Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Wang Xiaobin paused. "Open the new server?"

It was not troublesome to do that, but the only problem was there might not be any gamers in it. Bloody Battle Song was already steadily deteriorating. They had no money to publicize or market it, and there were no ratings for the game as well. No new gamers were logging in.

The people still playing the game were old gamers who had stuck with the game from the very beginning. They could be said to be fiercely loyal; nothing could drive them away.

All of these people had accounts on the old servers. They had already spent huge amounts of money and time on those accounts. Even if they opened the new server, who would play on it?

Still, Wang Xiaobin held up an okay-sign with his hand and said, "No problem. It'll be ready soon."

The game was going to fail sooner or later; whether they opened the new server or not, it would not make a difference.

Ye Zhizhou immediately created an alternate account in the new server and quietly waited.

A few minutes later, the world channel in the new server became lively!

"They've really opened a new server!"

"Ah, ah, ah! I'm so sad that I did not get the couch!"

"Are there any guilds?"

"Comrades, look here! Our guild is developing harmoniously. We're banding together and being led by whales. There is no battle we cannot win! We're going to specially offer help to grandfathers and grandmothers prone to falling down. We welcome you to join us so that we can help more grandmothers cross roads!"

"The previous commenter, you've just copied and pasted the advertisement, haven't you? There are no more whales now; how can they lead the guild?"

"How are there no more whales? Our guild's whales have spoken; whoever joins our guild will get the maximum number of strength potions every day!"

"Holy sh*t! Quickly add me!"

More world channels were being added, one by one. Ye Zhizhou could not keep up with the various channels.

"Our game… still has so many players?"

Ye Zhizhou was stunned. He only opened this new server to test waters after seeing a good number of people request for it in the previous channel. He did not expect that so many people would hop over to the new server to play the game!

What were they after? Did they want to abandon their old accounts?

Ye Zhizhou felt like everything was strange. He had not seen such passion for their game in a long time. Bloody Battle Song always opened new servers before this. After all, constantly opening new servers was a common marketing method for games with paywalls.

Yet, they had never seen a reaction as lively as what they were seeing today!

As Ye Zhizhou trained, he considered looking for a guild to hide in and spy. He wanted to ask the players for their opinions on the new game.

In the end, after playing for a while, his game got jammed. On the screen, the words 'reading resources' appeared. The image became a mosaic as well. However, this soon passed. The game quickly became smooth again.

Ye Zhizhou was just about to ask what just happened when he heard Wang Xiaobin shout, "Holy sh*t, there were too many gamers just then. Our server was overloaded. The new server is full?"

Ye Zhizhou quickly opened the platform to check.

The old servers that they had been maintaining were emptying out. There was practically nobody left. The new server, on the other hand, was so popular that it was exploding at that moment. It was overflowing!

New players could no longer enter the server. They had no choice but to wait outside.

Ye Zhizhou was shocked. Ever since he started at Shang Yang Games, he had not seen people queuing outside the server! Now, he finally understood that the players crowding in the new server were those from old servers!

The players had been distributed over tens of different servers before this. That was why each server looked empty and quiet.

However, now, the active players were all rushing into the new server at the same time. They were crowding together and making the entire game seem much livelier.

Ye Zhizhou quickly said, "Brother Wang, quick, open another server!"

Wang Xiaobin's mouse was moving at top speed. "I'll get it done at once. Once the newest servers are full, the system would automatically open a new one."

Lowering his voice, he mumbled to himself, "How strange. Gamers are becoming so excited about the new servers? Have the changes we made really taken effect? The results were instant."

Everyone in the design team was getting excited. Many people had not played Bloody Battle Song in a long time. At that moment, they created an alternate account for the first time.

"Go to different servers and observe the situation in each one of them. It'll be best if you could join a big guild and join their conversations. See how the whales and ordinary gamers are reacting to the changes we made to the game!"

Ye Zhizhou was extremely excited. He quickly gave each person in the design team tasks to hide in the new servers and observe how gamers were reacting to the new version of the game!

When Old Liu was still the chief planner, he never did things like this. That was because he had never seen the meaning behind it.

It was enough to keep an eye on the statistics of the games. What was the point in hiding among gamers and gathering feedback?

However, Ye Zhizhou thought differently.

He always thought that as a chief planner, one had to try out his own game, be among the players, and understand the reaction on the ground. If the designer himself did not like his own game, why would gamers like it?

After playing for a few minutes, people began to invite Ye Zhizhou into their guild. Then, they invited him into their conversations. Once he joined the group, he was bombarded by various messages.

"Hurry, go to the world channel and recruit people!"

"I have to get to level twenty today. Our guild will have to prepare for war sooner or later!"

"Do you all have friends who have stopped playing the game? Ask them to come back quickly!"

"I'm going to my old group to ask around now. I'll try to get ten more people here. They're all old gamers and old chauffeurs!"

Ye Zhizhou only turned away for a while before he had 99 unread messages. There was no time for him to read them all.

What shocked Ye Zhizhou even more was that this group of people was taking the initiative to pull back their friends who stopped playing the game a long time ago.

Ye Zhizhou had never seen passion like this in any other gamer. Even when he just joined Shang Yang Games and Bloody Battle Song was at its peak, he did not witness this!

Ye Zhizhou looked at the posts on the forum.

Back when Old Liu introduced the 888-weapon, the forums nearly exploded with criticism. People were spamming the official notices with curses until there were hundreds of pages of comments. For the two to three weeks that followed, people did not stop.

Later on, as they lost players, the forum slowly settled down as well. Still, most of the new posts there were people criticizing the officials.

However, after updating the game this time, the entire forum looked very different!

Before, people posted curses at the chief planner every day. Now, there was none to be seen. Players were discussing how to form guilds, prepare for wars, and trying to solve other problems in the game.

Ye Zhizhou read these posts and the conversations in his guild in disbelief. He started to think hard about how all of these happened.

"Could it be… a resurrection?" Ye Zhizhou finally understood.

The original Bloody Battle Song was a pool of still water. In order to maintain the business, Old Liu and Du Ruijie had tried all ways and means to salvage the situation; but the game was beyond cure.

Conflicts between gamers and the design team, as well as whales and ordinary players, had already reached their extremes. There was no way these conflicts could be dealt with.

Later on, due to the high paywalls, they lost huge groups of ordinary gamers. There was no way the remaining players could continue their group activities within the game. No matter how much whales paid—if there was nobody to play the game with them, the money would not seem worth it.

Thus, ordinary players left, and whales followed. Only a small group of old players hung on. The game continued to slip down the slippery slope.

However, now, all the purchase options had been taken away. Only the basic strength potion remained.

This unassuming change was life-changing for the environment of the game!

To ordinary gamers—without many paywalls in the game, they could now afford to play it. The items that they could only get if they paid actual money before were now being given out for free. In the new server, they now had the opportunity to experience what it used to be like for whales that could fight multiple enemies at once.

This was a great deal. Naturally, they came to the new server without any hesitation! Indeed, a significant number of whales left the game as well. However, as Pei Qian would put it, it was up to them!

What's more, not all the whales had left. There was still a group of them left.

Although their sales dropped by twenty to thirty percent, the remaining players had completely forgotten about their conflicts from before. Now, they were feeling the passion and excitement for the game all over again!

Ye Zhizhou finally understood.

"Indeed, Boss Pei could tell what the problem was with Bloody Battle Song. He knew that introducing new gameplay or improving the art resources would be useless. That was why he made us take away all but one purchase option!"

"This is… cutting off an infected limb to save the entire body! We cut off revenue to save our reputation. That's the only way to save Bloody Battle Song!"

It looked like an unsolvable problem at first, but just a single move by Boss Pei turned the entire situation around!

Ye Zhizhou could not help but feel deep respect and admiration for Boss Pei. Of course, he also knew that this was only the first of many steps. This action might have saved the game's reputation, but it came at a high cost: this game was no longer making much money!

Without the whales recharging their game currencies, their income had fallen to just eighty percent.

Bloody Battle Song's monthly income had been about three to four hundred thousand yuan before the changes were made. Now, after the changes, Ye Zhizhou was not sure if they would even earn eighty thousand yuan monthly.

What's more, they were not going to introduce any new purchase options in the future. Otherwise, the players would immediately start cursing the game once again. Then, they would all quit the game, and even Boss Pei would find it difficult to salvage the situation!

Ye Zhizhou felt like he was holding a clearance sale. Although life was injected back into the game, they could not go on burning money and not reaping profits in the long-term!

"Forget it. I'll cast these worries aside for now. Would Boss Pei not have thought about the problems I thought about? These must all be in Boss Pei's plan. As long as I obediently follow his instructions, we will be alright."

Ye Zhizhou suddenly became filled with confidence in himself and in the future of Shang Yang Games!