ill-mannered company, nor do I want them to profit from us!" some directors were still indignant about this.
"Gentlemen, why must we cooperate with Jiangnan Group? Can't we develop a game center ourselves? In that way, 100% of the income from the entire game center will be ours!" one director proposed an innovative suggestion, which was immediately supported by all the directors.
So the chairman asked Ackerman, "Sir, if we also develop a similar game center, how much R&D cost will it take?"
"Sir, this technology is not expensive. It only takes $100,000!" Ackerman said, and the directors were overjoyed. It turned out this game center only cost $100,000?
"But..." Ackerman licked his lips and said, "To maintain the necessary volume, we need at least 10 games or more. We must develop games for our store. Calculating at $100,000 per game, we will need to invest at least $1 million in revenue!"
"Another million?" The directors hesitated again. A million dollars was not a small sum.
"How long will it take us to earn back $1 million?" a director asked.
"It's unclear. If we're lucky, perhaps three to four years will be enough. If we're unlucky..." Ackerman didn't say much. After all, when it comes to game development, no one knows if a game will be popular. Besides, their own games didn't seem to have the nostalgic appeal of Atari.
"No, we absolutely cannot develop games ourselves. We are mobile phone manufacturers, not game manufacturers. This is putting the cart before the horse!" Fortunately, the chairman had some sense and knew what kind of company they were. He decisively rejected the idea of self-developed games and proposed a new idea: "Why can't we cooperate with other game manufacturers? We provide the platform, allowing game development manufacturers to put their games on our platform. I think Jiangnan Group has the same idea, otherwise, they wouldn't have specifically reserved a share for game developers!"
"That's a great idea. Sir, what profit-sharing ratio should we give to game manufacturers?" Ackerman asked directly. If this question wasn't clarified, there would be trouble in the future.
"20%..." The chairman blurted out, then instinctively felt that this proportion seemed too low. If he were a game developer, he would absolutely not accept this proportion.
But before, because they were negotiating with Jiangnan Group as a platform, and it was the Jiangnan platform itself that contacted game developers, this issue wasn't so important.
As a result, now that they were negotiating themselves, they had to pay attention to this troublesome issue.
"What is the platform profit-sharing ratio in the console industry?" the chairman asked with a frown.
"30/70 split. The console platform takes 30%, and game developers take 70%!" Ackerman said softly, and the chairman's face changed on the spot. Game manufacturers actually took away 70% of the profit, and he would only get 30%.
It would be better to cooperate directly with Jiangnan Group. Although they would get 10% less, they could offload all the troublesome matters to Jiangnan Group and directly receive the money.