Re: Life - Business & Technology

Chapter 12 - Apple Backs Down

[This suit looks pretty nice on me. I always wanted to dress like Harvey Specter from the TV show. Hopefully, my presentation was effective. Unfortunately, though, I couldn't spend too much time with negotiations. I'm paying the law firm to deal with most of the process, which frees a lot of time for school work and the development of our new game,] Vince thought.

Vince took some time to roughly update the Wingin' Chicken cash shop prices to match the current BTC going price on the market exchange.

[This stopgap was a temporary solution for the payment processing issue. If the negotiations work out, all my future products will provide native payment processing and cryptocurrency exchange. The ease of use will attract more user spending. Utilizing cryptocurrency can also help streamline a community market where users trade digital goods amongst one another. We should be able to start creating a barebones community market prototype soon. The Bitcoin Market guys will help accelerate its' development when we reach an agreement,] Vince thought. 

After working for a few hours, Vince checked his email and found one from Lewis-Jacobs stating the agreement from DWDollar and Bitcoin Market.

Someone arrived at the house to receive signatures from him and Leah which completed the transaction. Vince had a week to provide the $50 million stated on the contract.

He checked his satoshi wallet and found it didn't increase by much from the last time he checked, probably due to the increasing price of BTC, but the changes made to the cash shop prices convinced some users to spend money on the game again.

[I'll be losing plenty of Bitcoin in constantly adjusting the cash shop prices to meet market prices. So I need to get the payment portal up and running soon, even with fewer features] he thought.

He decided to sell 3 million BTC from his savings of 10 million BTC for around $11 each, spreading the transactions out like usual. 

Lewis-Jacobs handled the withdrawal and left him with $30 million of liquidity after the firm used the rest to pay for fees, taxes, and the acquisition of Bitcoin Market.

The good news about the lawsuit was also included in the email stating that the U.S government cared more about the anti-trust and monopolistic behavior Apple was showing and will most likely settle out of court within the month.

[That was fast. It would usually take years for a lawsuit like this to conclude. So it seems Apple doesn't have as much political pull that it had in my past life] he thought.

Google showed interest in pursuing the same lawsuit against Future Tech but thought wiser of it based on how things were going. Android users were the least affected and didn't care at all.

He replied with a few instructions stating his need for a networking infrastructure contractor and the assistance of Epic Games for technical and development support for Unreal Engine 3 and Future Tech's upcoming game.

Lewis-Jacobs scheduled a video meeting between Tim Sweeney and Vince Dalton a few hours later.

"Thank you for accepting to meet with me, Mr. Sweeney. I admire your company's work, and it's a pleasure to speak with you finally." Vince stated respectfully over Skype.

The 40-year-old Caucasian-American man on the other end replied with a modest and soft-sounding tone.

"I was surprised to hear from my secretary about a potential deal you wanted to negotiate. My company would usually reach out via my project managers, but you, Vince Dalton, interest me the most. Your success with the simple mobile game you developed has made the rounds in our offices. It's always the young that dominate the video game industry. No matter what the suits in the boardrooms of Activision or EA say." Tim stated curiously.

[The guy talks like a sesame street character but is straightforward, for sure. It seems strange for a small dev like me to ask a behemoth like Epic Games to help develop my new IP.] Vince pondered.

"Thank you for the praise, Mr. Sweeney. I agree that the young developers drive the industry forward for their time like yourself and John Carmack. I hope that the team and I can live up to your expectations." Vince replied graciously.

"Not a lot of people would think to integrate such a novel technology like cryptocurrency into their video game. So what's the new idea you've been cooking up that requires Epic Games' assistance?" Tim Sweeney asked inquisitively.

After a few hours of discussing Vince's vision of his new and radical game idea over Skype, the young business owner, and the video game industry behemoth worked out an initial partnership plan in developing War Online.

The game itself would start small in scope, but Vince's team and Epic Games would gradually add more features to keep existing players engaged with the content.

Vince had to pay a flat fee for Epic Game's development services and the license to use Unreal Engine 3, including all engine updates.

A month passed as everyone involved in his business worked towards the final production stages of both the new game called War Online and the native payment processor.

Bitcoin income from Wingin' Chicken was slowly fading along with its' popularity on most platforms. Therefore, a new product will have to be released to increase revenue continuously. 

DWDollar contacted Vince regarding integrating the new payment portal with Wingin' Chicken and War Online.

Vince emailed back, saying that both will be developed and released simultaneously. Kyle already notified him that War Online was ready to be released in a few days after the network infrastructure contractors finished work on their end.

[It was expensive to pay for networking services, but $10 million is a drop in the bucket compared to how popular he knew War Online would become.] Vince thought.

War Online was much different for Clash of Clans after its development. First, there was more of an MMORPG aspect than just attacking other people's bases.

Second, the game featured a mainline quest written by one of the high school seniors Vince recruited a month ago with an incredible talent in writing. The game evolved with more people involved in its development, such as the Epic Games consultants. 

Kyle and Sarah focused on the cash shop item designs while the other artist finished the base game art using assets like materials instances and static meshes provided by Epic.

The three programmers scripted the game with the help of Vince while Kyle worked with Epic Games to ensure cross-platform functionality would work as intended. 

It cost $5 million for Epic Game's consultation, which was already negotiated heavily by Lewis-Jacobs.

Epic provided Future Technologies with a cross-platform plugin to enable the 3D gameplay on most devices that support standard graphics APIs. As a result, War Online's visual fidelity can be customized for the device and platform being played.

The release will go live for Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS now that the lawsuit has concluded. Apple had to pay $10 million worth of ad revenue reparations for removing the game from the App Store.

The judge declared that Apple couldn't force developers to solely use the App Store payment processor and allowed third-party payment portals for use. However, Future Technologies still had to pay a fee to enable their games on the App Store and negotiated a flat cost of $5 million per month.

Vince decided not to publish Wingin' Chicken on the App Store and only published War Online on the money-grabbing platform. 

Lewis-Jacobs signed the same deal with Google to cover their bases before War Online's release.

The government inquired about Future Technologies' Bitcoin earnings and could not find any faults in handling capital gains. 

Deloitte treated his outgoing Bitcoin transactions like how they would for gold and other commodities as Bitcoin was not yet a recognized currency, saving Vince millions in taxes.

Vince attended homeroom like always but was rather tired because of the recent Future Tech projects.

The teacher today was a replacement rather than Ms. Miller. 

[I wonder if anything happened to Ms. Miller. She was always stern yet cared for her student's education. Her math classes were fun compared to other teachers and always gave me advice in my past life.] Vince thought.

The group met up during lunch and talked about the release of War Online. 

"The Future Technologies main website is ready to be deployed. Also, the guys at Bitcoin Market were a huge help in teaching me more advanced techniques with user base governance on HTML.", Jessica said.

"Sarah and I finished with the first collection of cash shop items and ready for the next project.", Rick added. 

"War Online is looking so good right now. I'm hyped for its release. Those Epic Games guys are geniuses, Vince. It was inspiring learning from them this past month, especially Mr. Sweeney!" Kyle declared.

"You guys have done great work. However, I'll give you and our upperclassmen a month off after War Online's release. Exams are coming up, and you'll need some time for rest and review.", Vince stated.

[War Online might be the most ambitious project I have led myself. I've been involved in larger projects, but this was different. This project will be released under my own company.] Vince thought proudly.

EDITED