October 3rd.

Three days had passed, and Pei Qian was closely monitoring the situation after “Turn Back to Shore” went online.

After all, he had placed high hopes on this game; it absolutely could not fail.

First of all, the comments from netizens were basically as Pei Qian had expected.

In short, the game was being savagely criticized!

Especially under the official Weibo, where players were being sarcastic and passive-aggressive in all sorts of ways.

On the game’s details page on the official platform, there were also a large number of players giving one-star negative reviews.

The arguments on the forum were also very intense, with a serious trend toward polarization.

The TPDb website had already collected quite a few reviews of this game, including consumer and netizen evaluations from around the internet.

Currently, “Turn Back to Shore” had a score of 7.2 on TPDb, with consumer and netizen reviews significantly pulling down this score.

As for media reviews, because it had only been a short time, most gaming media couldn’t possibly have completed the game so quickly, so those scores hadn’t come out yet and couldn’t be summarized.

On this point, Pei Qian wasn’t particularly confident. After all, media reviews wouldn’t focus so heavily on the game’s difficulty but would consider various aspects comprehensively, such as the game’s quality, content, and so on.

These gaming media might still give “Turn Back to Shore” a good score because of its high quality, which could cause the TPDb rating to rise.

But regardless, the game’s reputation among ordinary players had a bit of a collapse at the beginning, which could be said to have met Pei Qian’s expectations.

It didn’t matter whether the TPDb score was high or not, as long as the game didn’t make money.

Pei Qian looked at the players’ refund situation and found that it was less than 30%, which disappointed him somewhat.

What did this mean? Even though he had so clearly indicated to them to get a refund, the refund rate was still less than 30%.

The small monsters in the graveyard, the elite with the cleaver, the epitaphs that appeared upon death, the prompt in the final minutes—they had all endured these?

This simply wasn’t reasonable!

Moreover, this 30% refund rate still needs to consider promotional factors.

Many people came to play “Turn Back to Shore” because of Tenda’s golden reputation, and many players who didn’t want to suffer at all had mistakenly entered.

After discovering that this game was masochistic, these misled players’ first reaction would be to ask for a refund.

But even so, the refund rate was still less than 30%, which made Pei Qian very dissatisfied.

Of course, Pei Qian didn’t have many good options.

He had already been so extreme, and if players didn’t ask for refunds, it meant they truly didn’t want to. Pei Qian couldn’t hold a gun to players’ heads and force them to get refunds.

He could only wait and see.

Although a nearly 30% refund rate didn’t meet Pei Qian’s expectations, it was very high compared to other games. Combined with the game’s currently mixed reviews, the initial situation was fairly good.

Pei Qian also checked out the situation on AiLiDao.

Some people had already uploaded videos about “Turn Back to Shore” on the video site, but no particularly complete or comprehensive guide videos had appeared. Most were recorded as they played, so the quality of the videos wasn’t high, and the popularity was very average.

This point was also within Pei Qian’s expectations.

Anyway, as long as Qiao Laoshi didn’t release guide videos, everything would be fine!

These new players would need at least a week to slowly figure out the tricks of “Turn Back to Shore,” and Qiao Laoshi would also release videos a week later.

By that time, the players who remained would basically be die-hard fans, and it wouldn’t matter if they watched guide videos; as for those who had been discouraged, most would not return.

“Hmm, good start. Hopefully, we can keep it up!”

Pei Qian closed his computer and went out.

Today was Sunday, and he had agreed to treat Lin Chang to a meal at Mingyun Private Kitchen.

Lin Yu was busy with work and had already left Jingzhou. Lin Chang seemed to have more free time, probably because the two were responsible for different businesses and had different work intensities.

…

Mingyun Private Kitchen.

Pei Qian happily gnawed on a crab leg, in a great mood.

Across from him, Lin Chang was also eating with relish, full of praise.

However, as they ate, the topic turned to Lin Wan.

“Mr. Pei, about the matter I asked for help with last time, how have you been considering it?”

“It doesn’t need to be perfect. If you have any thoughts, feel free to share them, and we can discuss them together.”

Lin Chang cared quite a bit about this matter, clearly under significant pressure from the old man.

Getting Lin Wan back quickly would put him at ease.

Pei Qian thought for a moment: “I’m thinking we could use the pretext of business expansion to arrange for her to handle some other businesses.”

Lin Chang was startled: “Not let her continue making games?”

Pei Qian nodded: “Yes, not let her continue making games.”

“Because continuing to make games is too risky!”

She just led the employees of Shangyang Games to create a very popular mobile game. Whether it’s work enthusiasm, employee morale, or external reputation, everything is at its peak. If she continues to make games, the chances of the next game being successful are still very high.”

“If she makes another successful game, the situation might become completely unmanageable.”

Lin Chang deeply agreed: “Yes, that makes sense!”

Lin Wan had only succeeded with one game so far, and she was already showing off in the family group chat. If she succeeded with another one, wouldn’t her tail be raised to the sky?

This time, failure was not an option!

“But, Mr. Pei, there’s a problem,” Lin Chang looked hesitant. “Making games is Wan’er’s dream. If you arrange for her to go to another department under the pretext of business expansion, will she be willing?”

Pei Qian was confident: “Being too obvious won’t work.”

“And Lin Wan indeed wouldn’t be willing to completely give up her work in the gaming department.”

“That being the case, why not let her be responsible for both the gaming business and another department’s business?”

“With a lot of work on both sides, she’ll be stretched thin, and the chances of failure will naturally increase greatly.”

Lin Chang’s eyes lit up: “Oh, good idea!”

“But what business should we choose? And what kind of reason should we use? This still needs to be carefully considered. Wan’er is very smart; we must not make her suspicious.”

Pei Qian nodded: “Yes, I have several considerations, though I haven’t decided yet.”

Lin Chang was very interested: “Let’s hear them?”

Pei Qian picked up a piece of sushi: “My thoughts are as follows.”

“First, we must retain Lin Wan’s position as director at Shangyang Games, so that she is nominally still responsible for making a game.”

“If we don’t let her be responsible for anything related to games, it would be too obvious, easily cause suspicion, and also likely trigger her resistance.”

“On this basis, we find her a new job.”

“This new field must be related to games. This way, we can legitimately tell her that due to the need for business development, we must enter the XX field because this field is beneficial for game development.”

“Currently, the fields I’ve thought of are either livestreaming or mobile phones.”

Lin Chang couldn’t help but admire: “Brilliant.”

Pei Qian’s operation was very clear. He would tell Lin Wan that to better promote games, they now needed to develop livestreaming or mobile phone business, and she would be the person in charge of this new business.

This way, Lin Wan would have to take on two roles, and her energy would be insufficient. Whether it was livestreaming or games, the chances of failure would greatly increase.

And Lin Chang also knew clearly that Lin Wan was a very proud person. Whatever task Mr. Pei gave her, even if she felt it was a bit difficult to complete, she would accept it and not shirk the responsibility.

With this approach, wouldn’t it work out perfectly?

Lin Chang was very pleased: “So which business do you think is more suitable, Mr. Pei? Livestreaming or mobile phones?”

Pei Qian thought for a moment: “Mobile phones might be better.”

Pei Qian had considered other fields as well.

For example, shared bicycles would lose money.

But this field couldn’t be handed to Lin Wan because shared bicycles had nothing to do with games, so the reason for giving it to Lin Wan wouldn’t be sufficient.

However, making mobile phones or doing livestreaming could both be said to be building a moat for the gaming business.

The barriers to entry for both industries weren’t low.

For livestreaming, just the bandwidth cost alone would reach 40 million per month if they wanted to achieve about 2 million simultaneous online users.

After all, livestreaming was different from games. Network games didn’t use much bandwidth because the data volume transmitted was much smaller than livestreaming, so the bandwidth costs naturally couldn’t be compared.

And for several large livestreaming platforms that would emerge later, the number of online users was basically at the level of six to seven million to ten million, easily costing hundreds of millions in bandwidth fees.

Of course, they could play it cheaply, which would mean spending less on bandwidth, but no matter how little, the initial investment would still need to be at least thirty to forty million.

If they prepared too little money and couldn’t produce anything, getting stuck at the settlement, it would be counterproductive.

As for making mobile phones, investing one or two hundred million would be enough, especially since Coarse Grain Mobile had only invested ten million when they first started.

Moreover, given the current market environment, livestreaming hadn’t yet risen and was a blue ocean, while the mobile phone industry was developing much faster than in the previous life and was already a red ocean.

Shenhua, Pineapple, MSC, and many other big companies had already begun to battle it out. In the next few years, it would only get tougher for small mobile phone manufacturers, and failure was almost inevitable.

Furthermore, Lin Yu was responsible for Shenhua’s mobile phone business.

When Lin Wan’s side released a new phone, Shenhua’s side would release an even better one…

Wouldn’t that be perfect?

Lin Chang naturally quickly understood this point and couldn’t help but applaud: “Mr. Pei’s plan is indeed perfect, flawless!”

“I owe Mr. Pei another big favor.”

“Mr. Pei, rest assured, if there are any difficulties in this process, we will do our utmost to cooperate!”

“By the way, Mr. Pei, I see that your new game’s reputation isn’t very good. Have you considered controlling the reviews or something? It also seems to be trending on Weibo; would you like me to have it taken down?”

“Don’t worry, I’m very familiar with them. Just say the word, and it will be done in minutes.”

Lin Chang was responsible for Shenhua’s entertainment department, so he was naturally well-versed in these matters.

He probably felt that he had received too much help from Pei Qian and wanted to compensate a little.

Pei Qian hurriedly raised his hand: “No, absolutely not!”

“This is part of the plan.”

Lin Chang suddenly understood: “Oh, I see. Then I won’t interfere. Anyway, Mr. Pei, if you have any requests, just say so. From now on, your affairs are my affairs, and I will not hesitate to help!”