My game, you have no right to award

Chapter 127 Non-stop
The Super Black Cat accidentally "solved" the problem of not being able to enter the Steam store page and purchase "Nether Mountain and Sea".

The news spread to everyone almost instantly.

At the beginning, it was just because a few fans of the Black Cat Live Room went to other anchors’ live rooms to show off that they had successfully purchased "Youming Shanhai".

However, as the audience in other anchors' live broadcast rooms tried the methods they mentioned and they actually worked, this method immediately became like a panacea, spreading from one to ten, and from ten to a hundred.

Many players originally planned to buy the deluxe version, so they naturally would not hesitate and buy "Nether Mountain and Sea" earlier, so that they can brag about themselves by buying game time in the future.

As for those players who were originally undecided, since this unorthodox method could only allow them to buy the deluxe version, they reluctantly purchased the deluxe version of "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" for 368 yuan.

Those who want to buy the game as soon as possible are basically very supportive of "Youming Shanhai", and in order to support domestic games, they are willing to pay an extra 70 yuan.

Only those players who are determined to buy the standard edition, or who don’t care whether they buy the game as soon as possible, are still waiting for Steam to fix it or simply don’t pay attention to this matter.

So when Zhou Kuang saw the background data of Steam, he saw the counterintuitive data that the sales of the deluxe edition exceeded the standard edition by 100,000 copies.

Some people even put forward a conspiracy theory that Steam specifically left a backdoor for "Youming Shanhai" in order to make more players choose the deluxe version instead of the standard version.

After all, if this so-called "cracking method" is really random, then why isn't it the other way around, where purchasing the standard version works successfully, while purchasing the deluxe version will result in an error message?
Isn't this too much of a benefit for Megvii Games? Is this really just a coincidence?

However, those who put forward such conspiracy theories cannot find any evidence, and logically speaking, it is even more impossible.

After all, Valve and Megvii Games have nothing to do with each other, so how could they open a backdoor specifically for "Netherworld Mountains and Seas"?
If it is discovered, it will shake the user base.

How high a price does Zhou Kuang have to offer to get Valve to agree?
This is impossible.

As expected, Steam didn't fix the problem until midnight, which made Black Cat's method the only way to purchase "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" at present.

Even the term "How to buy Netherworld Mountain and Sea" appeared in the hot searches on Bilibili. Clicking on it would bring up a video of a small up-loader trying to buy the deluxe version of Netherworld Mountain and Sea in this way.

The "Wow" comments in the comments prove how simple and efficient this cracking method is. As long as you know the method, almost everyone can do it.

However, this hot search soon disappeared because at two o'clock in the morning, Steam was finally fixed.

In this way, any player can purchase the game directly, and Black Cat's unorthodox purchasing method is no longer useful. It has become an urban legend that the live broadcast room viewers later used to recall the launch day of "Youming Shanhai".

The conspiracy theory is self-defeating. After all, if it was really Valve that opened the backdoor, they could have waited until the next morning to fix the website instead of fixing it at two o'clock in the middle of the night.

After all, everyone is well aware of Valve's habits, so it would be normal even if they fix it the next morning.

Less than two hours after Steam returned to normal, at four o'clock, "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" had already reached the top of Steam's best-selling list!
It is also number one on both the domestic and global bestseller lists!

The data in the background is constantly increasing, and every increase in the number represents an expected three-digit revenue. As long as the players do not choose to refund later, these sales will eventually be converted into funds and deposited into the account of Kuangshi Games.

When Zhou Kuang got up in the morning, it was past ten o'clock before he slowly came to the company.

Yesterday he and his employees were in the office waiting for sales figures, so naturally he got off work late.

So Zhou Kuang asked them to come to work at the company at ten o'clock today.

This way you can get two extra hours of sleep.

Zhou Kuang went straight into his office.

Open the computer and check the data in the steam background.

At this time, the numbers in the background had jumped to a total sales volume of 520,000, and the sales gap between the deluxe version and the standard version had been narrowed to more than 90,000.

It seems that players' purchasing speed slows down at night.

Zhou Kuang thought.

Although many players claim to be night owls, they basically can't hold it in anymore by two or three o'clock and can fall asleep in less than five minutes after lying in bed.

Those who actually have their biological clocks disrupted and jet lag reversed are actually a minority.

If someone could really do this, go to bed at eight in the morning and get up at four in the afternoon, Zhou Kuang would actually praise him.

Then you are a real bully.

Zhou Kuang walked out of his office and inspected his subordinates in the office.

Everyone seemed to have not yet recovered from yesterday's sales. Everyone looked refreshed, with overly bright smiles on their faces.

"Brother Kuang!"

Feng Qi was about to go to the art department, but when he saw Zhou Kuang, he walked over.

"What? Are you still happy?"

Looking at the smile on Feng Qi's face that couldn't be concealed, Zhou Kuang joked.

"Hehe, indeed." He scratched his head, "It feels a little unreal."

"Why are our games selling so well?"

Seeing the other person laughing foolishly, Zhou Kuang patted his shoulder and encouraged him.

"This is a game you made, and you don't even know the reason!"

Feng Qi nodded: "That's right."

He is certainly confident about the quality of the game. What he is not sure about is how much of the current sales volume is due to marketing and how much is due to the real quality of the game.

He then asked with a hint of curiosity in his eyes.

"Brother Kuang, how much do you think our game can sell?"

After hearing this, Zhou Kuang showed a mysterious look, stretched out his right hand, separated his thumb and index finger to form an approximate right angle, and bent the other three fingers and brought them together in the palm of his hand.

There was a hint of astonishment in Feng Qi's eyes.

"Eight million?!"

"What? You don't believe it?" Zhou Kuang asked back.

"No, it's just..."

Feng Qi has not yet recovered from the shock. Although sales were good on the first day, for a game like theirs that is popular all over the Internet, sales will be concentrated in the initial period of time.

It's not impossible to sell 5 to 20 percent of a game's lifetime sales on the first day.

There is no guarantee that future long-term sales will continue at the current sales pace.

Zhou Kuang stretched out his index finger and shook it.

“Now is definitely not the fastest time to sell.”

"When was that?"

"Three days to a week after the game's release date."

When Feng Qi heard this answer, he frowned and thought deeply.

Why three days to a week after the release date?
Kuang Ge is saying that players will...

When he raised his head, he saw Zhou Kuang's smiling eyes.

"Also, you misunderstood just now."

Hearing Zhou Kuang say this, Feng Qi was at a loss for words. What did he misunderstand?
"This gesture doesn't mean eight million." Zhou Kuang once again made the gesture representing "eight" and waved it.

"It's eight digits."

……

……

……

"'Netherworld Mountains and Seas' topped the Steam sales charts both domestically and internationally, with pre-sale sales expected to exceed two million copies!"

"A true shining light for Chinese culture! Netherworld Mountain and Sea tops the Steam global sales charts, setting a new benchmark for cultural exports!"

"The Steam Double Crown is born! How did "Nether Mountain and Sea" reach the top of the global gaming world?"

How the Classic of Mountains and Seas went abroad, and the rise of Netherworld Mountains and Seas

After the pre-sale of "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" started, the negative public opinion about it immediately disappeared.

No matter which report I turn to, I can only see articles praising "The Netherworld Mountains and Seas".

It is even almost being hyped up to be the world's number one 3A game, but it hasn't even been released yet. The only thing Megvii Games has done so far is to pre-sell "Netherworld Mountains and Seas".

This is to a certain extent related to Niu Tieming. After he had a phone call with Zhou Kuang that day, he went to the Antarctic Group headquarters that night. No one knew who he met that day.

But the end result was that Antarctic Interactive Entertainment gained greater authority and could use non-Antarctic Interactive Entertainment channels within the Antarctic Group to market "Netherworld Mountains and Seas".

The top management of Antarctic Group saw the prospects and potential of this game, and naturally it was impossible for them to give up this vision. Instead, they chose to push "Youming Shanhai" to the position of the number one domestic game as much as possible.

As a result, many media outlets that were previously neutral or even opposed to the game suddenly changed direction and immediately began to praise "Netherworld Mountains and Seas".

Naturally, there are many channels of the Antarctic Group here, and Niu Tieming was not qualified to use these resources before.

But now the board of directors and shareholders have agreed, even if there are channels that don't want to cooperate, they have to bow their heads and do what Niu Tieming says.

In addition to Antarctic Interactive Entertainment's increased marketing of "Netherworld Mountains and Seas", many media outlets are simply fishing.

They don't care whether "The Netherworld" is successful or not. If it succeeds, they will praise it, and if it fails, they will criticize it. For them, there is no psychological burden at all in doing such things.

The only problem is that no matter what their attitude is now, their gains are really too small.

It is a pity that it is tasteless.

Chicken ribs.

Therefore, they chose to praise "The Netherworld Mountains and Seas" as much as possible, and if the other party falls in the future, they will definitely be the first to step on it.

Passersby love to see this kind of news full of contrasts.

They welcome the sight of successful people being pulled down to the ground or grassroots rising up.

Zhou Kuang quickly realized this and chose to deal with it coldly.

There is really no good way to deal with this conspiracy of flattery.

Either his virtue is unworthy of his position and he falls off the altar.

Or you can conquer everything with strength, like a bulldozer, and flatten all obstacles.

But Zhou Kuang chose the second one.

Now, no matter what opinions Megvii Games expresses in public, it will cause unnecessary trouble, so the best way is to shut up.

The more you say, the more likely you are to be wrong; the less you say, the less likely you are to be wrong.

On the first day, "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" sold 860,000 copies on the Steam platform, with the sales ratio of the standard edition and the deluxe edition being almost 50-50.

On Antarctic Interactive Entertainment's begamer platform, nearly 100,000 copies were sold, with the standard edition selling about four times as many copies as the deluxe edition.

On the other side, in front of the employees, Zhou Kuang and Feng Qi reiterated the current status of their project.

First, they haven't officially released the game yet.

Second, the optimization work is not yet complete.

Third, there are only a little over two months left until the release date.

On the second day of pre-sale, there was almost no progress in the optimization work. Except for Xu Yanjie and his team from Antarctic Interactive Entertainment and the QA team, the efficiency of other employees of Megvii Games was extremely low.

Zhou Kuang certainly knew why, because they were too excited about the sales figures.

After all, if it can sell nearly one million copies on the first day, then shouldn’t it sell ten million copies in ten days?
One hundred million must be paid back in a hundred days?

It won’t take too long, just one year, for "Netherworld Mountains and Seas" to surpass "Mortal Affairs 5" and "Minecraft" to become the best-selling game in history.

Don't even need to add one.

However, any reasonable person knows that this is impossible.

Therefore, in order to ensure the sustainable development of game sales, the quality of the game must be guaranteed.

But according to their current efficiency, it is difficult to complete optimization, let alone ensure quality!
Feng Qi got angry for once, and he scolded his men, telling them to get back to work instead of just foolishly searching for data on the Internet every day.

They are happy now, but they will cry when the game is released.

If the game is poorly optimized at that time, they will definitely be scolded by players.

Not only will they have to work overtime to fix bugs, but the time requirements will also be much tighter than they are now.

As long as you work hard now and do a good job of optimization, you can wait until after the release to urgently fix those outrageous problems that cannot be detected during the optimization process.

Then there's basically no problem.

In this way, they can ensure the reputation of the game, and once the game version is stable, they can sit back and relax.

The employees of Kuangshi Games are all elites in the gaming industry. After being briefly pointed out by Feng Qi, they realized their problems.

Have you heard the story of the tortoise and the hare?
The tortoise is a great game, and the hare is also a great game.

Not only do they want to be the first to cross the finish line, they also want to break the record. After crossing the finish line, they have to keep running forward.

Run until you leave everyone behind.

This is their obligation!

The art team has become a little more relaxed. After the QA team arrived, the performance engineers took over a lot of optimization work on art resources, making the art team's tasks a lot easier.

Yang Ji has been checking for deficiencies and filling in the gaps these days. He no longer needs to work on the art materials himself, but he has been hesitating about some adjustments to the overall style.

For example, if the color design of the screen in the engine is slightly raised, it can convey a different mood to the player.

Yang Ji kept reading the original version of Shan Hai Jing and the plot script of Nether Mountain and Sea, and kept thinking about how to use colors to express the core of the plot in every place.

Xu Yanjie and Wu Qianhe worked with the QA team almost 24 hours a day to fix bugs and optimize performance.

Previously, the RTX3090 could not run the game at the highest picture quality, but now the 3070ti can do so. The progress in performance optimization is amazing!
(End of this chapter)