Chapter 719: Chapter 682: The Wave of Strikes!
“Huh?” Lincoln was quite surprised, “Northern Ireland players are protesting? They want to join this competition?”
“Yes.” Chadwick was obviously not happy and began to complain to Lincoln:
“The original schedule was all set up to have a match on Christmas Eve. We even started the early promotion, and the money has been spent!”
“But now they jump out at this point, protesting every day outside the company, saying we discriminate against them and treat the Northern Irish differently.”
“We can’t withstand such a big accusation.”
“But it was originally two teams playing, but if it becomes three, the length of the competition will inevitably be extended to determine the ranking.”
“So I had to ask for your authorization, not only to extend the competition time but also the technical authorization for screening data and selecting player representatives, extending the authorization time, and expanding the scope of authorization to include Northern Irish players…”
…
Lincoln didn’t interrupt Chadwick’s speech, but waited for him to finish before saying:
“Are you sure that’s enough?”
“What do you mean?” Chadwick was a bit startled.
“What I mean is, is it possible that if you announce today that Northern Ireland is joining the competition, the company’s doorway will be blocked by Welsh players tomorrow? As far as I know, Wales has a third more players than Northern Ireland.”
“Ah!” Chadwick suddenly realized the seriousness of the situation.
Although Wales and England have a close relationship and rarely talk about independence and such.
But if a competition involves players from England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and only players from Wales are excluded…
They definitely can’t tolerate that!
Then it’s bound to be a chaotic mess, and if it delays any further, the final battle definitely won’t make it in time for Christmas.
It might even be delayed until New Year’s, clashing with the second [Peak War]!
“You’re right! It’s not enough!” Chadwick quickly corrected himself and included the Welsh players in the competition too.
After getting Lincoln’s authorization, he finally felt relieved and ended the call.
It was still late at night in London, and he needed to hurry up and get some rest.
The complications of the competition will inevitably bring in a lot of work, and the entire CC Game Company must now go all out to catch up with the schedule.
Before going to sleep, he thought gratefully: Luckily, the strike wave didn’t affect the gaming industry, otherwise we would have definitely missed the deadline.
*
On Cloud Dream’s side, after ending the call, Lincoln didn’t rush to work but instead watched the British news with Mavis.
Chadwick’s “You don’t know?” made him realize that he hadn’t been paying attention to overseas affairs for some time.
That’s not good.
So they revisited their familiar small sofa, each with a glass of fruit juice, and started browsing international news.
Starting with the UK.
The first news that appeared instantly made Lincoln admire in his heart-
[Over 150,000 teachers and faculty members will start a three-day strike from December 23rd!]
And the recent news was even more outrageous-
[115,000 Royal Mail employees will start a 48-hour strike from the 20th!]
[More than 10,000 ambulance care-related staff will hold a 2-day strike on December 17th and 18th!]
[UK Civil Service Union: Its 100,000 members in 124 administrative departments will go on strike!]
…
Lincoln watched this series of strike and protest news, some already happened, some are ongoing, and some are planned for the future…
Covering various industries like transportation, education, logistics, healthcare… even civil servants!
The scope of the strike was unbelievably vast.
In comparison, the gaming protest outside CC Game Company’s door was just a tiny unnoticed wavelet.
Lincoln recalled the last time he paid attention to British news; it seems that UK players wanted to learn from the “advanced experience” of German players, giving up on useless protests and instead trying to gather as many people as possible to organize a nationwide strike.
To convey their “powerful” voices, they demand the successful completion of the servers that will serve the virtual world.
Afterwards, he was busy with other things and did not follow up on the matter.
But seeing the increasingly fierce and vigorous large-scale strikes in the United Kingdom, Lincoln was shocked:
“Is this… done by British players?”
“Are they really that awesome?!”
“German players are not even worthy of being your teacher!”
This is just too outrageous!
But… if that’s the case, why don’t they see many headlines about [servers] and [virtual reality]?
The slogans of these strikes either call for higher remuneration, improved working conditions, or issues like pensions and employment security.
There’s hardly any players’ voices to be seen.
Lincoln turned his head and looked at Mavis, who was holding his arm: “Do you know what’s going on, Mavis?”
“Mavis knows of course!”
Mavis nodded proudly, and then, one after another, the complicated news pages floating in front of Lincoln began to move quickly and rearrange themselves.
At the same time, a large number of new windows were opened, and new pieces of information joined the information storm.
In just a few seconds, Mavis had sorted out a clear timeline and displayed it in front of Lincoln.
Lincoln followed this timeline, checking each headline one by one.
He hoped to find that turning point.
But after going through the entire timeline, he discovered that there was no such crucial moment.
It started with players protesting, then moving from protests to strikes.
Initially, the scale of the strikes was not large, and their online influence far exceeded their real-life impact on society.
But later, someone thought that if they were going to strike and protest, they might as well protest all the dissatisfaction at once.
So in the slogans of the strikes and protests, they added: “Increase remuneration!” “Improve working conditions!” “Protest against delayed retirement!”
This behavior quickly attracted a large number of imitators.
These slogans had a far greater impact than their previous ones!
Many netizens spontaneously joined in, and the volume of strikes and protests grew day by day.
After that, the first professional union emerged, organizing its members to carry out organized large-scale strikes.
Then the second, third, fourth…
By this time, not many people were shouting about virtual games and servers anymore. Instead, the latter slogans became louder and louder, sweeping across the nation like an avalanche.
“As expected, wages, medical care, and pensions are eternal social topics.” Lincoln couldn’t help but sigh.
In this wave of strikes, the players’ protests were merely a fuse that ignited the powder keg.
It’s unknown whether the British government agencies regretted their decisions when they saw the current situation.
After all, if they had agreed to the players’ demands earlier, they might not have to face this mess now.
At the same time, Lincoln couldn’t help but worry: after such a big “uproar,” is there still hope for Cloud Dream’s server center to be established in the UK?
Thinking about it from another perspective, if someone caused him so much trouble, he would definitely not let them off easily…
Not only that, under the wave of this large-scale strike, even if the British government agreed, the server center probably couldn’t be built.
In other words, British players are likely to face a long period of high latency, continuing to love and kill each other with India in the T3 War Zone.
Unless…
Move the server center to Ireland?
As soon as this idea came up, Lincoln thought of another matter:
“It seems… there’s a grudge between Ireland and England?”