April 23rd, Monday.

At Slackin’ Internet Café, Pei Qian was drinking coffee while checking work reports from various departments on his laptop.

The situation with “Mission and Choice” remained very troubling.

The film’s first-week box office results were in, reaching 170 million yuan. Although the opening day brought in only 22 million, the subsequent box office showed a continuously increasing trend.

Other films typically had their highest box office on opening day, followed by a sharp decline, but “Mission and Choice” was exactly the opposite. After securing 20 million on its first day, its momentum remained astonishingly strong!

Many theaters kept increasing screenings for “Mission and Choice,” but amazingly, no matter how many screenings were added, the attendance rate showed no obvious decline. Many people wondered where these new viewers were coming from.

What pained Pei Qian even more was that even professional movie apps like Dog Eye couldn’t accurately predict what the final box office for “Mission and Choice” would be.

When “Mission and Choice” first reported its opening day box office of over 20 million yuan, Dog Eye APP estimated a total box office of only 350 million, definitely on track to lose everything down to the last penny.

But by the third day, “Mission and Choice” box office suddenly began rising against the trend, and Dog Eye APP increased its estimated box office to 500 million.

A week later, the daily box office for “Mission and Choice” was still increasing rather than decreasing, completely confusing Dog Eye APP’s box office prediction algorithm. Obviously, the 500 million estimate wasn’t enough anymore, so Dog Eye APP directly raised the estimated box office to the 800 million level!

Many people online expressed confusion about this number, believing that Dog Eye APP might have initially underestimated the box office and, after being proven wrong, felt embarrassed and recklessly gave an excessively high number.

Currently, the box office peak for domestic films was an exceptionally good comedy that exploded at the box office under perfect circumstances, directly reaching 1.1 billion yuan. In previous years, the annual box office champions had generally been in the 600-800 million range.

Many film critics believed that the 1.1 billion level was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement. Dog Eye APP’s 800 million estimate for “Mission and Choice” had essentially reached the level of this year’s domestic box office champion. Even if it couldn’t secure the box office championship in the end, it would be a strong contender.

In recent years, Hollywood blockbusters’ box office results ranged from 600 million to 1 billion yuan. Dog Eye APP’s estimate for “Mission and Choice” could already stand shoulder to shoulder with those highly anticipated Hollywood blockbusters.

This made many people think it was far-fetched. Although they also felt that “Mission and Choice” was high quality, the key issue was that the opening day box office was too low and the promotion was completely inadequate. Reaching 800 million purely through word of mouth? It seemed too fantastical.

After all, there wasn’t a precedent for a domestic film becoming a box office champion solely through word of mouth!

Moreover, the true investment in “Mission and Choice” had also sparked online discussions.

Someone leaked that the investment in “Mission and Choice” was at least at the 200 million level, if not more, and almost all the money was poured into film production, with actor salaries and promotional costs being almost negligible.

If the final box office reached 600 million, it would mean the film broke even without profit or loss. Only at 800 million would they make a small profit.

However, this figure wasn’t confirmed. Some people thought it was an exaggeration, while others who saw the special effects in the film believed the number was probably true, and couldn’t help but worry about Fei Huang Studio, fearing the film might receive critical acclaim but not commercial success, ultimately failing to recover costs.

As for the game, first-week sales had also come in at 800,000 copies!

At 158 yuan per game, Tenda’s net income had already reached over 80 million.

This number also surprised many professional media personnel in China.

Although domestic single-player game sales had improved, they still couldn’t compare with foreign markets. “Mission and Choice” was a real-time strategy game with a relatively limited player base, so achieving these sales was an unexpected delight.

Many people commented that Mr. Pei’s god-tier marketing before the game’s release had been very effective. Numerous domestic game enthusiasts who never played real-time strategy games still purchased “Mission and Choice” without hesitation to show their support for domestic games, which was touching.

Moreover, games had a longer lifespan than films. Films could only be screened for a month, with most income generated within that month, while games could last for one or two years or even longer, continuing to generate subsequent income through discounts.

Furthermore, both the film and game versions of “Mission and Choice” were major productions with potential to impact overseas markets. When the film was released overseas and the game sold on foreign gaming platforms, they could earn even more.

In short, from the current situation, the prospects for “Mission and Choice” looked extremely promising!

Pei Qian silently took a sip of coffee, feeling inexplicably melancholic.

How had things turned out this way…

He didn’t understand.

If time allowed, Pei Qian planned to thoroughly review everything that had happened during the lengthy development period of “Mission and Choice,” to find the mole and see exactly which link had gone wrong.

But now was clearly not the time for review. He needed to focus on damage control first, then consider reviewing the situation after the vital signs stabilized.

To spend money, Pei Qian had already made a series of arrangements last week.

The sales team had found a leader, and Tian Mo was now memorizing the detailed rules Mr. Pei had given him every day. The experience store design had been assigned to Liang Qingfan.

Preliminary preparation work at Chi Xing Studio had also been largely finalized. Once funding was in place, they would wait for Lin Wan’s team to complete the design proposal and finish recruitment before development could begin.

Of course, the most optimistic situation was with Rabbitail Live. Since the implementation of the “mandatory one-hour” rule, the site’s popularity had significantly decreased, allowing Pei Qian to confidently pour more money into it again.

After finishing his coffee, Pei Qian decided to visit Rabbitail Live to see how Old Ma and Chen Yufeng were doing, and incidentally approve another sum of money for them to spend, distributing some of his pressure.

…

Half an hour later, Pei Qian arrived at Rabbitail Live.

As soon as he entered Rabbitail Live’s office area, Pei Qian clearly sensed that the atmosphere had changed significantly compared to his last visit.

It seemed that everyone’s morale had taken a considerable hit.

In reality, the popularity of Rabbitail Live and the number of viewers didn’t affect anyone’s salary, but most employees had a strong sense of belonging to Tenda and treated Rabbitail Live as their own career. In the current situation, morale would inevitably be somewhat impacted.

Pei Qian couldn’t help feeling a bit guilty.

So he went straight to Chen Yufeng’s office and said, “I see everyone’s been working hard lately. This month, give everyone an extra 30% salary as a bonus.”

Chen Yufeng hurriedly said, “Thank you, Mr. Pei!”

Ma Yang wasn’t in today, but there wasn’t anything that required his attention anyway, so Pei Qian didn’t ask about him.

Having Chen Yufeng there was enough.

Pei Qian sat down on the sofa and noticed that although Chen Yufeng’s expression showed some happiness due to the salary increase, he still looked rather dejected.

Pei Qian asked, “How’s the current situation with the website? Are there still as many people criticizing it online?”

Although Chen Yufeng’s mood was a bit low, he still took his responsibilities seriously and immediately replied, “The current situation of the website is… okay, I guess.”

“When the ‘mandatory one-hour’ rule was first implemented, the site’s popularity indeed dropped dramatically. Some livestream rooms lost two-thirds of their viewers, and rooms with fewer viewers completely zeroed out.”

“Some streamers who were working out of passion couldn’t handle it, cursed a bit, and left, but some stayed.”

“Now, the situation has stabilized somewhat, and the data has slightly rebounded.”

“Many regular viewers have found ways to adapt to the ‘mandatory one-hour’ rule. Some leave the webpage open when they have nothing to do until they reach one hour; some set up study plans to watch a series of videos, one hour each day; others use their phones in focus mode for an hour, concentrating on their own tasks.”

“As people gradually got used to it, the complaints subsided.”

“Other livestreaming platforms are quite happy though, and basically no longer consider Rabbitail Live as a main competitor. Previously, many platforms had strategies specifically targeting Rabbitail Live, but those plans have probably been abandoned now. Some features that other platforms were developing to imitate Rabbitail Live have also been halted and are no longer under development.”