August 24th, Friday.
After working overtime until 10 PM yesterday and continuing to be busy until noon today, “Empire’s Blade” was finally about to launch!
To be released on the Morning Dew Gaming Platform, “Empire’s Blade” had been delayed by a full two weeks. But fortunately, except for that one bug that was impossible to reproduce, all other bugs should have been fixed.
As the launch approached, Yan Qi felt very nervous. For a mobile game, the data from the first two days after launch essentially determined its life or death to some extent.
Unlike those big-budget, high-production PC games, mobile games operated with a rather unique mechanism. Most mobile game startups couldn’t get many resources for recommendations or game promotions in their early stages. So, the only way to get more promotional resources from distribution channels was to let the data speak for itself.
If the various metrics on launch day were good, with active players and enthusiastic spending proving the game’s profit potential, then the platform would naturally be willing to commit more resources to promote it. Better data meant more promotion, and more promotion meant better data—forming a virtuous cycle.
But if the data was poor right from launch, it would fall into a vicious cycle that was hard to reverse. Because it was difficult to pinpoint exactly which part of the game players disliked, and even with modifications, there was no guarantee players would like it afterward.
The “Empire’s Blade” developed by Yan Qi’s team wasn’t as hardcore or as focused on monetization as other games. Although it had monetization points as an action mobile game, they had put most of their energy into refining gameplay and quality.
He worried this approach might make the game’s revenue metrics look less impressive, dragging down its overall performance on the first day of launch. Add to that the recent series of negative events on the Morning Dew Gaming Platform, plus the rule that games would be removed if their not-recommended rate exceeded 55%, all of which made Yan Qi even more concerned.
Now, everything was finally ready, and the status of “Empire’s Blade” on the Morning Dew Gaming Platform had changed to “Server Opening Soon.” They just needed to wait patiently for a few more hours to know the final fate of this game.
But just then, Yan Qi suddenly noticed a huge promotional page prominently displayed on the platform.
“Find Bugs and Win 100,000 Yuan??”
“What the hell is this!”
“Could it really mean what I think it means?”
Seeing the information on this promotional page, Yan Qi was shocked and hurried to click in for details.
It turned out to be true. It clearly stated that if someone found as many bugs as recorded on the platform for a game, they would be rewarded 1,000 yuan. If they found one more beyond that number, they would be rewarded 100,000 yuan!
However, this activity came with a series of additional conditions:
First, the definition of “bug” only referred to programming bugs that affected normal gameplay. For errors such as typos or awkward sentences in text, although broadly considered bugs, they wouldn’t count in this activity.
Second, this activity would be based on the game version officially recorded by the Morning Dew Gaming Platform. If a game updated its version or content changed, the bug count would need to be recalculated.
Third, players needed to provide a complete recording of the process of finding the bug, proving that the game was downloaded from the official platform, was an unmodified normal version, and that the bug could be reliably reproduced at least once.
Finally, the activity would only last for two weeks, and each bug would only be rewarded once, with priority determined by when valid proof was submitted to the officials. The activity might be reopened later, with specific times to be announced separately.
After reading the rules several times, Yan Qi finally breathed a slight sigh of relief. Thankfully, these rules were quite comprehensive.
For activities like this, the biggest fear was that the rules would have loopholes for players to exploit, leading to endless disputes. But this activity’s series of additional conditions had basically closed most of the potential loopholes.
The first rule was to prevent players from playing word games or nitpicking. Typos, awkward sentences, and so on in games were inevitable, and most testers wouldn’t focus on these aspects. If players fixated on a typo and insisted it was a bug, that would be troublesome. Limiting it to programming bugs that affected normal gameplay made the definition clearer and more intuitive, less likely to be misinterpreted.
The second rule was to prevent internal fraud by game developers. What if an employee secretly uploaded a bug and then found it themselves to claim the reward? The Morning Dew Gaming Platform’s solution was to base it on the game version submitted to the platform—the version that Director Tang had playtested. If game developers wanted to modify this version, they would first need the platform’s approval, and any changes would leave traces. Secret modifications would definitely be discovered.
If it was a normal version update approved by the platform, then the bug count recorded on the platform would naturally change accordingly, and the bug-finding activity would be based on this new bug count. Of course, during this activity, game version updates would be avoided as much as possible, so players’ efforts to find bugs wouldn’t be wasted. Though such efforts were likely futile anyway.
The third rule was to prevent technically savvy players from falsifying by modifying the game client. They must download from the official platform, provide a complete recording, and be able to reproduce the bug reliably twice. Furthermore, games on the platform would be constantly connected online, automatically verifying the integrity of the client version and detecting whether it had been modified.
This way, the possibility of players falsifying through technical means became minimal. Of course, there might still be some extremely skilled technical experts who could bypass these restrictions and force a falsification, but the official platform would surely have measures for that as well. For example, they could reimburse travel expenses to have the person come on-site and prove it on official equipment, with the entire process recorded and livestreamed. As long as they proved the bug really existed, they would get extra reward money.
People who were falsifying wouldn’t dare to come, and at most would just make a fuss online.
The fourth rule established the time limit for the activity, as such events would consume a lot of human and material resources and couldn’t go on indefinitely. Although it would only last for two weeks, it would definitely attract enormous attention.
Moreover, even if someone really found a bug, so what? They would just pay out as promised. Judging from the previous marketing activities of the Morning Dew Gaming Platform, this platform didn’t lack money. Giving a small amount to the occasional player was like buying attention—compared to large promotional expenses, what did it matter?
Of course, there was one prerequisite: the game couldn’t have far more bugs than recorded on the platform. Taking “Empire’s Blade” as an example, the platform stated there was one bug. If there were actually dozens of bugs in the game, all easily reproducible, and these dozens of bugs were to be claimed by players dozens of times, directly losing several million yuan, that would definitely be a disaster.
But Yan Qi knew very clearly that this was a special location—it had been repeatedly verified by testers from many game companies! If only one bug could be found in such a prime location, the possibility of players finding two bugs was minimal.
Even if someone really did find one, they would just pay the 100,000 yuan. This amount was essentially promotional expense, achieving the effect of “buying a good horse with a thousand gold.” Not just for the gaming platform, even for small mobile games with monthly revenue of several million, a 100,000 yuan reward wasn’t much.
“This is good news!”
“Once this activity starts, a large number of players will flood the platform looking for bugs to win the prize money.”
“Our game is just launching, so we’ll benefit the most from this wave!”
Yan Qi couldn’t help but marvel that after a series of poor decisions, the Morning Dew Gaming Platform had finally come up with a smart activity! Although this activity completely relied on the special location and didn’t have much to do with the platform’s own strength, what did that matter? Every platform should fully utilize its advantages!
“Wait, something’s not right.”
“This approach might generate short-term heat, but after the activity ends, won’t it still cause controversy?”
“No, forget after the activity ends, I’m afraid the controversy will peak just one week into the activity.”
Upon analysis, Yan Qi realized this matter wasn’t as simple as he had thought.
Initially, the huge reward for finding bugs would certainly generate an enthusiastic response online, attracting a large number of players. These players would come with the purpose of finding bugs, and they would all be confident.
But after several days of intensive searching, most likely they wouldn’t be able to find any bugs. At this point, some people would inevitably resort to various tricks, such as falsifying videos or creating uproars online to fish in troubled waters. For instance, claiming they had found a bug but officials wouldn’t pay them.
Some might also say that certain games had already fixed all the bugs, and the actual number of programming bugs was zero, but the Morning Dew Gaming Platform deliberately wrote it as 1 to lure players into searching. Even if some players really received rewards, others would question whether they were secretly hired by the platform.
In short, those players who came for the reward money, once they failed to get it, wouldn’t just let it go—they would definitely cause trouble.
What if this group of people became angry from not finding bugs and frantically tagged games as “not recommended,” causing more games to be removed from the platform? While the activity attracted attention, how would they handle the negative public opinion sparked by some frustrated players?
Just thinking about it made Yan Qi’s head ache. He knew that such public opinion incidents were the hardest to handle because once they started fermenting, they would be driven by the emotions of many player groups. Even if the official statement was true, it would be hard to gain trust, and public opinion would be difficult to reverse.
At that point, once the problem worsened, no amount of promotional expense would be sufficient to resolve it properly.
Yan Qi, who had been quite happy just moments ago, deflated again. He had thought the Morning Dew Gaming Platform had suddenly come to its senses and made a good move, but after careful examination, he found that this move wasn’t so good either!
There were benefits, but there were risks too, and they were substantial! It was like dancing on the edge of a knife—one misstep and they would be burned.
Yan Qi couldn’t help but sigh. This Morning Dew Gaming Platform was truly plagued with troubles! Although creating a gaming platform was difficult, with money and resources, it shouldn’t be that hard. The Morning Dew Gaming Platform clearly had both money and resources, yet through a series of bizarre operations, they had turned it into a hellish difficulty level.
This kind of operation, where a good hand was played poorly, was beyond comprehension.
But Yan Qi had no choice but to focus on his own game while watching how things unfolded.