E-Ladies: Navigating the Wired World
Chapter 196: Episode 196: If My Company Doesn’t Listen to Me, Who Will It Listen To?

Chapter 196: Episode 196: If My Company Doesn’t Listen to Me, Who Will It Listen To?

Zhou Xueyin walked out of the meeting room and saw Yao Shanshan, her face red with anger, tears streaming down, arguing with Zhu Dayan’s subordinate.

"I told you, you can’t use that font, just can’t use it, you’ll be sued for infringement!" Yao Shanshan cried out desperately, her face a mix of red and white.

"Why can’t we use it? I’ve used it so many times and never got a lawyer’s letter! Just an art director, right? Isn’t it tiring to meddle so much? Whether your forum uses it is your business, our little game doesn’t need your supervision!" That person didn’t take Yao Shanshan seriously at all.

"But if you want to show up on the forum, you have to follow the forum’s rules! I’ve already given you the fonts you could use, why on earth aren’t you using them?" Yao Shanshan said anxiously, having revised the same image several times already, but the other side stubbornly refused to use the fonts she provided.

"Those fonts you gave? Ugly enough to make one vomit blood! How could I use them? You call yourself a graphic editor, I think you lack any aesthetic sense at all! Right, everyone?" The person shrugged dismissively.

"Why waste words! You don’t get to use the copyrighted fonts bought for 51buy in your little game! You want to use it? Spend the money to buy it!" Wang Anqi couldn’t stand it any longer and blurted out directly.

"We’re all from the same company, why divide yours and mine? Can’t we share resources?" Zhu Dayan tried to defuse the atmosphere.

"Not distinguishing yours and mine now? Who was it again? Before Sister Yin returned to work, didn’t someone say that all the traffic came from the little game, and the main site shouldn’t think about taking advantage? Who said that?" Zhao Caiyun couldn’t stand listening any longer and joined in.

"Enough already! It’s just a picture! Why make a fuss? If you’re told to edit, just obediently do it, isn’t that the end of it? Zhang Yongzhong hired you, to solve company problems, not to come here and argue!" Zhou Xueyin nearly shouted this out.

"Shanshan, don’t cry... If you think the font is ugly, you can arrange it yourself. Why bully our art director?" Zhou Xueyin deliberately defended her own team, feeling irritated at the arrogant boys who didn’t respect anyone.

"This crappy job is unworkable! Tell Brother Yong I’m not coming in tomorrow!"

Wow, such a small-time player with quite the temper, huh? That sounds so familiar. Zhou Xueyin smirked contemptuously, recalling how she had once been described the same way by others.

"Don’t smash the keyboard! That’s state property; if you break it, you’ll pay for it!" Seeing the person angrily lift the keyboard as if to smash it, Zhou Xueyin hurriedly intervened.

"Tch... Tsk..." The person yanked the headset out that was plugged into the tower with frustration and left cursing and muttering.

"Remember to sign the resignation agreement, otherwise, you won’t be paid for these few days!" Zhou Xueyin ’kindly’ reminded.

"Anyone else who wants to leave, feel free to go! But just remember, you are leaving voluntarily; I’m not forcing you out!" Zhou Xueyin said flippantly, "Alright, back to work everyone!"

The next day, when Zhang Yongzhong came to the company, he saw that over half of the game team’s desks were empty and their website was down. Frantic, he sought out Zhou Xueyin with a face pale from urgency.

"Who gave you permission to shut down the game site? Do you even realize this is a traffic treasure? The site’s already bottlenecking, instead of finding solutions, you’re stopping me? Don’t you want your bonus?"

"I admit the site has hit a bottleneck, but was it really necessary to go for these low-quality, borderline tricks? We are a legitimate fashion forum, not a borderline website!" Zhou Xueyin declared righteously.

"I did all of this with Xiaodong’s approval! You don’t agree? Let’s go to Boss Xiaodong and see who’s right!"

The last thing Zhou Xueyin wanted to hear was this; whatever she wanted to do was no longer firm, and she had to bring out someone bigger to back her up. But even so, she wasn’t afraid to bring out the big guns—why fear when she had the truth on her side?

Upon arriving at the CEO’s office of the group, Liu Ruidong was already prepared and waiting for the two people: "I knew it, with Yinyin’s personality, she would definitely come to me. Alright then, you two, state your points of view to each other."

"I’ll go first!" Zhang Yongzhong rushed to express his opinion.

"Why should you go first?" Zhou Xueyin gave him a disdainful look. "This is my website, if anyone should explain the situation first, it should be me, right?"

"Then let Yinyin speak first..." Liu Ruidong said, smiling as he looked at Zhou Xueyin.

Seeing this smile, Zhou Xueyin felt an indescribable sensation. She found the man before her to be both cunning and indecisive, as if he had to weigh every word three times over, no matter who spoke.

"It’s true that the forum has hit a bottleneck, but there’s no need for such despicable methods to attract junk traffic! This kind of traffic won’t stick around, it could vanish at any moment!" Zhou Xueyin spoke passionately, "Moreover, this kind of content is like a cancer to the forum, and it could blow up any time, ruining us all!"

"Hey, you little girl, don’t speak so offensively, alright? Shouldn’t you leave some face for others? What do you mean by ’cancer’? Making flash games, how is that cancer? Explain yourself clearly to me!" Zhang Yongzhong became angry upon hearing Zhou Xueyin’s words.

This one sentence effectively dismissed all his hard work from the past week.

"How is it not a cancer? If you made some proper flash games that would be one thing, but what are you making? All this stuff about ’nighttime’, ’housewives’, edging around ’SQ’ with such vulgar content! If that’s not a cancer, then what is?" Zhou Xueyin didn’t even want to recall those indecent screenshots.

"Only this type can attract people, you see! And it’s just the screenshots that look like that. The games themselves are still wholesome. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have found them online!" Zhang Yongzhong let slip the truth about sourcing the games.

So these flash games weren’t developed by them after all? That made sense; given these guys 28 hours a day, they still couldn’t have produced such a large number of flash games in a week’s time.

"Hah? Great! So the games weren’t developed in-house? You just transported them over? Aren’t you afraid of other websites suing you for piracy? Huh?" Zhou Xueyin glared at Zhang Yongzhong furiously.

"Ay, all the world’s a copy, my dear! It’s all over the internet, and they’re not going to fixate on us alone!" Zhang Yongzhong argued weakly.

"Boss Xiaodong, I disagree with this flash game thing! If he wants to proceed, that’s fine, let him start his own separate flash game site and not meddle with my 51buy!" Zhou Xueyin said with unwavering conviction.

"How do you plan to address the recent drop in 51buy’s traffic?" Instead of heeding Zhou Xueyin’s recommendation, Liu Ruidong shifted the conversation to another topic.

"We plan to develop a mobile version. When we were having fun in Hong Kong, we noticed a lot of people were using iPhones. We could make a forum module tailored for the iOS system... This way, netizens could browse the bbs anytime, anywhere!" Zhou Xueyin actually had no intention of doing this.

After all, not everyone can afford Apple’s exorbitantly priced phones, and most people currently use Nokia’s Symbian OS or just regular Android smartphones.

The reason she said this was to give Liu Ruidong some peace of mind, to make him feel like she was also considering the future of 51buy.

"Hmm... My suggestion is to first develop a forum module that is compatible with the Symbian OS. As for iOS... it’s not widespread yet, so there’s no rush!" Liu Ruidong agreed with Zhou Xueyin’s opinion. "Just that during the development period, first hang onto the flash games to attract traffic. Shanbao, you also keep an eye on this—don’t put up overly extreme pictures and indeed pay attention to the company’s image!"

The group CEO was the group CEO after all, making a compromise that really didn’t offend either side.