Chinese Reaction to Wuxiaworld vs. Qidian issue

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by _Selutu_, May 24, 2017.

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  1. JJ

    JJ [?]

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    I admit I don't understand china's market but for my two cents, it could be due to monopolies (thus making them arrogant), could be the great firewall or probably censorship (decreasing competitors or making competitors hard to enter into the market), or the language barrier itself (making it again harder to enter into the market). With those factors, qidian is king but only domestically.

    Coupled with the fact that most of their stories are bloated or full of fillers (and even chinese admit it), they really have a hard time entering into the market. Right now, I'm enjoying KRs more since they're succinct and doesn't have to blather a paragraph of adjectives.
     
  2. TheOnlyRavenbrand

    TheOnlyRavenbrand Death Knight - WW Supporter

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    Well that's the thing.. Friends or people that are friendly with one another can be at each other's throats for perceived wrongs or insults, what they think is someone being difficult just to be difficult or best of yet.. Difference of culture. Things that go into NDA land.. We don't try to pry and get people into legal trouble.. We can based on what we see here is.. Qidian International going full jerk mode.

    Of course they decided to invest after they decided to come in themselves. What I see as being a problem here is.. QI did something stupid.. And when RWX defended himself, Qidian doubled down. They can't admit they are wrong because that would give them a worse legal case. So better to double down and say someone is wrong when you think courts might be involved. As they say.. Never admit to anything!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 26, 2017
  3. Askurai

    Askurai Well-Known Member

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    Well that is not entirely the problem. They live on corrupted grounds, which is China, this is also where they can do what they want regardless of consequences.
    They don't seem to know that these way of thinking will not work in the Western world.
    They don't have feelings for copyright or plagiarism. as i said in my other post they copy cities from all over the world.
    And there was also a rumble as J K Rowling where she had not released a Harry Potter band, that there were" official chineese versions" bevor the release of the english version... (this was said by another poster with link but dont find it atm for quote)
    Why does this happen call the government doesn't have any interests is bribed or something else.

    I don't like to generalise, I don't think that these people have the right to talk about copyright. They only treat it like gold when they need, but when it is the copyright of other it doesnt interest them.

    that is what i find ironical. :sneaky:
     
  4. Lengyue

    Lengyue Member

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    Do you means the chinese is copying city? medieval building or modern building?(street,shop,etc from your other post).
    Edit: Add some images please, i don't know which city are you talking.
    Edit2: I saw the link on your other post, from what i see that is just a village, yes, just a village, but you are already so furious(Sorry my english is not good, but what i wanted to says is Picao or Picón something from the Spanish Language), it is not like in this world there is not any country with some chinese culture and copy cities from all over the world? well, i only saw 1 link about Australian (My internet is not good right now, maybe i missed some titles).And YES! there is a lot other country's building on China but it was a long time in the 19th century, 2nd Opium War but it was not builded by the chinese, it was builded by the Western (Maybe they had some chinese workers) so it doesn't count as copy. "To use underhanded means what inquirer the ire of the community and that would not only been image damage to the company but also to the country and Culture." a quote from your other post, what Culture are you talking? so the chinese trying to have Western culture is an evil does thing called Copy? In my opinion, you look like a racist, it is not than i says this because you trash talk China, you are calling the whole race corrupted in almost every post lol.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2017
  5. nicostrato

    nicostrato Well-Known Member

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    I feel like Qidian will start to lose profits if they continue too act in this unbridled and outrageous manner.
     
  6. rexzshadow

    rexzshadow Well-Known Member

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    Here is the thing they think of this as an investment so they expect to lose money for the first 1-2 years. So to them losing money might seem normal right now. They won't see if they really losing money until after the first 1-2 years which by that point might be too late to change their ways as they would have already crashed the market lol.
     
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  7. Hahhaa

    Hahhaa hereby irrevocably & perpetually waives all moral

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    Qidian might be losing money if thing blown out of proportion and Chinese realize how truly unbridled and outrageous Qidian are.
    Qidian International have no income anyway but their investor/share holder might pull out investment if shitstorm grow past their bottom line. Despite all said and done, face is still important.
     
  8. readerz

    readerz Madam Jin

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    They are losing what? Some super small amount of money like $30 per chapter? Their pay for translators is so low that the amount of translated material they are getting vs the money they spend could be very good ROI.

    Edit: I'm saying even if this a PR disaster, Qidian isn't going to lose much. A few hundred thousands is peanuts to Qidian. Their parent company China Reading, also known as Yuewen Group has a yearly revenue of US$31.9 million.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2017
  9. Chance

    Chance Observer

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    Not very much. How much profit do they have? Good find, probably why they are making a fuss...to bad they are poisoning the well of niche consumers.
     
  10. readerz

    readerz Madam Jin

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    Some news articles said their IPO will be around US$800 million so their total worth is around a billion but probably more.
     
  11. MadHatter

    MadHatter [WindyWeather]

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    My take on the situation

    At the beginning, Qidian venture into the western translation business was something new with a lot of unknown. Thus they were more than happy to enter a partnership with WW to get their hands on WW data and experience. Once they started their own website under Qidian International umbrella, and started to get a steady foothold on the business, it was predictable that they would be lure by the potential this new market could bring them in term of profit if they ever own sole monopoly of their materials. So when the negotiation started over the new 11 novels, it was expected to see QI strong-arm WW.

    What started all this mess? (This is my personal conjecture)
    My guess is that over at QI they had a meeting with the guy managing the NUF_Qidian account being present. They probably talked about their future plans and the thorn in their side WW had become. This NUF_Qidian guy was articulate enough and was quite well receive here on NUF. So he probably overestimated himself about the influence he hold over the community and decided to write that dumb piece that started all this shitstorm.

    How Noodletown came to become QI spokesperson? (This is my personal conjecture)
    QI should have a person who oversee all the translation teams. They should have a wechat group with all the translation group team leaders to discuss over things. They must have been discussing the current situation and out of nowhere, Noodletown must have brought up the story about WW and GT trying to recruit him but their offer was too low and he refuse them. Seeing that, QI manager told him to go ahead and present his view to the public to wash their reputation clean. Big mistake since Noodletowm statement was inaccurate. I will not judge if it was out of malice or a genuine mistake on his part.

    My opinion on QI versus WW:
    I obviously side with WW. WW quality control is their trademark. QI could have gone in a whole different direction and work with the pre-established translation groups. And the obvious move to forcefully grab WW experienced translators is sketchy.

    My opinion about Qidian:
    As a business entity, I understand the allure of a monopoly and the full control over their catalog. Business ethics apart, strong arming WW is a daring move with little risk for them. If they succeed the windfall outperform the loss of present fan base. Also, the situation of QI vs WW apart, Qidian bring a lot of new contents, with potentially even more in the future. I've heard the quality of their translation on some series are below standard, or they only need better editing. But I believe that can be easily improve.

    My stand:
    I will not boycott Qidian, can't boycott something I don't consume. I'm not saying I never went to their website either, because I did to see what it was like. But I'm waiting for their series to have more translated chapters and for them to fix any possible bugs or quirks.

    This hold true if you consider that WW viewership has constantly increase month over month. So we can expect the same thing to happen with Qidian. A new wave of readers will come to replace us from the old guard.

    People interest is never everlasting. I used to watch animes, I hardly do anymore. I used to read manga, I hardly do anymore. I used to watch K-Drama, I hardly do anymore. I used to watch bollywood movies, I hardly do anymore. I used to watch Japanese movies, I hardly do anymore.
     
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  12. sumguy

    sumguy Well-Known Member

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    Bingo, people don't realize this is why QI can survive with 5% of the current reader base and that growth is guaranteed as long as they don't screw up too badly. Non-paying readers? They have their worth, but literally the lowest of the lowest end of their line of products. Pirates? Not that different from non-paying readers. Paying readers that don't give a shit about quality or ignorant in general? Come to papa.

    And to top it off, they don't have to pay the middleman like with LN localization, so their tolerance is a lot higher in this regard. They can cut their cost further if they can avoid paying the middleman, that's assuming the consumers are able to tolerate shit/inconsistent quality which I think they are gambling on. Like I said previously, WW provides a value-added service, there's no one else aside from professionally certified translators that can do that, and they wouldn't be at the price WW "should" be charging.
     
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  13. MadHatter

    MadHatter [WindyWeather]

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    @sumguy Also since they have announce a deal with Amazon, their market reach can only increase further.
     
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  14. Hahhaa

    Hahhaa hereby irrevocably & perpetually waives all moral

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    Now that I think again, I think you are right. Their monopoly in China are impossible to shake up. Losing little money won't effect them.
    Their investment in QI is minuscule so far. They have much more to invest and potential to tap. At worst they would hire someone professional to do face saving.
     
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  15. Chance

    Chance Observer

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    It may or may not be worth 800 mil. But it's value are for future expectations. 32 mil isn't much money for a company revenue wise. If they increase that by 5 mil, that's about a 15% increase in revenue. Leads to Higher expectations and perceived value. If this is true, that's why they are trying to renig with WW, they want to show that growth. This makes it worse, for them actually as subscription counts and other metrics come into play.
     
  16. hehaaw

    hehaaw Well-Known Member

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    Do you know Qidian parent company Tencent ? their chairman is known as "Pony" Ma, is wellknown copying other works and making it theirs, and they balatantly doing it without care, because why? copyright doesn't work in china!
     
  17. sumguy

    sumguy Well-Known Member

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    When did they announce that? If it's the linked article, read it again, it isn't amazon.
     
  18. Askurai

    Askurai Well-Known Member

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    if you copy the style, what is ok btw, i would say nothing but what what I mean is the copy entire villages stone for stone the sign in every building is an exact copy like the original.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...t-replicas-Austrian-village--houses-sold.html

    http://www.businessinsider.de/cities-china-ripped-off-from-the-rest-of-the-world-2015-7?r=US&IR=T

    or the jk rolling issue
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/world/asia/01china.html

    In china you dont have the freedom of speech as we know it... and what is corrupted is not the common folk but what I would call upper management. and i never said or meant something like race... The common people don't have much power to say anything, anyway. China is not the only country that has this problem, Argentina for example has the same. If you say something against the government and the wrong people to hear it which will cause you to disappear...

    but my main point is that i find it ironical that they talk to us about copyright and plagiarism. where they are the master of breaking it...
     
  19. MadHatter

    MadHatter [WindyWeather]

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    It's on their website announcement:

    https://acts.webnovel.com/2017/59195029/index.html
     
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  20. Askurai

    Askurai Well-Known Member

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    If you define the country by the government and if the government is corrupt then you could define the country as corrupt. There's in conclusion doesn't include the common people it is just the system they live in that is corrupt.

    That doesn't mean that I'm a racist because I don't have anything against Chinese people. But I do have something against corrupt people from which country they may come, I don't care. as long as they are corrupt, they are scum. but this doesn't have anything to do with this discussion. I just wanted to clarify this.
     
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