"It's inconvenient for me to disclose more information here, so I'll only say that the production aspects of these two games are far better than 'Magic World Mastery', please look forward to them. In my opinion, 'Magic World' is only a defective product. There are so many flaws in that game, it would simply fail to meet the listing standard. The shortsighted, profit mongering ways of some people really make my teeth itch."
The reporters surround him to pitch questions, but Yi Zheng's bodyguards separated them. Yi Zheng pushed his lover's face into his bosom, comfortingly patting his shoulder as he led him out of the tight encirclement. Worried that the flashes would be too irritating, he also rested the palm of his hand over his lover's eyes.
Without any need for words, the two men's close friendship could be seen just from their body language.
The news of Yi Group's investment in ZHOU quickly appeared on the official websites of the major financial magazines, it's expected that as soon as the stock market opened tomorrow, ZHOU's stock prices would rise rapidly. Yi Group had received an AAA rating from the U.S's three major credit rating agencies, the investors usually placed extreme trust in Yi Group's investment directions. With Yi's significant equity stake in ZHOU, ZHOU's precarious state was instantly stabilized.
Fang Zhifei immediately smashed the coffee cup in his hand when he saw this announcement. It took him more than half an hour to calm down, then he connected to Tengda's servers, saw 'Magic World Mastery's' growing number of players, and felt much better. Defective product? Zhou Yun Sheng that moron actually had the gall to say this! After his perfect modifications, 'Magic World' would become a classic that no one would be able to surpass for the next 50 years, time would prove everything eventually.
The next day, ZHOU's stock prices really rose sharply, after three days, if the new games' conference was successful, it would presumably continue to climb. The investors who had wildly sold off ZHOU's shares before now regretted until their intestines turned green, and of course, the bargain-hunter investors were overjoyed, they jumped and danced about in the trading room.
The shareholders and employees who had left ZHOU suffered internal injuries from their dark hate, they waited to see exactly what kind of game could go beyond 'Magic World Mastery'.
"They couldn't have developed a new game in such a short time, even if they did, it's delusional to think it could go beyond 'Magic World'. Our production team is currently the best in the country, he can't have found a group more talented than us." Fang Zhifei resolutely said.
Tengda's CEO gave him a distrustful look and asked in a heavy voice, "Be honest with me, does 'Magic World' really have no technical problems?"
"Don't you know what I can do? That Zhou Yun Sheng is deliberately trying to discredit our company, ignore him."
As the two started discussing response strategies, the tech department's head hurriedly knocked open the door and hectically said, "Boss this is bad, large scale connection drops are appearing in Magic World, more than 50,000 players have already posted complaints. Chief Fang, you need to look at this now ."
Fang Zhifei immediately put down his folder and rushed to the tech department, Tengda's CEO fished out a heart-rate stabilizing pill and dry swallowed it, his heart suddenly filling with a very ominous premonition.
In fact, 'Magic World' didn't only have a dropped connection problem, more and more serious problems kept emerging. Some players had their equipment disabled, and some players had skill failure. Even with a 4M connection speed, the game's lagging made them go crazy, and as soon as the lag stopped, the player's character dropped dead and all their equipment inexplicably disappeared, like they'd encountered a ghost.
The complaints flooded Tengda's official website, and the angry players directly posted their various grievances on the game's forum, denouncing 'Magic World' as a beautifully packaged piece of shit.
Garbage! Don't play this game anymore!
They're lucky this is still a free trial, or I'd rush over to Tengda's headquarters to break some fucking heads!
A small company is still a small company after all, quality control is not guaranteed.
Didn't Chief Zhou call 'Magic World' a defective product? I thought he was just being shameless, deliberately smearing Tengda, now it seems to be the truth.
Shit, of course it's true. Tengda bought 'Magic World's copyright from ZHOU, so it makes sense that ZHOU knows exactly what this game is made out off.
Oh man, you guys are so right. ZHOU's a big company, if the game doesn't meet production standards, it can always delay it. But Tengda's different, it spent all that money on this cash cow, it'd be nuts if it didn't start desperately milking it. And as usual, us players get the short end of the stick! It's great that the problems broke out in the trial period, if this happened after my subscription, I'd sue Tengda for fraud.
Such remarks flooded the Internet. The amount of praise 'Magic World' enjoyed in the past was the amount of insults it had to bear now. The number of players began to drastically decrease.
Tengda's CEO almost died on the spot after learning about the situation, he mercilessly gripped Fang Zhifei's arm, and bit out, "You and Meng Wan were responsible for leading 'Magic World's post-production team, it's your responsibility to fix this problem. You better think of a way out now, or we're all finished!"
In order to found Tengda, the two had put all their net worth into it, and also took on a large sum of outside debt. The company could only stand up by looking forward to 'Magic World's release, if 'Magic World' had a bad reputation, they certainly wouldn't make any money after the trial period, and the two would lose all their investments.
Fang Zhifei revealed a tensed expression for the first time, he opened up the server's terminal and began trying to debug the problem.
He examined it over and over, then twisted his eyebrow, "Looks like the game's code was maliciously tampered with, and the server has been attacked by a hacker. All right, this is nothing, just a few small problems. I'll restore the code, then set up a few defense systems right away."
"Then fix it quickly. Announce that the server has been hacked and changed, let the players know that it's not a problem of our game's quality." The CEO was relieved.
Fang Zhifei nodded and led the team to modify the code overnight. But he'd apparently underestimated the seriousness of the problem, no matter how much he modified it, just like loading a backup, the code would be instantly restored to its previous state.
Fang Zhifei exhausted all his effort, but he couldn't even modify one character, which made him realize that the person who'd tampered with the code was far more skilled than him.
The next afternoon, he finally gave in and contacted a friend from the U.S, paying him a large sum to correct the code. This was someone Fang Zhifei had gotten to know over the internet while he was studying abroad in the U.S, he'd learnt all his hacking skills from this person. This person was the founder of the top-tier hacker organization based in the U.S, in this world, there was no system he couldn't hack into, including every country's national defense systems.
If he wasn't good friends with Fang Zhifei, he wouldn't even get out of bed to modify such an insignificant code.
"Don't worry, my friend is one of the world's most skilled hackers, this kind of task is absolutely no problem for him." Fang Zhifei appeased the anxiously pacing CEO.
His voice had just faded when someone connected to his computer and played an audio.
"John, I can't help you this time. The person who attacked you, I'm afraid their skill is already supernatural, I'm also helpless. Just look at this, they're mocking me. John, I hope you start seriously thinking about who you've offended….and then give me their name and digits. Seriously, this hacker's too savage, I need to be their best friend, like, yesterday!" The other end used a voice changer, apparently not wanting to expose their identity.
After the audio cut off, a video jumped out.
It was a computer screen, rows of modified game code suddenly swirled into a whirlpool, continuously spinning, a few seconds later, a diaper wearing toddler climbed out from the center of the whirlpool, holding a water gun, it aimed it at the screen and said in a childish voice, "Freeze! I'm the Messenger of Justice, and you're under arrest!"
The chubby toddler was pink and innocent looking, very cute. At near the end of the video, Fang Zhifei heard his friend break out in laughter.
But Fang Zhifei couldn't laugh with him. If he couldn't modify the code, that meant they had to re-code the game, and they'd also have to push the game through all sorts of debugging. Because of that, forget about a month, it'd take more than half a year to solve this problem. If they really waited until that time, 'Magic World's reputation would've already fallen to the bottom, with no chance of recovery.
75 million to buy a piece of garbage, Fang Zhifei clearly didn't have heart disease, but he still felt a sharp ache in his chest. Tengda CEO's eyes had long rolled to the back of his head, out cold.
Thinking of Zhou Yun Sheng pre-emptively denouncing 'Magic World' as a defective product, Fang Zhifei had no reason to doubt who'd hired this hacker. He couldn't take this lying down, he turned on the computer, trying to hack into ZHOU's office system.
Just as he touched the first firewall, he was kicked out, the diaper wearing toddler appeared on the screen, firing the water gun in his hands, shouting pew pew pew. [Shooting noises]
Fang Zhifei was a stubborn daredevil, he once again attacked the firewall, and the toddler replaced the water gun, taking out a rocket launcher twice its size, then pulled the trigger.
Boom! The loud noise made Fang Zhifei jump in fright, the other side's 3D effects were too realistic, making the screen fragment like it was truly hit by a rocket, then it flashed blue twice and went completely dark.
Motherfucker! Fang Zhifei ferociously smashed the mouse. He had no choice but to concede to the other side's hacking skills, he wasn't even 1/10,000th as skilled as them.
His threaded his fingers through his hair, constantly pulling, his expression fierce and agonizing. Troubled, he didn't notice that his computer's webcam was still intact and was silently shooting his desperate expression.
Zhou Yun Sheng was lying on his bed, laughing like a ninny as he leaned over his laptop's screen.
Yi Zheng walked up to the bedside, with only a towel tied around his waist, and lightly slapped his lover's firm butt, scolding 'too naughty'. He was now firmly rooted in Zhou family, occupying half of his lover's bed every night on the basis of business talk. Zhou mother unexpectedly didn't find it strange.
"Tomorrow is the company's game conference, I can't wait to see Fang Zhifei's expression. He dared try to sell that inferior product, 'Magic World', I'll choke to death before I can finish laughing about it."
When the two games came out, they'll inevitably be compared with 'Magic World', the superior one would be obvious at a glance.