Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games

Chapter 100: A Petition

Ocean Fortress hadn't received any updates either.

But that was understandable—it had just launched a little over a month ago and had the powerful "Fire Qilin" package for 888 yuan. So the player base there wasn't as impatient yet.

Over on the Ghost General side, however, players were losing it.

They'd never seen a game company this pure and unpretentious!

Other companies were like heavily made-up influencers screaming "Come spend your money, boss!"

Tengda? The complete opposite. Not only were they bare-faced, but they were also actively pushing you out the door.

"What the hell is Tengda thinking? Why won't they just add a new way to spend money? Do they hate profits??"

"After buying the lifetime card, there's literally nowhere else to spend money!"

"Is this company planning to cash-grab once and run?"

"I've heard of broke developers disappearing, but vanishing after making money? That's a new one!"

A lot of players couldn't take it anymore—they had no choice but to temporarily AFK.

There was just nothing left to do!

Once you bought the lifetime card, you got extra daily card draws. After two months of that, most people had pulled nearly every card. The only thing left was slowly upgrading them.

These days, most players just logged in to draw a few cards, run a couple of campaign stages, and… that was it. No real gameplay left.

As a result, many people wandered off to play other games.

Yet—no one uninstalled Ghost General.

Because this was still the most generous, most artistically unique mobile game on the market! As long as there was a new update, they'd come running back, excited as ever.

Uninstall the game? Who could bear to do that?

Then suddenly, a new post popped up in the forums:

"I'm moved to tears! The game has secretly been updated!"

Clicking in, the post read:

"Today I noticed something strange. That bug everyone complained about—Guan Yu's chain slash damage being too low? It's been fixed! He's way more viable now!"

"And Zhao Yun's rear-line attack trigger rate? Seems like that got tweaked too!"

Players investigated further and confirmed it: a bunch of previously minor but annoying bugs had quietly been fixed!

No patch notes. No version update. No announcements. Nobody even knew when these changes had been made.

Other companies go out of their way to list every single bug fix in their update logs, desperate for players to acknowledge how hard their devs are working.

Tengda? Didn't say a word. Totally chill.

The forum exploded with excitement!

"Tengda hasn't abandoned Ghost General!"

"Other devs delay bug fixes in favor of launching new monetization events. Tengda does the exact opposite! No monetization, just pure optimization! I'm floored!"

"Does this mean… a new version might be on the way?"

"Suddenly I'm feeling hyped again!"

"This company is so sincere. I'm actually touched!"

"As long as Tengda doesn't give up on Ghost General, we'll keep supporting it!"

"Let's start a petition—ten thousand signatures to beg for a new monetization feature!! (1/10,000)"

"Please, devs, let us give you our money!!"

. . . . . . . .

March 7th.

"What?!"

"Ghost General's customer service lines are flooded, and the forums are filled with requests for new monetization features???"

"You're telling me… players are literally begging us to add ways to spend money??"

Sitting in the car, Pei Qian tapped his phone screen in disbelief, replying to Lin Wan's private message.

He had been in a good mood that day. The renovation of the Moyu Internet Café had just been completed.

A big chunk of company funds had been spent on computers, furniture, drinks, and hiring staff.

Thinking about the café's brilliant potential to burn money, Pei Qian felt great. So he had Assistant Xin drive him over to take a look—inspect Ma Yang and Zhang Yuan's progress, and correct any possible missteps.

On the way to the internet café, Pei Qian unexpectedly received a private message from Lin Wan—and found out that Ghost General players had started organizing a petition of ten thousand signatures!

Currently, the only official communication channel between players and the company was customer service.

Previously, in his quest to lose money, Pei Qian had deliberately outsourced customer support to a company whose staff were masters at dodging questions like Tai Chi practitioners.

To put it bluntly, customer service was entirely outsourced, with zero knowledge of the development team's actual situation. No matter what players asked, the customer reps couldn't give any real answers.

All they could do was repeat a few generic, placating phrases over and over again:

"Thank you for your feedback, we will pass your suggestions to the dev team!"

"Sorry for the inconvenience. We're actively working on resolving this, sir!"

Phrases like that.

Originally, no one really bothered calling customer service.

Most players who encountered minor issues in-game didn't find it worth the effort to phone in—those kinds of helpful, proactive players were rare.

Usually, people only called to rage about payment problems.

But Ghost General only had one monetization feature: the lifetime card.

And it was such a simple system that it was practically bug-proof.

So the support team had been enjoying a peaceful life… until recently.

For the past two days, for reasons Pei Qian couldn't fathom, players had been bombarding the support line!

And they all had the same request:

"PLEASE just add a new way for us to spend money!"

And it wasn't just one or two random callers—they were taking turns, calling nonstop!

Meanwhile, over on the forums and Tieba, the conversation was exactly the same. People were spamming threads left and right with the same plea.

Pei Qian was dumbfounded.

His first assumption was that players were demanding new content or gameplay updates.

That would be normal. After all, Ghost General had been out for three to four months already. Naturally, players would get tired of the same old content.

But no—they were begging for new monetization features???

Pei Qian was baffled. He messaged Lin Wan:

"Do we have more specific info? Why are the players asking for more ways to pay? This doesn't make sense."

Lin Wan replied:

"They seem worried the game might be getting shut down, and they want to support it financially."

HSSSSSSSSS—

Pei Qian sucked in a sharp breath.

'What kind of madness is this?!'

His original plan was to just stop updating the game, let it coast into obscurity, and die off naturally.

As long as players didn't raise a fuss, Ghost General would simply fade away from lack of content—its popularity and revenue declining into nothing.

And up until now, that plan had been going smoothly.

Players were behaving themselves. After all, they were just here to have fun, not start a movement. Without a strong reason, no real unity could be formed among them.

But now?

What the hell is going on?!

It was like they had been struck by some divine revelation!

Pei Qian thought for a moment, then responded:

"Tell customer service to reply with a unified message:

'A new version is currently in the planning stages! Estimated release… hmm… around May or June!'"

Lin Wan:

"Huh? It's already in development? Why didn't I know?"

Pei Qian:

"Please don't twist my words. I said 'in planning'! That's totally different."

'Even if it's only in my head, that still counts as planning!'

Lin Wan:

"…Got it, Boss Pei."

Pei Qian felt like the universe was playing tricks on him.

'Ever since I started making games, everything has gone sideways!'

'Nothing makes sense anymore!'

He had hoped to coast by unnoticed—but the players were having none of it.

And now, he couldn't pretend not to see what was happening anymore.

<+>

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