To ascend, I had no choice but to create games

Chapter 525: Chapter 307: The Collapse of Landick (Part 2)

His pupils began to dilate, his features contorted, as his left hand gripping the armrest involuntarily clenched tighter, the pale arm’s veins bulging menacingly.

The usually indifferent Landick displayed expressions he had never shown before at this moment, which, to Leon’s puzzlement, actually brought a trace of satisfaction.

You finally got what was coming to you, huh?

Landick always managed his emotions well, even when someone threw paint on him in public, he could still smile innocently and offer the perpetrator a compensation for the damaged clothing.

It seemed he never lost control of his emotions, but today, he revealed a rare look of shock and anger, making Leon even more curious about what he had seen.

Landick stared at his phone like a statue, then suddenly snapped back to reality and started making international calls.

...

He usually communicated via email, this hardcore North American didn’t even want to spend an extra cent on phone charges, but today was undoubtedly an exception.

While Landick was busy making calls, Leon also opened the stock trading app, and after a while, he discovered the reason for Landick’s loss of control.

Since the opening of the market, Druid Entertainment’s stock price had been affected by negative news and began to fall.

However, just minutes later, the stock began to surge against the trend; the negative news not only failed to drive its price down but caused it to break through the previous day’s closing price and continued to rise.

A rising stock price is good news for a company’s shareholders, but for Landick, it was undoubtedly a nightmare.

He was shorting Druid Entertainment’s stock, which meant every point the stock went up, he would lose some money.

As he was shorting the stock at ten times leverage, should the stock rise more than 10%, he would be facing a margin call, with the tens of millions of US Dollars he invested going down the drain.

One by one, negative news about Druid Entertainment was reported, and their own PR, under orders from the higher-ups, continued to spread their company’s scandals—a “paying to sabotage oneself” situation which, even outside the gaming industry, seemed particularly explosive, and yet, it was happening.

As he read through the press releases, Leon felt as if he were living in a dream.

Has the gaming industry really become this outrageous?

But no matter how explosive the negative news was, Druid Entertainment’s stock price kept rising.

Leon didn’t know how many institutions Landick had contacted, but judging by the flurry of different calls he was frantically making, it seemed there were quite a few.

Ignoring that he was in a public place, Landick shouted into the phone, “I don’t know, I really don’t know! I’m shorting it too, you’ve seen my settlement document, I’m not lying! This is just a technical adjustment, there’s no problem!”

“Margin called? Damn it, how much leverage did you add? Twenty times? Damn it!”

“Listen to me, I’m dealing with this situation right now, I will handle it!”

Furiously pressing his phone, Landick looked at his mobile with crazed eyes, his red orbs resembling those of a gambler desperate for a turnaround, searching for any chance to reverse his fortunes.

The stock price continued to rise, every short-selling institution’s margin call pushing it even higher.

The stock price creeping ever closer to Landick’s margin call threshold was like the slow-burning fuse of a bomb, inching closer to pushing Landick to the brink.

After making all his calls, Landick seemed to age ten years in an instant.

He sat blankly in his chair, his back soaked with sweat, even the back of his suit jacket showing a large wet patch.

At that moment, Leon passed his own phone to Landick, “You need to see this.”

Taking Leon’s phone with a vacant expression, Landick looked for a while and then said, “This is… Game Inn? I don’t understand Chinese.”

“There’s an automatic translation, just click here.”

After translating, Landick saw the content on Game Inn, and his expression grew even more astonished.

Game Inn had now become a globalized gaming-related website and, due to the previous real vs. fake “Fang Cheng Studios” incident, a large number of North American players had flooded the site, beginning to denounce Druid Entertainment’s crimes.

Recently, a stockbroker involved in short-selling Druid Entertainment’s stock released his own settlement document. Although he quickly deleted the post, it was immediately saved by someone and uploaded there.

This incident should have gone unnoticed, but because of the magnitude of the prior event, the post was unearthed, and it was sharply observed that some of Druid Entertainment’s executives were also short-selling.

They had their own fronts, but the analytical abilities of the players were strong as well, and those dissatisfied with Druid Entertainment immediately caught onto clues and continued searching for evidence, eventually reaching a conclusion:

Druid Entertainment was shorting its own stock.

Short-selling a stock requires a major negative news item as a catalyst, so they quickly connected it to the previous bogus acquisition incident and anticipated that the acquisition would likely fail, and the “time bomb” was set to explode today.

Once detonated, Druid Entertainment’s stock price was bound to plummet, and the executives short-selling their own stock would make a fortune, leaving these ordinary shareholders to foot the bill.

Having pieced together the cause and effect, the anger of the North American players was finally ignited.