August 22nd, Wednesday.

Yan Qi saw that the last bug on the platform had been fixed and finally let out a sigh of relief.

It was finally completed!

Heaven knows what he had been through during this period.

According to the original development process, “Empire’s Blade” should have been launched more than a week ago, but due to many unexpected bugs appearing one after another, the game was delayed by over a week.

This was even with everyone working like they were on steroids, quickly finding and fixing bugs.

Although the game was delayed by a week, it was a good thing for Yan Qi.

If not for the blessing of the feng shui hotspot, who knows how long it would have taken to find these bugs. Although the game could have launched a week earlier without this delay, they would have been overwhelmed after launch, still needing to fix bugs, which might have affected the game’s reputation.

As for how many bugs still remained in the game, it was hard to say.

All that could be said was that they had found the bugs with higher occurrence rates that were easier to discover. While there might still be other bugs, if they couldn’t be encountered in the “feng shui hotspot” state, players would be even less likely to encounter them under normal conditions.

Yan Qi installed the fixed game on his phone and returned to the Morning Dew Gaming Platform.

Whether the game could go online didn’t depend on their own count of remaining bugs, but on how many bugs Director Tang encountered while playing.

“Rest assured, Director Tang, we’ve fixed all the bugs that could be encountered in the game. This time, there definitely won’t be a single bug!”

Yan Qi was confident.

Tang Yishu didn’t say much, just nodded and took the phone.

Yan Qi watched from the side. The game ran smoothly as he had expected—accepting quests, entering levels, fighting monsters… everything was fine.

As the half-hour mark approached, Yan Qi finally relaxed.

But just when he thought everything was stable, the game screen suddenly stuttered and showed an error!

The time was exactly at the 29th minute.

Yan Qi was shocked.

How was this possible?

After fixing the bugs, the testing team had run through the game several times and hadn’t found any new bugs!

Yet there was still one?

How unlucky did one have to be to encounter this?

Tang Yishu handed the phone back: “Hmm… it meets the requirements. The game can be arranged to go online.”

Yan Qi took the phone back, suddenly feeling very disappointed.

Logically, having achieved the goal of fewer than three bugs in half an hour, allowing the game to go online, he should have been happy.

But he hadn’t expected Director Tang would still find a bug!

Yan Qi nodded: “Alright, Director Tang. I’ll go back and fix this bug, and then arrange for the launch!”

Back at his workstation, Yan Qi immediately sent screenshots of the bug to the testing and development teams, asking them to fix it right away.

However, after trying for more than an hour, they still couldn’t reproduce it!

If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes at Director Tang’s place, Yan Qi would have doubted whether this bug really existed.

What was going on?

Today was Wednesday, bugs should be “working” today, right?

Had the feng shui hotspot lost its effect?

But looking at the testers from other companies, they were all enthusiastically finding bugs, and everything seemed normal.

The only explanation was that this seemed to be a deeply hidden bug with an extremely low chance of occurring. Even in the “feng shui hotspot” state, encountering it was still a very difficult thing.

Yan Qi was torn. He felt his OCD acting up.

Knowing there was a bug in the game but being unable to reproduce it or fix it was like having a small thorn stuck in his hand—unable to find it or pick it out, yet constantly feeling its presence.

It was frustrating!

What was even more annoying was that the Morning Dew Gaming Platform had interfaces with the testing backends of various games, and the current version’s bug count was displayed in real-time on the gaming platform.

The bug count had been 0, but now it was back to 1.

This wasn’t just a difference between 0 and 1; it was the difference between having and not having!

Yan Qi agonized for a long time but eventually gave up.

Forget it, it was just one bug. Continuing to delay the game for a bug with such a low reproduction rate, one that the vast majority of players would never encounter, wasn’t worth it.

Better to launch the game!

Yan Qi notified the development group and communicated with the staff responsible for coordination at the Morning Dew Gaming Platform to officially launch the game.

The launch operation itself was very simple, but they couldn’t just launch it without any fanfare. They needed to arrange corresponding promotional resources.

If the game launched but no players saw it, wouldn’t it be launching in isolation?

Currently, the Morning Dew Gaming Platform had already gone through two rounds of large-scale promotion. Although the conversion rate wasn’t high, it had accumulated some players. Moreover, with fewer games on the platform in the early stages, competition wasn’t so fierce, making it easier to get better recommendation spots, which was sufficient for small companies.

Staff from both sides quickly carried out the preparatory work and set the launch time for 4:00 PM.

Besides continuing to search for that hard-to-reproduce bug, Yan Qi had nothing else to do. So while waiting for the game to open its servers, he opened a webpage to check netizens’ discussions about the Morning Dew Gaming Platform.

To his great surprise, he discovered that while he had been buried in fixing bugs, netizens had already engaged in a very heated discussion about the Morning Dew Gaming Platform’s practice of displaying bug counts for various games!

“I’ve figured it out. This Morning Dew Gaming Platform is clearly deliberately creating hype, putting on a show! The so-called display of bug counts for all games is just fake data, intended to deepen players’ impressions and promote themselves!”

“How can you tell it’s fake data?”

“It’s simple. I’ve been paying attention to the changes in these bug counts. On Sunday, the bugs of these companies basically didn’t move, and even those that did change, whether finding or fixing bugs, were very slow. But as soon as Monday and Tuesday came around, the speed became like they were cheating, increasing rapidly!”

“Huh? Isn’t that normal? The companies took weekends off, right?”

“That’s such an amateur comment. What do you mean by ‘took weekends off’? First of all, game companies usually work intensely before a game launches, with overtime and all-nighters being very normal. Weekend break? Dream on! Do you think all industry companies are like Tenda? Secondly, for those games whose bug counts didn’t change at all, I can accept they might have taken a break, but what about those with slow changes? Why were bugs found slowly on weekends but quickly on Mondays?”

“When you put it that way, it does seem suspicious…”

“Yes, I noticed too. The speed of finding and fixing bugs just isn’t scientific! It feels obviously much faster than the normal speed! Logically, in the later stages of project testing, finding bugs should become increasingly difficult, but the changes in bug counts on the Morning Dew Gaming Platform are linear, always fast! So, I also suspect this must be pre-prepared fake data.”

“Damn, what’s the point of faking this? It’s incomprehensible.”

“The significance is huge! First, precisely because most people think the platform has no reason to fake such things, the fakery isn’t easily suspected or exposed. Second, this marketing event is nothing more than creating a gimmick, claiming that games on their platform are only launched after fixing bugs, establishing a ‘few bugs’ persona for their platform. Doesn’t this attract many players?”

“Damn, that behavior is very bad! Though not highly destructive, it’s extremely insulting! Aren’t they treating us players like monkeys?”

Reading these discussions, Yan Qi was stunned.

They were arguing about this?

Yan Qi knew very well that the reason bugs were found so quickly was because of the feng shui hotspot.

But players didn’t know this!

They only saw that the speed of bug fixing was obviously abnormal, so they suspected the Morning Dew Gaming Platform of faking data.

Yan Qi wanted to defend the Morning Dew Gaming Platform—this was all real data! It couldn’t be more real!

But on second thought, his voice carried little weight. His comments probably wouldn’t be believed, and he might even be labeled as the platform’s lackey or a paid poster.

“What a mess. Why does it feel like the Morning Dew Gaming Platform is plagued with bad luck?”

“Since its establishment, it seems like nothing has gone smoothly.”

“They’ve spent quite a bit on promotion, but hardly any money has been effectively used. Instead, they’ve been constantly misunderstood. The bug fixing was originally a good thing, but it’s also been misinterpreted as hype.”

“Sigh, forget it, I can’t help much. I’ll send a private message to the Morning Dew Gaming Platform to inform them of this news. As for how to handle it, let them decide.”

Yan Qi didn’t know if Director Tang was aware of this online public opinion, but giving a heads-up wouldn’t hurt.

So he opened the chat group and sent a private message to the staff member who had created the group.

The person quickly replied: “Thanks for the reminder. We’ve already noticed and are thinking of solutions.”

Yan Qi shook his head slightly.

Thinking of solutions now might be a bit late…

He looked at the online discussions. The arguments had been going on since Monday. Initially, there were some players defending the gaming platform, but now it was already Wednesday, and the Morning Dew Gaming Platform had never come forward with an explanation. So those who believed the platform was faking had gained the upper hand.

With this kind of public opinion event, once a stereotype formed, clarification would come too late.

Unless there was some major event that could immediately reverse public opinion, but who could predict when such a thing would happen?

Yan Qi wanted to say more, but on second thought, he had already done his duty by bringing this up. Saying more would make him seem like he was meddling in affairs that weren’t his concern. He could only hope for the best for the Morning Dew Gaming Platform.

Yan Qi thought for a long time and finally decided not to say anything more, preparing to close the chat software and continue with his own business.

But just then, he saw someone sending several consecutive messages.

“This is bad, something serious has happened!”

“Our game has a very high negative review rate. If this continues, it will be removed from the platform by Friday!”

“What should we do?”

Several messages in a row, along with a screenshot.

Looking closely, Yan Qi recognized the sender as the head of a local game company in Jingzhou.

This game was relatively old, having been operating on other platforms for more than half a year, so it had few bugs. It was one of the four games that officially launched on the first day of the Morning Dew Gaming Platform’s trial operation.

But now, this person was repeatedly tagging the group owner, wanting an explanation.