Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Ma Yang was troubled.

“Brother Qian... is our game really that trashy? There’s absolutely no hype around it...”

“When a new game’s published, it would normally get a few tens of thousands of downloads on just the first day. Why is ours only getting a couple of dozens...”

Ma Yang was thoroughly affected.

Ever since the game was published, he was refreshing the figures for Ghost General on the official games platform every other minute to check for number of downloads and reviews by players.

Yet, one hour had passed...

Three hours...

Five hours...

The figures had hardly changed at all!

That was because Ghost General had only taken on a small spot on the recommendation list and that title by itself wasn’t anything particularly attractive nor were there any beautiful advertising images – who would even notice it?

The Lonely Desert Road was discovered by Teacher Qiao because he was an UP Master who specialized in dissing standalone games and would seek out new games on the regular.

That could be said to be an exception amongst exceptions.

Most mobile gamers would not go around looking for new mobile games on the regular unless they were exceptionally popular or poised to be at least.

For a new mobile game such as Ghost General, the chances of it being buried into oblivion was almost 100% without any marketing measures planned.

“It’s fine, this is always the case for new games. We just have to wait and see,” Pei Qian consoled.

Wait and see?

Yeah, right!

Even though Pei Qian looked to be as worried as Ma Yang on the surface, he was long gloating internally.

It was normal that there would be no downloads – after all, where would the players come from since this game had not seen the light of day just yet?

A couple of days aside, this game would most likely end up into stagnation even after a week or a month had passed!

Pei Qian was just waiting for the week to pass by as quickly as possible. Eventually, Ghost General would drop from the games platform’s recommendation spot and so would its popularity. With that, the system’s settlement would convert all 300,000 of System Funds to his Personal Wealth.

Amazing! f𝐫𝑒𝗲𝙬𝒆𝚋𝐧૦𝘃𝗲l.c𝚘𝘮

Pei Qian’s consolation did not bring about much results as Ma Yang still looked despondent as ever.

“Sigh, let me check the figures again. Perhaps there might be some changes now that three hours’ passed,” Ma Yang said as he opened up ESRO’s official games platform and searched for Ghost General.

When he got to the information page of the game, Ma Yang was stunned.

He rubbed his eyes, thinking that he might have been hallucinating.

When he had checked it multiple times previously, the downloads were always in the tens. However, it had suddenly increased to more than 2,000!

Ma Yang thought that he was seeing things. But, when he checked out the ratings and reviews by players, he knew that it was true.

A group of gamers had indeed discovered this game!

The first thing Ma Yang checked was the rating of the game – it was at an exaggerating 9.7!

Initially, Ghost General’s review section was absolutely empty. However, there were already hundreds of reviews by now!

“Why is this game sold at 10 yuan? It’s more expensive than Qute Three Kingdoms, what the hell?!”

“The previous commenter, you must not have played the game yet, right? You’re complaining that 10 yuan is expensive? It’s too cheap!”

“I’ve played it seriously for a little and found that it’s a mobile card game filled with sincerity! The key is that there’s only a single permanent membership card that the game sells to you. If you were to lump it together with the cost of the game, everything costs a mere 40 yuan!”

“40 yuan to play as much as you want while everyone’s equal without any top up values or paywalls. I’m appalled! Is this even a mobile card game?”

“This game’s quality is rather decent. As a loyal fan of mobile card games, I’ve finally found one that is unique!”

“What’s memorable are the characters inside! I’ve never seen anyone interpret characters of the three kingdoms using such a unique manner! It’s absolutely unbelievable! Yet, within its ridiculousness, there’s a refreshing feeling to it!”

“The original art’s awesome! I’ll even be willing to pay money in-game just because of the original arts! What? I can’t pay money in-game? Seems like I can only give a 5-star review then!”

Ma Yang’s hands were shivering in excitement. After going through the reviews page by page, he couldn’t even find a single negative review!

It wasn’t entirely because the original arts were amazing and the game charged a reasonable price that there was no negative reviews. The most important reason was that the first batch of players were here just for the original arts!

After the artists from Chen Qi’s group shared the images on their Weibo, there was an extremely warm reception and those people got here by searching for the game’s title.

While the majority of the people were somewhat disappointed at how Ghost General wasn’t a standalone or large scale online game, they could not bear to give it a poor review after they started on the game.

That’s because, the game truly had too much of a heart!

It was of a decent quality be it in terms of art or music resources. Cost was not an issue to Pei Qian and the first impression it gave off was amazing.

Coupled with the fact that there was no paywall, more players were even more sold on the game!

As such, Ghost General exploded with amazing reviews after the first batch of gamers started it with great word of mouth advertising!

Ma Yang stretched his head out from the upper bunk and said to Pei Qian, “Brother Qian, we did it! Our downloads are increasing and there are many amazing 5-star reviews!

“Pfft!”

Pei Qian was drinking water and he choked on it, coughing for a full minute thereafter.

“What did you say?” He nearly thought that he was hearing things.

Ma Yang repeated excitedly, “We’ve got over 2,000 downloads now! Also, everyone’s giving great reviews for the game and there are even people who are praising my character designs!”

Pei Qian was completely dazed.

The downloads had gone over 2,000?

How could that be? Where did the gamers hear about the game from?

Besides, they all gave 5-star reviews?

That didn’t make sense! The game was completely made using universal mobile card game templates and there wasn’t any breakthroughs in gameplay – how would that render 5-star reviews?

If this was someone else’s game, Pei Qian’s first reaction would be that the creators must have bought likes and reviews themselves!

However, this was his own game!

He was none the clearer that he hadn’t bought any reviews at all!

He had already spent all his money, how would he have any bit left to purchase fake reviews?

Besides, even if he had money, Pei Qian wouldn’t possibly do it. What he wanted more than anything else was for the game to disappear silently – how could he possibly do something that would generate this much hype?

Could some other companies have bought fake reviews and ended up reviewing the wrong game by mistake?

That wouldn’t seem possible as well. Who would provide such a lousy service that they could even review a wrong game by mistake?

Could it be... that another incident similar to the previous game had happened?!

Pei Qian logged into ESRO’s resource website and glanced at the game’s download figures.

Ma Yang had not lied to him – they had truly exploded!

Besides, the reviews of the players seemed exactly the same as what fake reviewers would write – all of them were praising Ghost General for having a heart!

The download figures were still increasing rapidly along with the number of people who had purchased the in-game permanent membership card!

Pei Qian was completely stunned as he looked at both leaping figures.

What was up with this world?!

What went wrong this time round?!

His vision blackening, Pei Qian collapsed back onto his bed.