After seeing Old Liu off, Tang Yishu returned to her workstation.

“How did it go?” Li Yada asked.

Tang Yishu hesitated for a moment: “This game had a few too many bugs… so I asked him to go back and fix them, then return when the bugs are fixed.”

Li Yada was a bit surprised: “Huh? Isn’t this game already online? How could it still have so many bugs?”

“That doesn’t seem reasonable, does it?”

Tang Yishu fidgeted with her fingers: “Well, I… I don’t know either.”

Li Yada nodded: “Maybe companies outside aren’t as good as Tenda in various aspects, so their testing teams aren’t very effective either. Don’t worry, you did the right thing.”

“It’s normal for a game to have one or two bugs, but when there are so many bugs that they affect the normal gameplay, it only shows that the company hasn’t done its job properly, the testing department hasn’t fulfilled its responsibilities, and there are internal management issues.”

“If there are so many bugs that they affect the normal player experience, then it definitely shouldn’t be released. It should be fixed until there are no bugs, and turning them away was the right decision.”

“It’s fine, this is just one company. Let’s see about the next one.”

Despite saying this, Li Yada had an inexplicable sense of foreboding.

Because the first company at least had a game that was already on the market, which logically should have had relatively few bugs.

The second company’s game was still in development.

Although this game called “Empire Blade” was almost complete with only the finishing work left, and testing was certainly already underway, its completeness definitely couldn’t compare with projects that were already online.

There was a high probability that it had more bugs than “Heroes Battle Song,” the knockoff of “Hot-Blooded Battle Song.”

So here was the question:

Was it just bad luck that they encountered games with bugs, a coincidence?

Or were all the game companies outside like this?

Li Yada had joined Tenda shortly after entering the industry, so she didn’t have much experience working at other companies.

In her impression, Tenda’s games didn’t seem to have been troubled by bugs.

During every development period, bugs would spring up like bamboo shoots after rain, with the testing department constantly reporting bugs and the development department constantly fixing them. Generally, by the time a game was released, most bugs had been fixed.

Even if some modifications were needed after release, the workload was often not very large.

So she had always felt that fixing bugs was just manual labor, and if bugs weren’t fixed by the time a game was released, it could only indicate an attitude problem.

If they couldn’t even do this kind of basic work, what else could it be but an attitude problem?

But now it seemed that these companies outside might really not be up to par?

“Forget it, I won’t think about this anymore. It was probably just a coincidence earlier. How could every company be unable to fix bugs properly?”

Li Yada felt she was overthinking and shook her head, no longer dwelling on it as she continued with her work.

……

After waiting at her workstation for over an hour, the boss of the second company arrived right on time.

Tang Yishu followed the same procedure as before, inviting him to the meeting room.

“Hello, Director Tang, pleased to meet you.”

“My name is Yan Qi. The information about our company and my personal résumé have already been sent over.”

Tang Yishu nodded: “Yes, I’ve seen them. Please have a seat.”

After Old Liu left, Tang Yishu had carefully reviewed the materials given by Li Yada again. This time she had plenty of time, so she memorized everything.

Yan Qi and his company could basically be seen as a microcosm of many mobile game startups.

He had previously been a lead game designer at a game company in Magic City, and his project was considered successful, but the boss was too stingy. Even with a monthly net income of six to seven million, the entire project team didn’t receive a single penny in bonuses.

The boss euphemistically said: “We need to use the money we earned for advertising to make more money.”

He also made empty promises, saying that after a few months of advertising, the game’s earnings might multiply several times, and then everyone would get a big bonus.

Yan Qi had been in the workplace for two or three years and knew how absurd these promises were, so he decisively left.

On the day he resigned, he knew he had made the right decision because the boss only made a verbal attempt to keep him but didn’t mention any raise or bonus.

It was clear that the boss didn’t care whether employees stayed or left.

This was normal. After all, the game had already been developed and was bringing in several million every month through stable operations. Did it matter if employees left?

If a lead game designer left, they could just hire another one. There was no shortage of people in this industry.

After resigning, Yan Qi didn’t want to be a high-level employee for someone else anymore, so he had the idea of starting his own company.

He was originally from Jingzhou and had heard that Jingzhou had been developing particularly well in the past two years, with a good environment for game startups. So he recruited several industry friends to come to Jingzhou, established a new mobile game company, and obtained a few million in venture capital from some local investors in Jingzhou.

After working for about half a year, they had developed a game.

The game he made was called “Empire Blade,” an ARPG mobile game, which meant an action game.

Theoretically, this type of game has a relatively high barrier to entry and isn’t suitable for startup companies, but thanks to the official editor and Yan Qi’s previous work experience, the development went smoothly.

Of course, limited by investment, it certainly couldn’t be considered particularly excellent, but Yan Qi felt that his game was at least of decent quality. After its release, it should earn a small amount of money, enough to sustain the company.

For most mobile game startups, the idea of getting rich overnight might be too unrealistic. The first consideration should be how to survive.

The game was almost complete, and Yan Qi had also contacted many game distribution channels.

For small companies, the more distribution channels they could get on, the better. As for revenue share and other such matters, there was no point in overthinking—they would take whatever was offered. Small companies basically had no bargaining power.

So when he heard that there was a new gaming platform in Jingzhou that was quite close to his company’s office, Yan Qi was very happy and came immediately.

“This is the beta version of our game, currently only being played by a small number of players. But don’t worry, Director Tang, there are very few bugs left, and they basically won’t affect the normal gameplay.”

Tang Yishu nodded and took the phone.

“Alright. Mr. Yan, here’s the agreement, please take a look.”

“If you’re satisfied with the terms of the agreement, and if the game doesn’t have more than three bugs within half an hour, then we can sign the contract today.”

Yan Qi took the agreement, feeling somewhat surprised.

That simple?

He had negotiated with other distribution channels before, and each one acted more entitled than the last.

Some offered very low revenue shares, some demanded major changes to the game—they all had conditions, though some were especially outrageous while others were relatively reasonable.

He had never seen a channel like Morning Dew Gaming Platform that only required fewer than three bugs within half an hour.

Half an hour? Three bugs?

Yan Qi thought there shouldn’t be a problem.

Although “Empire Blade” hadn’t been officially released yet and had quite a few bugs, these bugs were mainly concentrated in some mid to late-game large levels and deep gameplay mechanics.

In half an hour, players would basically only get through the early stages.

During development and testing, because they needed to optimize the beginner’s guide, the early content had been modified many times, so it had the fewest bugs.

Yan Qi felt that unless he was particularly unlucky, he shouldn’t encounter three bugs consecutively within half an hour.

As one tried the game and the other read the agreement terms, the meeting room temporarily quieted down, with only the sound of combat from the game.

Yan Qi had just started reading, seeing that the revenue share was fifty-fifty, when Tang Yishu encountered the first bug on her end.

The tutorial got stuck. During the guidance process, the screen should have had a gray overlay blocking everything except the highlighted area that the player needed to click, indicated by an arrow. But after clicking the button, the overlay didn’t disappear properly, and the screen remained in a semi-transparent gray state.

“Ah, this…”

Yan Qi felt a bit awkward.

It wasn’t that encountering a bug was strange, but it happened way too quickly!

Moreover, this kind of tutorial bug was something that not only had he never encountered, but even their company’s testing team had never encountered it.

Before Yan Qi could explain, Tang Yishu had already very skillfully closed the game process and re-entered.

“It’s okay, please continue reading the agreement.”

Yan Qi had a vague sense of foreboding, but he couldn’t say anything and could only continue reading the agreement carefully.

……

Half an hour later, Yan Qi had thoroughly read the agreement twice, and the number of bugs Tang Yishu had found was finally settled.

Within half an hour, Tang Yishu had found a total of twelve bugs of various sizes!

Among them, four bugs were very serious and would cause the game to become unplayable once they appeared. The remaining bugs, while not as severe in their consequences, still had a very negative impact on the gaming experience.

Yan Qi was starting to feel embarrassed.

There were far too many bugs. What was going on!

He even suspected that he might have installed the wrong version on his phone, not the stable version but the development version.

Otherwise, how could the stable version have so many bugs in the early stages?

It made no sense!

Tang Yishu seemed to have anticipated this outcome and handed the phone back: “It’s okay, Mr. Yan. It’s quite normal for games to have bugs. You can go back and make some revisions. As long as you can control the number of bugs to fewer than three within half an hour, we’ll sign the agreement.”

“By the way, you’ve read the agreement, right? Are you satisfied with it?”

Yan Qi nodded: “Yes, I’m satisfied. What’s there to be dissatisfied about? These terms are already very good for us.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve noted all the bugs you encountered, and I’ll have them fixed urgently when I get back!”

“Fixing bugs is part of our job, and we should even thank you. If we hadn’t happened to encounter these bugs, we might not have known they existed.”

“If these bugs only appeared after the official release, the loss would have been much greater.”

Yan Qi expressed his gratitude to Tang Yishu profusely, took his phone, and left.