Restart life

Chapter 480 0470 [The New Year is almost here again]

Youke.

Chen Guiliang was playing Minecraft version 2.16, a game that is now becoming increasingly rich in content.

It remains a relatively niche genre, but its die-hard fanbase is growing.

Even in Europe and America, there are already die-hard fans.

Qu Guohao said, "Riot Games paid GOA a penalty for breach of contract and completely regained the European operating rights for League of Legends."

"It was bound to happen sooner or later." Chen Guiliang continued playing the game.

The European operating rights for League of Legends were initially distributed among several different distributors.

In 2009, Riot Games wanted to merge multiple European servers into the GOA server, which would then be operated by GOA. However, this was met with strong resistance from players.

In May 2010, Riot Games established its European headquarters in Ireland and announced that it would take back European operations and operate them independently.

But this isn't something that can be solved with a simple announcement.

It also needed to hire employees, establish channels, set up servers, reclaim operating rights, migrate user data, and so on. After more than half a year of work, it is finally completely finished.

Qu Guohao said, "I've been studying the consulting report repeatedly recently, and I feel that those European operators are doing a terrible job. Instead of acquiring GOA or other companies, we might as well learn from Riot Games and build our own company."

“Tell me in detail,” Chen Guiliang said.

Qu Guohao continued, "Ireland is the ideal location for Youke to establish its European headquarters. I'm very curious why Riot Games chose Ireland instead of the UK, France, or Germany when setting up its European headquarters. So we sent someone to contact the Irish Development Agency, and when they learned about our company, they were extremely enthusiastic. Just like... just like domestic officials being enthusiastic when attracting investment!"

Chen Guiliang asked with a smile, "What preferential policies are available?"

Qu Guohao explained in detail: "Ireland also experienced a sovereign debt crisis last year and quickly formulated a series of preferential policies. If we set up our European headquarters in Ireland, the tax rate on regular game operation revenue is only 12.5%, and the tax rate on intellectual property revenue, including licensing fees, is only 6.25%. Eligible R&D projects can enjoy a 25% tax credit, and there may even be tax refunds."

"That's awesome?" Chen Guiliang put down his mouse.

Compared to Ireland's ultra-low corporate tax rate of 12.5%, France's is 33.33%, the UK's is 28%, and Germany's is 30%.

Moreover, the UK's 28% tax rate was lowered during the economic crisis; previously, the tax rate was 30%, the same as Germany's.

Qu Guohao laughed and said, "That's why Fist went to Ireland to build its European headquarters."

Chen Guiliang carefully recalled his past life, and it seemed that Ireland hadn't caused any trouble. Especially during the US-China trade war, Ireland maintained a "neutral" stance.

“Continue to contact the Irish authorities and come up with a plan after the Spring Festival,” Chen Guiliang said. “Since the Europeans are so difficult to please, we’ll build our own European operating channels. No matter how difficult it is, we have to do it. Once it’s done, it’ll be a permanent solution.”

……

After attending the annual meetings of ByteDance and Youke, Chen Guiliang immediately flew to Chengdu.

Before heading back to my hometown for the Chinese New Year, I took the opportunity to visit the Chengdu Cloud Computing Center.

Upon hearing that Chen Guiliang was coming, leaders from the High-tech Zone also showed up, and even Bian Jinsong came to join in the fun.

The heads of the Chengdu Cloud Computing Center are still Zhou Ruiping and Xu Shiwei. The former oversees the overall operations, while the latter is in charge of technology.

Xu Shiwei explained, “The first phase of the project has been successfully completed. Currently, the technical team has 158 people… Only 300 server racks are powered on so far, but the server uptime rate has reached 92%. Our business expansion is very rapid, and more and more internet companies are cooperating with us. Of course, business development is not my responsibility… The leaders of the High-tech Zone have also been very supportive, ensuring zero power outages throughout the year…”

Chen Guiliang smiled and shook hands with the leaders of the High-tech Zone: "Thank you for your care, Director Zhang."

Director Zhang smiled and said, "Serving high-tech enterprises is our bounden duty."

Xu Shiwei continued, "Our self-developed platform boasts a stable virtual machine deployment success rate of over 99.5%... We can confidently promise 99.9% availability for object storage. To achieve this, we employ a three-replica strategy... From application to virtual machine activation, we can control the time to within 10-15 minutes..."

Chen Guiliang had absolutely no technical knowledge and his head was spinning the whole way.

Seeing Zhou Ruiping and Xu Shiwei's proud expressions, Chen Guiliang could guess that they had done a great job, so he smiled and praised them: "Very impressive, your results far exceeded expectations, you must have put in a lot of hard work."

After visiting the administration building, laboratories, and computer room, Chen Guiliang then visited the canteen.

In the second half, Zhou Ruiping introduced the situation: "We haven't outsourced the canteen; we've always run it ourselves. While ensuring food safety, we also strive to make it nutritious and delicious, and we provide meal allowances for our employees... As for accommodation, initially, the employees stayed in talent apartments provided by the High-tech Zone. After General Manager Bian built the nearby residential area, more and more employees chose to buy their own homes."

Bian Jinsong added from the side, "We have specially formulated a housing security plan for the core employees of Xiangyun Company (cloud computing center) with zero down payment. The local government also fully supports this housing plan."

"The nearby primary school has also started construction," Director Zhang added.

Whether it's the newly built primary school in the High-tech Zone or the residential community developed by Bian Jinsong, they are certainly not built solely for the cloud computing center.

Several plots of land in the surrounding area have already been acquired by other companies.

In another timeline, this area would have gradually developed into a financial center. However, the establishment of Chen Guiliang's cloud computing center has attracted a large number of high-tech companies.

Continuing his stroll to the construction site, Chen Guiliang put on a safety helmet.

Zhou Ruiping pointed ahead and said, "That's the second phase of the project; construction started two months ago..."

Chen Guiliang only visited the site from the outside and did not enter the construction site to disturb the construction.

We ate lunch at the cafeteria here.

At first, the employees were a bit reserved, until one employee put down his tray and ran over to take a photo with Chen Guiliang, and the other employees followed suit. After more than ten photos were taken, Zhou Ruiping started to shoo them away: "Go eat by yourselves! How can the chairman eat when you're all running around taking photos?"

Chen Guiliang laughed and said, "It's alright, there aren't many people."

Even so, the employees dispersed and went to find tables to eat.

Director Zhang and Bian Jingsong also lined up for food with Chen Guiliang.

They called it queuing, but it was just for show; any employees with good sense would voluntarily give way.

In the afternoon, Director Zhang and Bian Jingsong left one after the other, and Chen Guiliang chatted with Zhou and Xu in a small conference room.

"After the Spring Festival, I will move more of ByteDance and Youke's businesses to the cloud. You must guarantee that there will be no problems!" Chen Guiliang said sternly.

Although Xu Shiwei made impressive claims, such as a virtual machine deployment success rate of over 99.5% and object storage availability of 99.9%, even Chen Guiliang didn't quite believe them, let alone other company clients.

Whether it's ByteDance's social platforms or Youke's games, they only dare to migrate a portion of their operations to the cloud. Only after operating them for a period of time without problems do they gradually expand the scope of cloud technology usage.

The same thing is happening at Alibaba Cloud; there's a huge internal dispute within Alibaba.

Last year, Alibaba Cloud officially launched its public beta test. But even Alibaba itself only dared to test a financial order loan product on the Alibaba Cloud platform as a guinea pig.

However, Alibaba's core business, including its executives and customers, is skeptical of cloud technology.

Ma Jieke kept pushing but couldn't budge it!
Xu Shiwei assured, "We've been in public testing for over six months, constantly improving the Xiangyun platform, and it's now extremely reliable. I guarantee there won't be any more problems."

Xu Shiwei had come from Kingsoft, so he wasn't very close to Chen Guiliang.

Zhou Ruiping, who was transferred from Youke, was much closer to Chen Guiliang. He said with a smile, "Boss, if we weren't absolutely certain, we wouldn't dare take on business from the parent company (Youke). If any of the games had any problems, the losses would be so great that we couldn't afford to pay them even if we sold ourselves."

Chen Guiliang said, "No matter how confident you are in your words, I will only take it one step at a time."

After chatting for a while, Chen Guiliang got up and left.

He had Yang Shuo drive the cloud computing center's car to Bian Jingsong's house to pick up Bian Guanyue and take her back to his hometown for the Spring Festival.

Yang Shuo's wife is pregnant and stayed at her parents' home to rest this year, instead of going back with Yang Shuo.

The expressway from Chengdu to Longdu is under full construction and is expected to open to traffic next autumn.

This year, we'll continue down the same bumpy road.

"Are you home yet?" Tao Xue texted.

Chen Guiliang replied, "Still on the road, causing all the trouble."

"I just flew to Hangzhou. Sigh, I'll be spending the New Year here from now on."

"Your parents moved there?"

"Yes, they've all retired. To urge my brother to get married, they moved to Hangzhou. I heard they go to the matchmaking corner in the park every week to find a marriage partner for him."

"If I were your brother, I'd just get married already. It's so annoying that our parents keep pressuring us."

"Haha, he deserved it!"

Tao Xue has graduated and changed jobs twice in six months. She has now resigned to write online novels full-time.

So-called full-time work is just a matter of working sporadically.

She herself didn't know what to do, so she stayed at home all day reading and playing games, occasionally going out to eat and go shopping with Chen Guiliang.

Even so, Tao Xue has managed to accumulate quite a few fans.

Although her updates are incredibly slow, the quality of her novels is getting better and better. She has now left Qidian and started serializing on Jinjiang Literature City, specializing in ancient romance novels.

Chen Guiliang even went to read her masterpiece. The writing was beautiful and the plot was melodramatic, making it quite suitable for adaptation into a TV series.

Before I could finish chatting with Tao Xue, Xu Fengyin sent me another text message saying that she had gotten off the plane and was taking a taxi home.

Chen Guiliang glanced to the side and saw Bian Guanyue sleeping soundly, leaning against his arm.

The car swayed back and forth on this broken road, which was quite hypnotic.

As evening approached, we returned to Longdu.

The urban area here has changed a lot, mainly due to the booming real estate market, with large areas of new urban development in the last two years. Furthermore, the city is being developed into a tourist destination, resulting in demolition and redevelopment projects everywhere.

Wages haven't increased much, but prices are skyrocketing!
Chen Guiliang took a car back to the village. Because the migrant workers had returned home for the Spring Festival, the village was much more lively than usual.

When he was reborn, the village was quite backward. Now, you can see new two- or three-story houses everywhere, and mobile phones (feature phones) are basically common in the village.

Every now and then you can see villagers making phone calls.

In just a few years, things have changed dramatically.

(End of this chapter)