Old Liu took out his phone and handed it over. “This is our game. If you’re interested, you can try it out.”

It had been over two years since he left Shangyang Games.

At that time, Shangyang Games was on the brink of collapse, and Old Liu, seeing the situation deteriorating, had made a swift exit.

Although there weren’t many respectable gaming companies in Jingzhou, there were also few gaming industry professionals.

As a lead game designer, Old Liu had an impressive resume, so he quickly found a new employer.

Later, when he heard that Shangyang Games had been acquired by Tenda Group, Old Liu did regret his decision for a while, but he soon came to terms with it.

After all, he still remembered that Tenda’s young boss had a grudge against him and didn’t like him.

So even if he had stayed at Shangyang Games, he would most likely have been fired by that boss anyway, resulting in the same outcome.

Old Liu stopped dwelling on the matter and steadily continued working on new projects at his new company.

During these two years, Tenda Group had undergone tremendous changes, transforming from an obscure small company into Jingzhou’s and even the nation’s largest gaming giant, with each game they released becoming a hit.

Even Old Liu’s former subordinate, Huang Sibo, was now thriving there.

Old Liu hadn’t deliberately followed these developments, but official platforms and some gaming media had interviewed Huang Sibo, so he couldn’t help but hear about it.

This made him extremely bitter, and he even considered taking Tenda’s recruitment exam several times.

But Tenda’s recruitment exam was far too difficult. His professional knowledge should be fine, but he couldn’t pass the written test.

And when he thought about how Tenda’s boss actually disliked him, he would probably be immediately rejected after the interview, or be mistreated, or even be stepped on by the subordinate he once bullied…

Old Liu abandoned the idea and moved between other gaming companies in Jingzhou.

Fortunately, in recent years, Jingzhou’s gaming environment had been improving, with more and more reliable gaming companies emerging, so Old Liu’s resume and salary had been steadily increasing.

He was quite satisfied with his current situation, so he no longer thought about Tenda.

It was ultimately a missed connection!

About eight months ago, Old Liu had switched to his current company and developed a new game that was performing quite well.

Old Liu had previously worked on browser games, but the boundary between browser games and mobile games was actually quite blurred, so he adapted to mobile game development very quickly.

The current game was a somewhat hardcore pay-to-win mobile game called “Heroes Battle Song.”

Yes, it was obviously a knockoff of “Hot-Blooded Battle Song.”

Many people thought this when they first saw the game.

But Old Liu felt it was unfair.

After all, the initial version of “Hot-Blooded Battle Song” was really designed by him!

Could it be called a knockoff if he was copying himself?

Of course, “Hot-Blooded Battle Song” was originally a terrible game, but Shangyang Games later made major revisions, completely reset it, replaced all the art assets, and even made significant changes to the game mechanics, which breathed new life into it.

But for Old Liu, there were still many elements in the revised “Hot-Blooded Battle Song” that felt familiar.

So, making another similar mobile game as a knockoff, while it wouldn’t make too much money, would definitely be enough to make a living as long as the quality was decent.

This proved to be true. “Heroes Battle Song” had a monthly revenue of eight to nine million, which was quite good for a mobile game company.

Old Liu earned more recognition from his current boss because of this, and the task of negotiating with new distribution channels fell on his shoulders.

Old Liu was confident about this game.

After all, it was a profitable game!

It couldn’t compare with Tenda’s games, but for a new gaming platform, how difficult was it to find a profitable game? Wouldn’t they be eager to have it?

Today’s cooperation should go very smoothly.

However, after Tang Yishu took the phone and played for less than five minutes, she stopped, repeatedly tapped the screen several times, then looked up in confusion.

“It seems… it’s frozen.”

Old Liu was surprised.

“Huh? Frozen?”

That couldn’t be.

This was the stable version already running on other gaming platforms, and it had gone through several rounds of testing.

Although official game releases inevitably have some bugs, it’s a probability issue, and the vast majority of players wouldn’t encounter them.

How could they be so unlucky to encounter a bug during the demonstration?

Old Liu took back the phone and saw that there really was a bug!

The character on screen mysteriously couldn’t move, stuck in place twitching frantically, and the tutorial hadn’t even finished.

“Ah, this…”

Old Liu scratched his head, at a loss for words.

If it were other aspects of the game, he could still fudge his way through.

For instance, if the gameplay mechanics were unreasonable, he could claim it was a game feature; if some art assets didn’t look good, he could say aesthetics were subjective, that some players liked that style, or that these were temporary resources that would be replaced later.

But a bug was a bug, and encountering one only proved that the company’s technical capability was lacking, the testing team was unreliable, and it severely affected the player’s gaming experience.

It was really hard to talk his way out of this one.

“Director Tang, this should be an extremely rare bug. After all, as you can see, our game is already on other gaming platforms with decent reviews.”

“Some scattered bugs are unavoidable, as long as they’re controlled within a certain range.”

Old Liu restarted the game, and fortunately, the tutorial progress was saved, so he didn’t have to start from the beginning.

Otherwise, if it got stuck in the same place twice, that would be utterly embarrassing.

After making sure they had passed the previous bug location, Old Liu handed the phone back.

Tang Yishu reached out to take it.

“How about this: if I don’t encounter more than three bugs within half an hour, we’ll sign the agreement and arrange for the game to enter the first batch of testing on our platform.”

“Here’s the agreement. Please take a look.”

Tang Yishu took out a pre-prepared agreement and handed it over.

The agreement specified the revenue split between the two parties and outlined some other regulations, such as a trial period for all games. If a game was removed during the trial period, the developer would still receive half of the revenue, while the Morning Dew Gaming Platform would return their half to the players.

Tang Yishu played on the phone while Old Liu read the agreement.

In fact, Tang Yishu was quite self-aware. For someone with her bug-attracting constitution, encountering bugs was commonplace. However, as long as there weren’t too many, the impact on players after the launch wouldn’t be too significant.

Old Liu nodded without raising any objections.

Three bugs in half an hour?

Unlikely.

This was the stable version, and although there were definitely more than three known bugs, not all of them had a 100% trigger rate. Moreover, how much of the game could be experienced in half an hour? Just wandering around the beginning areas.

So Old Liu didn’t think too much about it and started carefully reading the specific provisions of the agreement.

The more he read, the more absurd it seemed.

Who would do business like this!

Players could vote to have a game removed from the platform? This was nonsense!

Many pay-to-win games had terrible reputations and were heavily criticized by players, but that didn’t prevent them from making money.

Giving players such significant power was like cutting down their own money tree!

Moreover, after a game was removed, the biggest impact wasn’t on the game developer, as they could still get 50% of the revenue, so it wasn’t a complete waste of effort. Rather, it was the gaming platform that would suffer, as they had to refund their entire 50% to the players—all that promotional effort for nothing.

This kind of gaming platform was surely doomed!

Previously, Old Liu had thought that this young lady, despite her youth, had become a company boss and created a gaming platform, so she should at least have some common sense.

But now it seemed he had overestimated her.

This young lady had no common sense at all!

Could such a gaming platform really attract players?

Would cooperating with such a platform lead to anything good?

Old Liu sank into deep doubt.

“Ah, it crashed.”

This time Tang Yishu didn’t hand the phone back but reopened the game app and continued experiencing it from the beginning.

Old Liu: “…”

After another three minutes, Tang Yishu stopped again and handed the phone back.

Old Liu took it and saw that the game graphics were distorted, seemingly due to a small issue with the art resources.

Old Liu was completely speechless.

What was going on?

How could a perfectly fine game suddenly break down like this?

It hadn’t even been ten minutes, and there were already three bugs!

Although these bugs did exist in the game, and Old Liu even knew that some of them might occur with an extremely low probability, under normal circumstances, the low probability shouldn’t affect the gaming experience, right?

Encountering three bugs in ten minutes was far too rare.

Anyone would think the game was riddled with bugs!

Tang Yishu consoled him: “It’s actually okay. Bugs are inevitable. Why don’t you go back and fix the bugs a bit, then come back to sign the agreement?”

“Rest assured, as long as there are fewer than three bugs encountered within half an hour, we’ll officially sign the agreement.”

Old Liu was also at a loss, and nodded: “Alright, I’ll come back another day.”

He had thought that coming to negotiate with this new gaming platform would be a chance to show off.

But this script was completely wrong!

Old Liu stood up to say goodbye.

After leaving the Morning Dew Gaming Platform’s office, Old Liu decided not to come back.

Fix bugs? Fix what!

This game had already been tested many times, and although there were still some remaining minor bugs, they didn’t make the game unplayable. Why go to such great lengths to find and fix each one?

Moreover, after carefully studying the agreement from this gaming platform, Old Liu found it to be completely unreliable!

Such a gaming platform would absolutely never develop successfully. Even if they signed the agreement and put the game on this platform, there probably wouldn’t be many users, they wouldn’t make much money, and it was even questionable whether they could survive the one-week trial period.

There were plenty of game distribution channels. Was it necessary to go to such great lengths to fix bugs that weren’t even serious for a small channel that had just been established?

It didn’t seem necessary.

He would just tell his boss that this platform wasn’t reliable and should be abandoned.

Having made up his mind, Old Liu left by car.