August 24th, Friday…
He had worked overtime until 10 at night yesterday. After work today, he had been busy until noon. The Blade of the Empire was finally going to be released!
The game ‘Blade of the Empire’ had been delayed for two whole weeks for the sake of publishing on Dawn gaming platform.
Fortunately, other than the bug that could not be replicated, the other bugs should have been fixed.
As he was about to go online, Yan Qi was very apprehensive.
For a mobile game, the figures for the first two days after being released basically determined life and death to a certain extent.
Unlike client-side games that were hugely invested and produced, mobile games had a unique operating mechanism.
Most startups that made mobile games could not get too many resources to recommend or publicize games in the early stages. Thus, the only way to get more recommendation resources from channels was to talk about data.
If the figures on the day of release were good, players were more active and charged more enthusiastically, proving the potential of the game to make money, the platform would naturally be willing to use more resources to promote it.
The better the data, the more they could promote it. The more data they promoted, the better. That would form a virtuous cycle.
On the other hand, if the figures were bad once it was released, it would fall into a vicious cycle. It would be very difficult to salvage the situation.
That was because it was difficult to tell which part of the game players did not like. Even if it was modified, it was difficult to guarantee that players would like it after modification.
On the other hand, the ‘Blade of the Empire’ that Yan Qi and the others had developed was relatively less heavy and had a low paywall. As an action mobile game, even though there were charging points, they still spent most of their energy on the gameplay and quality polishing.
He was worried that this would make the game’s top-up figures look bad, and thus delay the overall performance of the first day of the game.
Coupled with the recent series of negative events on Dawn Games platform and the rule that the recommendation rate would be taken off the shelves if it exceeded 55%, Yan Qi was even more worried.
Now, everything was finally ready. The state of “Blade of the Empire” on the Dawn Games platform had also become “about to be opened”. He just had to wait a few more hours to know the final fate of this game.
However, at that moment, Yan Qi suddenly noticed a huge promotional page on the platform.
“Find bugs and win 100,000 yuan?”
“What the hell is this!”
“Do they mean it literally?”
Yan Qi was shocked when he saw the message on the promotional page. He quickly clicked on it.
In the end, it was true. It was clearly stated that as long as they found a bug with the same number of bugs as the one recorded on the platform, they would be rewarded with a thousand yuan. If they found one more, they would be rewarded with a hundred thousand yuan!
However, this event had a series of additional conditions.
First of all, the definition of ‘bug’ only referred to the programming bugs that affected the normal progress of the game. Mistakes like the wording and semantics in the text might be considered bugs in general but they were not included in this event.
Secondly, this event would be based on the game version number recorded by the official platform of Dawn Games platform. The game version would be updated and the content would change. The number of bugs had to be tabulated again.
Third, players would have to provide a full video to prove that the game was downloaded from the official platform and was a normal version that had not been maliciously modified. The bugs that they found could be replicated at least once.
Lastly, the event would only last for two weeks. The same bug would only be given once. The order would depend on the time when the official platform would provide effective proof materials. The event might continue in the future. The specific time would be different.
Yan Qi finally heaved a sigh of relief after reading the rules several times.
Fortunately, this rule was quite complete.
He was most afraid that there would be loopholes in the rules for such activities. Players would take advantage of the loopholes and not be able to clarify things.
The series of conditions attached to this event basically blocked most of the loopholes that could be exploited.
The first rule was to prevent players from playing word games and wrangling.
It was inevitable for there to be mistakes in words, sick sentences, and so on in the game. Most testers’ tests would not focus on this. It would be a little difficult if players insisted that this was a bug because of a single mistake.
It was limited to programming bugs that would affect the game’s normal progress. The boundaries would be clearer and more direct. It would not be easy to blur over.
The second rule was to prevent game developers from faking it.
What if an employee secretly spread a bug and found it to collect the bonus?
The way to deal with the Dawn Games platform was to use the game version submitted by various game manufacturers to the platform. That was the version that Manager Tang had tried out.
If the game developers wanted to make changes to this version, they would first have to obtain the approval of the platform. Secondly, they would have to leave traces of changes. Secretly making changes would definitely be discovered.
If the platform allowed ordinary updates, the number of bugs recorded on the platform would naturally correspondingly change. The search for bugs would be based on this new number.
Of course, during this event period, they had to avoid updating the game version as much as possible so that gamers would not find bugs for a long time and all their efforts would be wasted.
Even though such efforts would probably be in vain.
The third rule was to prevent some technical players from faking it by modifying the game’s client.
They had to download the entire video from the official platform and provide a recording of the entire process. What’s more, they had to be able to replay it twice steadily. What’s more, the games on the platform would be connected to the internet the entire time. The automatic school client version would be tested for its integrity and to see if it had been modified.
That way, the chances of players faking it through technical methods would become negligible.
Of course, he could not rule out the possibility that some particularly impressive technical big shots could bypass these restrictions and forcefully fake it. However, the official platform would definitely have a way. For example, they would reimburse him for the travel expenses and let him prove with the official machine that he could record the entire process and live-stream it. As long as he proved that this bug really existed, they would give him an additional bonus.
If it was a fake person, he would definitely not dare to come. At most, he would harass them online.
The fourth rule was to determine the effectiveness of the event. Such an event would consume a lot of manpower and resources. It would definitely not last.
It might only be two weeks but there would definitely be a lot of attention.
What’s more, so what if someone really found a bug? They could just distribute money normally. This platform was not lacking in money at all from the marketing activities that morning. Giving a few players some money would be equivalent to buying popularity. What could it be compared to a large sum of publicity funds?
Of course, there was a prerequisite. There could not be more bugs in the game than on the platform.
Take the Blade of the Empire, for example. There was a bug written on the platform. If there were actually dozens of bugs in the game, and they could easily be replicated, the players would have to take care of these dozens of bugs dozens of times and directly take away millions. Then, they would definitely be done.
However, Yan Qi knew very well that this place had good feng shui. It has been repeatedly tested by many game companies!
If they could only find one bug in a treasure ground, the chances of players finding two bugs were negligible.
Even if they really found it, he would just give them a hundred thousand yuan. This hundred thousand yuan would just be a publicity budget to achieve the effect of spending a thousand yuan on a fervent quest for talent.
A hundred thousand yuan was nothing to some small mobile games that generated millions of yuan each month, much less gaming platforms.
“That’s a good thing!”
“Once this event is released, a large number of players will definitely flood the platform to find bugs for the bonus.”
“Our game will be able to enjoy this wave of dividends when it’s just released!”
Yan Qi could not help but feel emotional. He had used all sorts of bad moves on the Dawn Games platform previously. Now, he has finally organized a smart event online!
This event might be completely dependent on feng shui and treasure land, and had nothing much to do with the strength of the platform itself, but so what? Every platform had to make full use of their advantage!
“Hold on.”
“Doing this would indeed increase the popularity in the short term, but I’m afraid it would still cause controversy after the event, right?”
“No, don’t talk about the end of the event. I’m afraid that the controversy would reach its peak a week after the event.”
Once Yan Qi analyzed it, he realized that it was not as simple as he thought.
In the beginning, the huge bonus from the bug-searching event would definitely cause a huge reaction online and attract a large group of players.
These gamers were here to find bugs, and they were definitely very confident.
However, they probably would not be able to find any bugs after searching for a few days with high intensity.
At that time, people would definitely think of all sorts of tricks, such as making fake videos, criticizing online, and taking advantage of the situation.
For example, they could say that they had found a bug but the official platform did not pay for it.
Some people might also say that in fact, some games had already fixed all the bugs. The actual number of programming bugs was zero. However, in order to deceive players, Dawn of Games deliberately wrote the number of bugs into one.
Even if players really won the prize money, others would suspect that it was an official request.
All in all, those gamers who were rushing to get bonuses would definitely not give up as long as they did not get bonuses. They would definitely cause trouble.
What if this group of people became angry because they could not find any bugs and did not recommend the game crazily, causing more games to be taken down?
Doing an event might attract attention, but how could they quell the negative public opinion caused by a portion of players’ anger and humiliation?
Yan Qi only thought about it for a moment before he felt a headache.
He knew very well that public opinion like this was the most difficult to deal with. That was because once it fermented, the emotions of many players would be coerced. Even if the official statement was true, it would be very difficult to gain people’s trust. It would be very difficult to reverse public opinion.
If the problem worsened, it would be difficult to solve it no matter how much publicity funds they spent.
Yan Qi, who had been quite happy just now, became listless again.
At first, he had thought that Dawn Games platform had suddenly become enlightened and made a good move. However, after careful observation, he realized that this move was not good either!
There were benefits, but there were risks, and they were huge!
It was simply dancing on the edge of a knife. If he was not careful, he would attract fire.
Yan Qi could not help but sigh. Dawn games platform was really full of disasters!
It might be difficult to create a gaming platform but it was not that difficult as long as there was money and resources.
On the other hand, Dawn Games platform was obviously rich and had resources, but it had forcefully played through a series of tricks to become hellish difficulty.
There would be no one else who engages in such operations with such a good hand.
However, Yan Qi had no choice. He could only watch the changes while busy with his own game.