News Update on Second Coming of Gluttony

Didn't see a thread about it so...
https://www.wuxiaworld.com/announcement/everlasting-gluttony-descends-on-wuxiaworld
SCOG is coming to WW (hopefully). Read the backstory. Interesting stuff
To those who don't wanna click on the link...

The second novel announcement is... the popular Korean webnovel, The Second Coming of Gluttony, to be translated by FudgeNouget on Wuxiaworld! Yes, I thought that'd attract interest from some of you. Please note that for now, we are just uploading the 160 chapters already translated by Fudge elsewhere and there will be no new chapters right away. This is just to whet your appetite or rereading needs! Hopefully, new chapters will be loaded later! In short, I was in Seoul the past weekend and had a five-hour meeting with Breathe Company, who owns the rights to Gluttony and several other top-tier Korean webnovels. Even though we didn't sign a contract right away (these things take time), the meeting went so well that Breathe CEO Moon personally approved a small favor; even though the formal licensing contracts still need a week or three to finalize and be signed on both sides, he has approved Wuxiaworld posting all previously translated Gluttony chapters on Wuxiaworld, so long as we didn't translate anything new before the contracts are finalized. I would like to take this opportunity to thank CEO Moon for being so understanding and supportive of the community! Three cheers for Breathe Company, and for CEO Moon! For previous Gluttony fans - Gluttony is coming back very soon (tm)! For those who have not read Gluttony yet - you are in for a real treat!

Spoiler: Backstory

The Backstory: There's actually a huge amount of backstory here, so for those who are interested, feel free to follow below as I ramble about it like an old man. Fudge actually came to me months ago and asked about translating Gluttony on Wuxiaworld; at one point, we were in talks with Munpia to have them our Korean agent and liaison, but those talks broke down after they received investment from China Literature/Qidian, and I became reluctant to add on new Korean novels without the licensing situation being addressed. Time passed, and eventually another fan translator started translating it on Creative Novels under the name of 'Second Coming of Avarice'. A few more months passed, and there was a minor stir in the community - a new site, Pacific Novels, claimed to have acquired the rights from the publisher to this novel, and forced Creative Novels to shut down their translation under threat of DMCA, while recruiting for a Korean translator to handle their own translation. It was at this point where Fudge came to me, very excited, and asked if I would mind him doing this as his next project elsewhere. I said, "Of course not! If they can get licenses and it's a book you love, go for it!" So Fudge went forth, to work legitimately on this novel (now called Second Coming of Gluttony)... or so we thought.


It came as a huge surprise to Fudge when, a while ago, he received C&D's from the publisher of Gluttony, 'Breathe Company'. He went to Pacific Novel's management and said, "Uh, what's going on? I thought we had licenses." And, from what I've gleaned from public posts, Pacific Novel's management replied, "We kinda sorta do. Well, it's more an informal understanding, really, we just didn't ink the paperwork on them, but the discussions were going really well." So... that really bothered Fudge. Eventually, he removed his translation from Pacific Novels.

So how did Wuxiaworld get into this mess? Well, it's funny. There are actually a lot of Wuxiaworld-clone pirate sites which host a lot of bootleg novels, including Gluttony, and Breathe hired a law firm to send C&D letters to all the pirate sites they found hosting Gluttony. The letters essentially requested those sites to take down the novel but offered the chance to partner/buy the license. The law firm confused the fake Wuxiaworld pirates with the real www.wuxiaworld.com and send us C&D letters as well. My response was, "Um, that's not us, but... we'd love to work with you?"

One thing led to another, and two weeks later I found myself flying to Seoul to meet with Breathe CEO Moon. This was a grueling meeting, primarily because of how long it lasted (5 hours) and because both of our sides were working through interpreters. We each learned a lot about how the other side operates; I spent at least 2-3 hours explaining WW's history and our various monetization models, while CEO Moon let me know how things were done in Korea, and also let me know that as I had suspected, they had never been in negotiations with Pacific Novels prior to sending the C&D's. On a tangent - the looks on their faces when I mentioned that Pacific Novels claimed to have an 'informal understanding' with them about Gluttony? Priceless.

The end result of this genuine, heart-felt meeting between our two sides is a handshake agreement for a partnership, with a full contract to be signed in the next two weeks after we have our respective lawyers review it. Again, I'm truly appreciative towards CEO Moon for being so kind as to let us host Fudge's already-translated Gluttony chapters in the interim, and I really hope that this will result in a large expansion of Wuxiaworld's tiny Korean translation scene. And that's the full backstory!

 

Given everything that's happened with this novel so far, I'm surprised Ren is willing to announce this before the contract is signed. Next thing we know it'll be on Qidian tomorrow.