April 1st, April Fools’ Day.

“Game Producer” was officially released for sale, priced at 28 yuan!

Now that Tenda had a reputation and had specifically hired several video creators for promotion, this game couldn’t be released quietly without players noticing.

Regarding the price, Pei Qian had struggled for a long time.

If priced too low, “Ghost General” was a cautionary tale.

If priced too high, “Sea Fortress” was another kind of cautionary tale.

What could he do?

It was truly a dilemma.

After consideration, Pei Qian thought a lower price would be better.

Because the feature of “Game Producer” was that players could “cloud-complete” it!

As long as video creators recorded the entire gameplay, cloud players could fully experience it on video sites, reducing the urge to purchase.

In other words, the main group buying this game should be more hardcore players.

For example, many video creators, streamers, and players are particularly enthusiastic about domestic single-player games.

These people wouldn’t be very sensitive to a game’s price. Whether a game was priced at 30 or 90 yuan wouldn’t make much difference—if they wanted to play it, they would buy it.

And for cloud players accustomed to freeloading, no price could be lower than free.

So, after comprehensive consideration, the price was set at 28 yuan, which was already the lowest price the system allowed.

When the target player group was relatively fixed, the lower the price, naturally, the less profit!

This pricing raised concerns among some people in the company who feared they wouldn’t recoup costs, but Pei Qian overruled them and finalized this price.

Pei Qian hoped the keywords for this game would be: huge investment, spectacular scenes, extremely popular, dismal sales!

So far, the main investment in “Game Producer” had been in art, about 2 million yuan, with total investment around 3 million yuan including other expenses.

Ruan Guangjian had indeed given a discount, but he was only responsible for the game’s concept art design. The specific artwork, scenes, models, etc., all required additional expenses.

Considering various other miscellaneous investments, this game would need to sell about 300,000 copies to make a profit!

For the goal of not selling 300,000 copies, Pei Qian had a bit of confidence.

Among players, there might be a small group of masochists, but there couldn’t possibly be 300,000 masochists, right??

…

As the game was released, Qiao Liang also updated his video.

After updating, Qiao Liang immediately closed the Banana Potato Network backend, muted fan group chat messages, and set his phone to silent.

Self-isolation mode, all at once!

Then he immediately sent the video link to Lü Mingliang.

Before long, the payment arrived.

With the money in his account, Qiao Liang breathed a sigh of relief.

Perfect!

Straight into ostrich mode—who cared about the flood behind him? The money was in hand, he could play for two months before worrying about anything else!

No matter how much criticism he received, after two months, when the heat died down, he would act as if nothing had happened, and Qiao Laoshi would be back in business.

…

Shortly after Qiao Liang posted the video, his fans received notifications.

Within just ten minutes, the fans’ emotions underwent a massive fluctuation, suffering tons of damage!

Seeing that Qiao Laoshi had updated a video, their first reaction was happiness.

Looking more carefully, they discovered it was “This Month’s New Game Recommendations,” and their enthusiasm instantly cooled by half, because they knew this was just a regular sponsored video that wouldn’t be very interesting.

Some fans with nothing better to do clicked on it.

And then their worldview shattered into pieces!

All the footage throughout the video was from a particular game. The visuals were quite beautiful, nothing to criticize there.

The key issue was the voiceover content, which could only be described as unbearable!

“Hello to all my dear daddies, I’m your familiar game father Qiao Laoshi.”

“Before starting this episode, please allow me to calm my excited emotions, slurp slurp slurp… ah~”

“The game you’re seeing now, do you see its producer? Tenda!”

“Tenda Games’ latest development, now I’m going to start showing you this game’s visuals…”

“Sorry, everyone, I’m a bit incoherent… Wow, ladies and gentlemen, the very first time…”

“I haven’t had this feeling for many years, anticipating a game so much. At 3:11 in the morning, Tenda’s development team sent me the game’s video materials online.”

“Its name is ‘Game Producer,’ G~A~M~E, game, game designer!”

“Awesome!”

…

Many of Qiao Laoshi’s fans were stunned, their mouths open in an O-shape throughout the entire video.

The video wasn’t long, just over ten minutes.

But the style of this video was completely at odds with Qiao Laoshi’s previous videos, as if it wasn’t made by the same person at all!

Previous “This Month’s New Game Recommendations” videos, although also sponsored, were still made with care by Qiao Laoshi.

He would create appropriate introduction plans based on each game’s characteristics.

In the videos, he would speak clearly and fluently;

Although they were for monetization, with some emphasis on strengths and glossing over weaknesses, the videos were still content-rich and interesting.

But what was this episode?

It was inexplicably mixing Chinese and English, adding many off-putting tones.

It was all about fawning over this game, not mentioning any shortcomings, and only saying empty words, as if he couldn’t find any real advantages and had to force praise.

Most importantly, watching the entire video, there was no substantial content at all, just fluff—a complete waste of time!

It had no meaning other than making people physically nauseated.

Many fans watched the entire video and still couldn’t accept this cruel reality.

“Qiao Laoshi, if you’ve been kidnapped, blink your eyes! Oh, you’re not showing your face, never mind.”

“What is this? Monetization is one thing, but does it have to look this ugly??”

“Unfollowing!”

“Bootlickers don’t get houses!”

“Shouldn’t have clicked when I saw ‘This Month’s New Game Recommendations’…”

“What does this mean? Is this an April Fools’ joke? Hmm, today is April 1st, it must be that!”

“I can’t even tell from the tone whether this is ironic bait or serious…”

“When you can’t distinguish between irony and stupidity, always treat it as stupidity!”

“I counted, in a video of just over ten minutes, you said ‘wow’ over thirty times. I’m free, and you’re fawning!”

“Wow, awesome, this is my exclusive moment!”

“It’s hard to imagine how much money the well-versed Qiao Laoshi received to make such a sponsored video…”

“I wonder, can you get paid for this kind of promotion? Wouldn’t such fawning disgust the sponsor?”

“The key is… this ad is for Tenda! From ‘Lonely Desert Highway’ to now ‘Game Producer’… I’m confused, what happened between Tenda and Qiao Laoshi…”

“A game-criticizing creator defeated by an evil game company with money? I can’t help but imagine the story!”

“Today, Tenda did indeed release a new game called ‘Game Producer.’ The possibility of Qiao Laoshi getting paid is as high as 99.99%!”

“Is it Tenda’s game? The same company that made ‘Ghost General’ and ‘Sea Fortress’? Is… their promotion strategy this low, or did Qiao Laoshi actively go to fawn over them??”

“After watching this video, I was determined never to touch this garbage game, but finding out it’s Tenda’s game, I’m a bit curious. What should I do?”

“Don’t do it! Knowingly eating shit—how desperate are you!”

“I’m just the opposite. I want to see what kind of game could make my son fawn like this!”