The Self-Redemption of the Wronged Fool [Quick Transmigration] - Chapter 21

The Zero Hour Game Company fell into such a massive pit. After finally managing to repair their network and database, they could only bite the bullet and wait to launch their new game a month later.

This was, after all, the result of a whole year of effort, into which they had invested significant capital and manpower.

Although the public discussion regarding Emperor Cheng had not ceased a month later, its game revenue directly surpassed their previous two games.

However, they did not realize that Shiji Games was able to make money because the quality of their games was excellent, not merely because of their game models. Their game models and gameplay had not actually undergone significant changes; they had simply made the quality of their games exceptionally outstanding.

Ji Qiuchi also saw the new game launched by their company. The bugs present in the internal testing remained unresolved after the public beta. Not only that, but the game would undergo maintenance from time to time, which was extremely frustrating for people.

They had not made sufficient preparations before presenting this game to the public.

From the very first day, the number of players began to drop continuously; they couldn’t even recoup their costs.

Meanwhile, Shiji was in no hurry to release new games. This was also because the information Zhao Chengyu had taken out caused the content of Zero Hour’s games and Shiji’s new games to partially overlap.

Although it was unknown exactly how he obtained the game intelligence, Qi Shi had no intention of letting the matter go unpunished.

As the planner of Emperor Cheng, Ji Qiuchi’s second success made his reputation in the industry very formidable. However, this was also because the company had deliberately cultivated an image for him.

After all, some players do not particularly care what game they play; they might play a game because of a game company, a game planner, the artists, or perhaps the voice actors.

Zero Hour’s game failed to make a splash. Ji Qiuchi provided some assistance regarding the modifications to the company’s Otome games and then stopped managing that, leaving it to others in the company.

The company’s next big project was a holographic game. Conservatively, this would take ten years to develop, but Qi Ye was a powerful individual. His research and development were proceeding in an orderly fashion, and he stated that once there were certain results, he would assemble a team within the company to produce the game.

The company released its first Otome game during the winter break. Whether it was the artwork, the music, or the AI emotional technology, their game quickly occupied the pinnacle of this genre.

It directly slaughtered Zero Hour. From the beginning, Zero Hour felt that Zhao Chengyu was a mole who had come to harm them. Now, seeing that Shiji’s game was entirely different from what Zhao Chengyu had described and was performed even more excellently, they were in a state of absolute, irreconcilable enmity.

However, wanting to catch a weakness in Shiji’s company was too difficult; they also did not understand why Shiji was able to create games without loopholes.

But they were not pushovers either. Having reached this stage, even if Shiji had no loopholes, they planned to manufacture loopholes for them.

Shiji’s new game was positioned as an Otome game, but its primary gameplay consisted of two modes: rhythm game play and combat play. These two modes were part of a single main storyline, depending on which mode the player preferred.

Those who liked technical operation could use the rhythm mode, while those who liked combat gameplay could directly engage in free combat; clearing the levels allowed them to view the remaining story content.

They all knew that Shiji’s game plots were extremely excellent, and indeed, Shiji had relied on game plots from the very beginning to make countless players unable to stop.

The general story was about the female/male protagonist acting as an idol manager, entering the 【Idol Academy】 and encountering various handsome characters, with a complete career path planned to become a top idol.

Looking at it this way, it seemed like an ordinary game. Originally, many people were waiting for them to reveal a big move, wondering what kind of results they would produce this time.

In the end, it was just this. With the previous three games as precedents, this kind of game truly made the public somewhat disappointed. Many players stated they would just grab an account and then quit the game, and countless players began to speak ill of it. Even many game manufacturers in the industry felt they had exhausted their talent, believing this was their opportunity.

Originally, being surrounded and suppressed by three games had caused them to lose more than half of the game market territory. Now, they could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

But they were not happy for long. Just as they were tensely watching the subsequent development of Idol Academy.

Shiji’s game exploded in popularity again.

The profit of Idol Academy was on par with Emperor Cheng, and this was only after the first month.

Everyone fell into confusion. It was impossible for them to succeed with every single game they made. Zero Hour was the same; clearly, their games were made similarly.

Therefore, they lurked in the game comment sections to conduct investigations. Finally, they discovered that Shiji had once again taken an unconventional path.

In this game, players could create clothes for the characters they liked, and there were clothing attribute bonuses for scoring. Whether in combat mode or rhythm mode, points could be added to help them pass levels easily. Everyone fell into a state of bewilderment.

This kind of game doesn’t sell cards; you let players make the clothes? Then where exactly do you make money from? Furthermore, not everyone is good at drawing blueprints.

Until they discovered that there was actually a beautification button within the game, utilizing a professional art system developed by Shiji Company to help all players DIY their sketches.

Of course, more importantly, players with poor manual skills could obtain game resources to draw clothing blueprints. Almost no two blueprints were identical; they were all beautiful, with different rarity levels determined for different blueprints.

This time, the game did not abandon the pity mechanism or the gacha (drawing) mechanism, but the trading system returned to this game.

This was the reason why fan artists went completely crazy, because they could sell their sketches within the game. Sometimes these clothing designs could be auctioned for astronomical prices.

And Shiji’s AI system was extremely powerful; sketches that were plagiarized or merged could be directly judged as failures, and the system would even provide the source. It also did not allow for the existence of duplicate sketches.

This once led many artists to use it as a detection and rights-protection tool.

But in reality, most of Shiji’s games were dedicated to letting everyone change their destiny through games. Since they were playing games and passing time anyway, it was better to use the games to earn money.

What people liked most about this game was the music and dance movements. They had hired professional teachers to participate in the game production. Not long after the game went online, the game songs became popular across many platforms, and some people even went to replicate the dance movements of the characters.

This was a little bit of cleverness from Shiji; they had even bought some marketing for this purpose.

None of the characters in Idol Academy were ugly, and they had distinct personalities. Besides raising them as husbands/wives, they could completely be raised as sons/daughters. There was even a desktop pet Q-version effect.

The game would not be interrupted or exited when hanging in the background, and the desktop pet would quietly do its own thing until the player interacted and communicated with it.

Without a doubt, this was one of the most beloved Otome games of the year. The massive storyline almost bombarded the eyes of all players, and the characters could even change their “XP” (sexual preferences/tastes).

Not long after the game went online, related merchandise sold like crazy, and the merchandise for this particular game was the easiest to sell.

Now they also understood that the other party was not just making an ordinary Otome game; they were creating a small world, a world where many people were still willing to live. Even after the game’s preview, players could create their own original characters (OCs) to enter the Idol Academy to compete for top idol status, and there was even a group debut gameplay. In short, it was dazzling.

The degree of freedom this game gave them was simply too high. It was fine that clothes could be made by oneself, but houses, songs, and dances could also be choreographed by oneself.

Those unwilling to choreograph could also directly use the official sets provided. It completely looked after almost all players, unless they simply did not like this type of gameplay at all.

“Now it seems we still have to let parents report it. This method never fails. Just get a few more victims who were scammed of their money, and the trading system of this game will have to be scrapped,” said a high-level executive at Zero Hour.

They were now completely at loggerheads. It wasn’t a matter of whether they were willing or not; they had already done it, the loss was already this great, and they had a grudge from before, so they could only bite the bullet and keep going.

But how could Ji Qiuchi, who was constantly monitoring their situation, give them this opportunity? He had been paying attention to them all along.

After all, they were a game company with unclear minds that supported Zhao Chengyu.

Upon discovering what they planned to do, Ji Qiuchi directly assisted the company in adding a minor-prohibited transaction button within the game and also appealed to minors not to rashly engage in offline trading.

Of course, offline trading could not be stopped. To be safe, an internal game trading platform was also built—a middleman transaction system.

Both the money and the goods were stored by the system, and only after the transaction was confirmed would they reach their respective accounts.

Naturally, there were also various password locks, face locks, voice locks, and SMS locks everything needed to ensure that accounts would not be stolen. Players could choose not to use them, but the features had to be there.

Once this update was released, players naturally gave a burst of heavy praise. To be honest, few companies were willing to pay such a high price to implement this.

Because this essentially held no profit for them. The people at Zero Hour Company were also dumbfounded. They hadn’t even done anything yet, so why had Shiji started updating this program?

Of course, the policy from a few years ago that minors could only play games on weekends had already blocked a portion of those inexplicable reports.

Furthermore, their company was seriously paying its taxes. Wanting to catch their loopholes? Sorry, there were simply no loopholes.

“It won’t work; their movements are too fast.”

The people at Zero Hour fell into silence. They certainly had some other methods.

These were all based on the assumption that this game was very easy to breach. As long as blueprints were copied, the entire game could collapse, but it was useless because their system firewall was too powerful.

After the previous Dark Web incident, many people even if they didn’t actively spend money to have them attack Shiji’s system later found that it was impossible to take it down and became obsessed with the system. From time to time, they would go to challenge it. Although so far, no one had succeeded.

Everyone enjoyed it tirelessly, even taking pride in being able to breach their system.

Zero Hour was soon unable to pay attention to Shiji anymore, because regarding Zhao Chengyu leaking Shiji’s game data and information, Qi Ye made a move.

They had originally waited until after Idol Academy was widely known to act, intending to thoroughly finish him and the Zero Hour game company.

The internet was abuzz with discussion. Various games under Zero Hour began to experience a wave of mass server exits.

“So disappointing. They even copied it to this extent. Now that the original is out, it’s a direct beatdown.”

“So, can even a company like Shiji not avoid having traitors among its internal staff? Didn’t they say their benefits are very good?”

“It’s probably all for profit, after all.”

“This time, who knows exactly how much money will have to be paid in compensation.”

Idol Academy was not a project Ji Qiuchi had followed from start to finish; he had only provided a bit of help. By now, there was no longer any need to do anything to prove its value.

The people in the company recognized him and admired him, and they were very much looking forward to working on the next project with him.

As for Ji Qiuchi, one day he opened the door and saw Zhao Chengyu’s haggard face. His eyes were full of bloodshot streaks. Having not seen the other man for a long time, he had completely lost the arrogance he had the first time they met.

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