Investor That Can See The Future

Chapter 447

As you can see from the title alone, ‘Lost Fantasy Saga – Serin’s Tower’ is a fantasy webtoon licensed by Lost Fantasy.

After several months of being officially serialized in Neo-Teen Webtoon, the dream of webtoon writers, this webtoon climbed to the top of the charts.

This is thanks to Lost Fantasy’s vast and structured worldview, attractive characters, Min Ha-young’s drawing skills, and Oh Taek-gyu’s story review.

To this, the explosive popularity of Lost Fantasy M and online and various events related to the game were added.

Even when the first official serialization was decided, Min Ha-young felt like she had the whole world, and she did not have high expectations for profits.

However, paid preview sales and advertising revenue exceeded our imagination. Her eyes widened as she saw the money in her bank account.

She said that her monthly income far exceeded that of her average office worker for a year. For her, who once floundered in the swamp of multiple stages, she was literally a life-changing event.

Instead, she had to struggle with deadlines every day without a proper holiday. However, no matter how busy she was, she used her story as an excuse to meet and talk with Taek-gyu at least once a week.

She is having such a busy but happy day, but a strange thing happened a few months ago. Profits from preview sales began to decline significantly.

At first, I was worried that the fun might have been lost, but based on the reaction of readers, it seems that is not the case.

This didn’t just happen to her. Although there is a slight difference, the decline in revenue was the same for other writers.

The reason was because of an illegal webtoon sharing site called Helto Kak. On that site, Min Ha-young’s webtoons, Neo-Teen webtoons, and webtoons from all kinds of sites such as Lujin Comics and Three Mix were uploaded. In addition to adult webtoons, Japanese adult comics, which were banned for release in Korea, were also being translated and serviced.

What’s very surprising is that all of this is free!

As word spread that you can watch webtoons for free, which can only be viewed after paying for it, from a certain moment, Helto Kak began to grow rapidly.

He even surpassed Neo-Teen Webtoon and vomited his flair for being number 1 in the number of daily users!

Hearing her story up to this point, Taek-gyu was startled.

“What? Are they that big?”

Taek-gyu is also well aware of Helto Kwak.

No, there will be no one who reads webtoons and doesn’t know. Because when you type the title of a webtoon, HeltoKKK appears as a related search term, or HeltoKKK site is above the official serial site.

Among the illegal webtoon sharing sites that are widely spread on the Internet, Helto Kwok boasted an overwhelming first place. The reason is that it is being operated so diligently that it is hard to believe that it is an illegal site.

A neat UI that considers users, new updates faster than other illegal sites (of course, it is not permissible), and provides a screen suitable for mobile, etc.

‘Still, I’m sure I’ll break the Neo-Teen Webtoon.’

The content industry such as webtoons and web novels continues to grow, and the industry is sparing no investment to preoccupy the market.

Each company is pouring a huge amount of publicity money to the point where you can easily find webtoon advertisements on TV, the Internet, and subway screens, and Helto Kak has attracted more than 50 million traffic per day without advertising!

‘Is this the power of free?’

After all, if you say you can watch it for free, it is the human psychology that you don’t want to pay money.

Min Ha-young said with a smirk.

“Well, so I… … .”

Unbearable that her own work was being shared illegally, she plucked up her courage and sent her e-mail to her e-mail address on her site with her Hel Tok.

[Good morning.

I’m Hi Young, a webtoon writer who is serializing ‘Lost Fantasy Saga – Serin’s Tower’ in Neoteen.

Not long ago, I found that my webtoon and the webtoons of fellow authors were uploaded illegally on the Helto Kwok site. One webtoon contains the author’s blood and sweat, and the writers make a living through it.

(syncopation)

As many writers are suffering from illegal sites, please delete inaccurate webtoons.]

Taek-gyu asked.

“So what happened?”

“Heh heh, I did… … .”

Instead of downloading the webtoon, the operator revealed an e-mail on the site.

And underneath it, ‘Writer Hi-Young asked me to take it down, what should I do? Hahaha,” he added with a mockery.

The comments below it were speculative.

– You should be grateful just to look at you.

– If you watch it for free, you’re not even a reader?

– Ha, that’s ridiculous. So you’re saying you shouldn’t even look at students with no money like me?

– I don’t think we’re seeing it and promoting it.

– The writer’s personality is crushed. 🤩🤩🤩 It’s dirty, so I’ll never see this author again.

– She’s a female writer, so it’s not like she’s a John nail.

– ㅋㅋ There are also writers who are better than Ji, but what did Ji say?

– You open up and make some money, so you can’t see anything.

– I’ll have to go into Neoteen Webtoon, give the first one a star, and leave some comments~

-Oh oh! Good idea. You have to spin three IDs to get one point for each!

-Everyone! Let’s show the power of Helto Kwok users!

Taek-gyu couldn’t help but be surprised as he looked at the comments on the phone handed to Min Ha-young.

“No, what’s so proud of the punks?”

Min Ha-young burst into tears again as if she was feeling unfair.

“Aww! I do not know.”

The people in the cafe muttered all at once.

“The man must have called the woman.”

“You look cute.”

“Are you sure you didn’t hit me?”

“Aren’t you supposed to report it to the police?”

Taek-gyu crossed his arms and nodded his head.

‘Hmm, there are days in life where I get misunderstood like this. okay. I can.’

Anyway, for the first time, he comforted Min Ha-young from crying.

“Calm down. What would you like to drink?”

“Shut up, yes. Not coffee, but sweet.”

After ordering two glasses of peach smoothie, Taek-gyu looked closely at the Helto Kwok site.

Outwardly, it was not much different from other webtoon sites. It is neatly organized by day of the week, by new publication, and by site, and the finished works are separated separately.

‘People who don’t know will think it’s an official webtoon site.’

If there is a difference, there are advertisements on various adult sites and gambling sites next to it. It’s quite understandable.

‘Well, it’s not like these guys are digging and operating.’

Min Ha-young said as if complaining.

“If I upload a preview, it really comes up to Helto Kuk in less than three minutes. do you think this makes sense? Why the hell are these indecisive people so sincere?”

Such sincerity is the secret to winning the top spot over other illegal sites and Neo-Teen Webtoons!

“How much has your paid income decreased?”

“I’m about 30 percent. There are writers who are cut in half.”

The damage is much greater than I thought. No, this is at a serious level.

Neoteen webtoon writers have three main sources of income. The manuscript fee, preview paid sale, and advertising fee attached to the webtoon from Neoteen.

Traffic is directly related to advertising fees. If traffic continues to flow to Helto Quak as it is now, the advertising fee will naturally fall.

While the Helto Kwok management team is making profits, the writers who draw the webtoons and the sites that provide services are suffering a huge financial loss. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Did you report it?”

“The Neoteen Webtoon side filed a complaint with the police directly, but they said there was nothing they could do about it because it is a site operated overseas. Blocking the site is only for a while, and they only change the domain and continue to operate.”

“Ugh.”

This is a typical illegal site tactic. Adult sites and gambling sites operate in a similar way.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“What do you do? There is no way.”

Min Ha-young wiped her tears with a tissue and blows her nose.

“I just said it out of frustration. Whoa, it’s better after we talk.”

He cried so much that his round eyes were swollen as bright red as rabbit eyes.

If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know, I can’t stay still as long as I’ve heard the story.

Taek-gyu looked for the e-mail address on the site, but the e-mail address was gone all of a sudden.

“Do you have any e-mail addresses left? Let me know.”

“Huh? What are you going to send?”

“Wait a minute.”

Taek-gyu sent an email.

[I’ll find you, and I’ll kill you.]

Taek-gyu looked at the sent e-mail and thought.

‘Five! I’ve always wanted to try this line.’

As I slowly finished drinking the smoothie and was about to get up, my phone rang. Surprisingly, a reply email arrived.

[Good luck!]

Taek-gyu smirked.

“Hey, look at this bastard.”

* * *

It was quite an issue when OTK Company and Space Z, me and Allen Everhart joined hands.

I am an investor, and Allen Eberhart has a good reputation as a developer and entrepreneur. When we agreed to form a subsidiary through a joint venture, expectations for the commercialization of electric planes increased significantly.

Again, small electric planes, flying cars (flying cars), electric helicopters, and manned drones have already been made.

Prototypes have also been released, and some have even completed test runs.

However, for commercialization, several problems such as price, safety, cruising range, and charging facilities must be solved.

When asked about this by reporters, Allen Eberhart replied, ‘I said the same thing when I first said I was making an electric car’. Anyway, one driving force is me.

In the establishment of the subsidiary, the CEO will be Allen Eberhart, and the board of directors will have an equal number of members.

We continue to discuss this issue with Space Z, but Taek-gyu, who came back from meeting Min Ha-young, returned.

“What are you talking about?”

“There is a serious problem.”

“What?”

“Hellto Kok said he ate first place.”

“… … Huh?”

What do you mean?(Read more @ wuxiax.com)

Taek-gyu explained what he had heard from Min Ha-young.

“It seems that webtoons also have serious problems with illegal copying.”

Illegal use of non-genuine software has a long history.

Even before the Internet was established, there were people selling VHS tapes or CDs in Yongsan Electronics Market, etc., and illegally translated books called pirated versions were sold in bookstores.

Since then, the Internet era has begun, and the golden age of piracy has begun. Illegally copied software moved freely over LAN cables.

Taek-gyu just cut it off.

“Bokdol is the axis of evil. Because of these guys, great game companies are ruined, and genuine users like me suffer damage!”

As the saying goes, the game industry suffered a lot of damage to genuine users due to piracy.

When sales volume decreases, companies have no choice but to raise prices or reduce game volume. In the case of foreign games, they are not sold, so instead of making a Korean translation, they either released the Japanese or English version as it is, or withdrew from the Korean market.

Ironically, these problems began to be solved with the further development of the Internet and technology.

The advent of online games made piracy impossible at all, and payment and streaming of content became easier, increasing the number of users and lowering prices.

With the launch of OTT services such as Netplay and Faceit, it is cheaper to pay to subscribe than to search for illegal files.

Ultimately, piracy will gradually disappear over time.

… … I thought so, but seeing that sites like Helto Kak are number one, it doesn’t seem like that’s the case.

“I can’t let these bastards suck the creators’ blood.”

“By the way, the server is in a foreign country? How?”

Taek-gyu thought for a moment, and then he asked.

“The operator of this is obviously Korean, right?”

“I will.”

The Helto Kwok site uploads Korean webtoons and Japanese manga translated into Korean. Hopefully, foreigners will not be running such a site.

“After all, if you find this guy, everything will be resolved.”

“so?”

Taek-gyu crossed his arms and said.