Monday, noon.

Last Friday’s team-building activity had everyone thrilled. After resting for two days on Saturday and Sunday, they had completely relaxed.

Except for Bao Xu, who still came to the company on Sunday, no one else came to work overtime, and they all enjoyed their weekend.

After all, the game development was already completed, so there was no reason to work overtime anymore!

Although overtime would mean extra pay, relatively speaking, a leisurely and comfortable holiday was more attractive.

On Monday, many people were still immersed in this happiness.

But Huang Sibo wasn’t blindly optimistic; his expression was somewhat serious.

“You’ve noticed the data for ‘Sea Fortress’ too, right?” Huang Sibo came to Bao Xu’s workstation and found that Bao Xu was also paying attention to the backend data of “Sea Fortress.”

Simply put, it was terrible!

The game was submitted for review on Friday and passed the review on Saturday evening. Yet after an entire Sunday, the download count was just a few hundred.

Far too few!

FPS games were different from other games; they could be considered competitive online games, requiring enough players to be playable.

The basic gameplay of FPS games was player-versus-player combat, but with only a few hundred downloads and just dozens of active players, how could anyone have a proper match? Forget about matching with equally skilled opponents—it wasn’t even certain if one could match with real people at all!

They couldn’t expect players to just fight against computer opponents, could they? That wouldn’t be right.

Of course, one thing that distinguished “Sea Fortress” from other FPS games like “Bullet Hole” was that it had a story mode and could be played as a single-player game.

But the story mode couldn’t support a long enough gameplay time; players would soon get bored.

Moreover, most players who enjoyed “Counter-Strike” were more fond of the competitive mode and didn’t care much for the story mode.

All in all, the situation was extremely unpromising!

These few hundred downloads were achieved with “Sea Fortress” being free to download. If “Sea Fortress” had been priced according to single-player game standards—at least thirty or fifty yuan—the download count would likely plummet even further.

As for why “Sea Fortress” was set as a free game…

It was because Pei Qian had learned from the lesson of “Ghost General.”

“Ghost General,” due to its exceptionally user-friendly characteristics, had caused a rapid expansion of its user base, with hundreds of thousands of new active players every month!

Each new active player brought Pei Qian 10 yuan in income, which caught him off guard…

Originally, the 10-yuan price was just meant to be a threshold to block free players, but unexpectedly, it backfired and achieved the effect of low profits but high sales volume…

So, after careful reflection, Pei Qian completely reversed the pricing strategy for “Sea Fortress.”

The game was completely free, meaning that even if there were some unexpected occurrences and the game got a certain number of downloads, Pei Qian wouldn’t get a penny from these ordinary players!

The 888-yuan threshold for epic weapons was high enough to, on one hand, attract criticism, damage “Sea Fortress'” reputation, and deter average players; on the other hand, it made it unaffordable for the vast majority of players.

As for why not make it completely free…

Didn’t Pei Qian want to?

The key was that the system wouldn’t allow it!

If the game itself was free, and there were no in-app purchases or advertising services within the game, this would be unreasonable. It would be equivalent to Pei Qian spending his own money to produce a product and then giving it all away for free.

This kind of behavior, which was clearly exploiting loopholes and intentionally losing money, was explicitly forbidden by the system.

Otherwise, losing money would be too simple for Pei Qian—he could just buy products at the original price and then sell them at dirt-cheap prices, losing as much as he wanted.

The system would never leave such an obvious loophole for Pei Qian to exploit.

So, Pei Qian had to design a profit model for the game. Whether it was selling by volume or adding in-app purchases to the game, he had to ensure there were profit points to avoid warnings from the system.

In short, so far, the situation of “Sea Fortress” was still within Pei Qian’s control.

Pei Qian had set up three lines of defense for “Sea Fortress.”

First, no prior promotion, making the game ignored by all.

Second, a failing pricing strategy with the 888-yuan epic weapon tarnishing its public image, causing the “Sea Fortress’s” reputation to collapse.

Third, the excellent competing game “Bullet Hole” would suppress “Sea Fortress” completely.

Now, the first line of defense was working.

And Huang Sibo and Bao Xu were troubled by this.

These two were also paying attention to the performance of “Sea Fortress”; after all, it was their labor of love that they had been working on for a long time, and this game also carried Mr. Pei’s trust.

If the game failed, wouldn’t that be letting down Mr. Pei’s trust?

Absolutely not!

Huang Sibo hesitated, seemingly unsure whether to say what was on his mind.

But after much hesitation, he finally spoke up.

“Bao, do you think Mr. Pei hasn’t promoted ‘Sea Fortress’ at all? No matter what, the download data shouldn’t be this dismal, right?”

Although saying this was somewhat disrespectful to Mr. Pei, from all perspectives, that was exactly what was happening…

These days, whether a domestic game succeeded largely depended on marketing and distribution channels.

Many terrible games, through brainwashing marketing, managed to trick a large number of players into trying them.

Of course, whether they could retain those players was another matter.

But at the very least, no matter how terrible a game was, as long as it was properly advertised and money was spent on promotion, it wouldn’t be completely ignored.

Having only a few hundred downloads after a day of being online was simply unreasonable!

Bao Xu looked at Huang Sibo: “Huang, don’t question Mr. Pei. Mr. Pei, who came up with the idea of using Weibo marketing to promote ‘Ghost General,’ is a master in this field. How could he not know the importance of promotion and advertising?”

Huang Sibo scratched his head.

That made sense.

But the current half-dead state of “Sea Fortress” clearly showed that there was no promotion whatsoever…

Huang Sibo had specifically searched and found that “Sea Fortress” wasn’t on any other gaming platforms, hadn’t run any advertisements, and hadn’t used any other promotion methods.

Surely Mr. Pei wasn’t secretly preparing some major move?

Seeming to sense Huang Sibo’s confusion, Bao Xu said, “I think we should just completely trust Mr. Pei. If Mr. Pei hasn’t assigned us to worry about promotion, then we shouldn’t worry about it.”

“Hmm, you’re right,” Huang Sibo thought about it and agreed.

What kind of genius was Mr. Pei? Was it his place to worry?

So, Huang Sibo turned and left.

However, after ten minutes, Huang Sibo returned.

“This time it’s not about promoting the game,” Huang Sibo explained. “It’s about the subsequent version modifications.”

“Oh? Go ahead, Huang,” Bao Xu nodded.

Huang Sibo paused slightly: “It’s like this. The official version of ‘Sea Fortress’ has been developed. According to the usual development process, we should now be preparing to formulate the development plan for the next version.”

“Hmm, and so?” Bao Xu seemed to half-understand.

Currently, his understanding of the game development process isx still limited; he simply followed Huang Sibo’s arrangements.