Li Mu slept until noon, but he only slept for less than six hours. His mind was filled with thoughts about the Stoneware Overlord, so his sleep quality was not good.
When he woke up, his parents had already left for work. Li Mu prepared to give Zhao Kang a call and go to the internet cafe to see how the Stoneware Overlord was doing.
Before the release of the Stoneware Overlord, he registered a new QQ ID and left his number in the cheat. He also couldn't wait to know if anyone would contact him.
When he reached the living room, his phone rang.
It was Zhao Kang.
Like Li Mu, he did not sleep well.
Although he did not know much about technology or plug-ins, he had worked hard in front of the computer last night and felt what Li Mu meant by the Internet Water Army. He felt the trap design and the mysterious and subtle influence.
He wanted to go to the internet cafe to see what kind of feedback they would receive from the netizens.
The two agreed to meet at the entrance of the district and went straight to the Spider.
The first post had reached 80,000 views. The attachment had been downloaded 54301 times, and there were 9791 replies.
Not to mention Zhao Kang, even Li Mu was dumbfounded.
Zhao Kang excitedly counted the number of downloads on the forums. In just twelve hours, the number of downloads had reached 120,000.
In this era of scarcity, free good stuff could really create a strong cohesiveness. It brought these netizens together. After downloading the free plug-in, they couldn't wait to use it. They didn't forget to come back and post their thanks. They also didn't forget to recommend the good stuff to their friends and netizens in the game.
Li Mu thought about it carefully. Back then, the Legend of Mir 2's candle-free plug-in only had a single, weak function. Yet, in a short period of time, it had spread to almost all Legend of Mir 2 players. This was the Diamond Age of the Internet. Any seed planted on the Internet had the chance to grow into a towering tree!
…
Far away in a residential house in Yanjing's Zhongguancun, seven or eight young people were anxious and sweating.
These people were the entire team of Abbe's plug-in.
They were formed by the merger of Abbe and Qian Yu's two plug-in teams. In the beginning, the two teams were at loggerheads. It was Qian Yu who first released a paid plug-in. Seeing that Qian Yu was making money, Abbe's plug-in team developed a similar plug-in and attacked the market by using it for free. Qian Yu's group suffered greatly. In the end, the two teams decided to merge in order to make money together.
In the past few months after the merger, they had basically monopolized the 'Stone Age' plug-in market and had indeed made quite a bit of profit. The revenue they received in June was more than $200,000.
Originally, they had decided to take advantage of the summer vacation in July to reach 300,000 yuan. They had also begun to rebuild their sales team, preparing to bypass the provincial agents and directly take root in the retail terminal. However, just as they were in high spirits, one of the developers of the plug-in team happened to see Zhao Kang's post last night.
At first, the developer scoffed and downloaded the trial version of the Stoneware Overlord. After using it, he felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave. His scalp was cold, and he felt a chill down his spine.
After that, the entire team was stunned by the sudden appearance of this plug-in.
Back then, Abbe's cheat had also been a troublemaker. He had used the free trial version to catch Qian Yu's people off guard. Just like a ruffian, he had given Qian Yu two choices: Either they don't earn money, or they earn money together.
In the end, Qian Yu compromised. The appearance of this kind of spoiler was like a desperado. They didn't make money, so they had nothing to lose. But Qian Yu was different. They had tasted the sweetness and couldn't give it up.
They didn't expect that someone would use a similar method to spoil the game again.
The most terrible thing was that this Stone age Overlord was too powerful. It was far more powerful than Abbe's plug-in. Moreover, it was much more convenient and smooth to use than Abbe's plug-in.
This feeling is like "Rising Sun Masculine" is preparing to hold a ticketed concert with "In Spring" as a gimmick, and Wang Feng himself came to this city to hold a concert at the same time, but in the end, Wang Feng is still f * cking free.
This is bullying. I can't f * cking play anymore!
After the merger of the two teams, the person in charge was called Sun Peng. He was the founder of Qian Yu. After Abbe came out to spoil the game, he incorporated Abbe's people. It was equivalent to sharing the food in the pot with Abbe's people. However, because Abbe's plug-in gathered a lot of popularity when it was free, everyone decided to use Abbe's plug-in.
Sun Peng thought that with the merger of the two teams, there should be no real competitors in the market. But what the hell was this Stone age Overlord that suddenly appeared?
Since the morning, Sun Peng's mobile phone had not stopped ringing.
In this era where mobile phones were charged for both directions and answering calls cost a few cents per minute, Sun Peng's heart was bleeding.
Moreover, every call was from the agents under him.
Agents were generally divided into provinces. Abbe's plug-in found an agent in each province. He was responsible for the expansion of the city and county Internet cafes in the province. The sales terminal of Abbe's plug-in was the countless Internet cafes below.
Now, many people who bought Abbe's plug-in from the Internet cafes asked for a refund. The reason was very simple. It was a scam! They had just bought it a few days ago, and there was a much better plug-in on the Internet. It was even free. Who could stand it?
Although the customers who asked for a refund were somewhat unreasonable, this kind of thing could easily make people feel indignant. The users who spent the money had no place to vent their anger. They could not find Sun Peng and the others, so they could only find the Internet cafes that sold them the plug-in.
The Internet cafes' owners selling plug-ins was only a sideline. Their real main business was the netizen players who came every day. If they offended this group of people, what would happen to their business?
Therefore, the Internet cafes' owners immediately protested to the agents. The agents could not bear the pressure of so many Internet cafes. They all asked Sun Peng for a refund for the users who had not yet expired.
There was even an agent who gave Sun Peng a seemingly very fair refund plan. 15 yuan a month, 50 cents a day. However many days were left in the customer's account, 50 cents a day would be refunded to the user.
Sun Peng wanted to refuse, but he could not. His current marketing model was very unhealthy. What he said did not count.
He was in charge of the development of plug-ins and the distribution of the monthly activation codes. The activation codes were distributed to the provincial agents, who then distributed them to the major Internet cafes.
Because the sales terminal had sunk all the way to the Internet cafes, and the Internet cafes selling plug-ins was only a sideline, they were not willing to pay the superior agents in advance. Therefore, the flow of funds for the plug-ins and the distribution of the activation codes were exactly the opposite.
The Internet cafes began to collect the funds and settle the accounts with the agents every month. After the agents received the money from the Internet cafes, they would settle the accounts with Sun Peng. For every activation code sold, the Internet cafes' owners had to ensure a profit of 4 yuan. Otherwise, the Internet cafes could only sell a few dozen or even a hundred a month. The money was too little, and they could not be bothered. They had to sell, record, and remit money to the superior agents. They could only earn 300 to 400 yuan a month, which was barely enough for an Internet cafes manager's salary.
After all, an Internet cafes only had a few dozen machines. How much traffic could they have in a month? Moreover, among the traffic, some came to chat, some came to play single-player games, and a small number of people played Stone Age. Among this small number of people, only an even smaller number of people would spend money to buy plug-ins.
As a result, for every activation code sold to the provincial agents, they would deduct 3 yuan. The reason was that the provincial agents were not easy to deal with. They sent their own people to the Internet cafes one by one. The cost was not low, and it took a lot of effort.
After the layers of exploitation, Sun Peng was only left with 8 yuan per activation code. This 8 yuan also included the cost of rent, equipment, servers, and other expenses. A few technical staff had a monthly salary of a few thousand yuan. Just this alone cost 20 to 30 thousand yuan. There was also the cost of these people's daily necessities.
In the team, there were two people and Sun Peng's core shares. If they were distributed proportionally, Sun Peng would not be left with much after a month.
Looking back at the agent's request for a refund, it was useless even if Sun Peng did not agree. The money from this month's sales was in the Internet cafes' hands. If the Internet cafes refused to hand over this month's money, even the provincial agents could not do anything.
Sun Peng gritted his teeth angrily. "Fine, we can refund, but after the refund, you have to give us a summary of all the accounts. We will block them all!"
The agent did not care. They were smart enough to realize that the popularity of this Stone Age Overlord might destroy Ah Bei's plug-ins. It seemed like there would not be any more opportunities to work with them in the future.
After receiving calls for more than an hour, Sun Peng's face turned green. The seven or eight people in the studio were also dispirited. They were technical staff who had learned programming, but their skills were very average. They knew the difference between them and the other party with one look at the Stone Age Overlord plug-in. It was like the special effects team of the web series Grave Robber's Chronicles. They knew their limits when they saw the special effects of a Hollywood blockbuster.
"Boss, what should we do?"
Sun Peng's role in this guerrilla-like team was the boss. The agent was in his hands, and everyone had to rely on him to earn money.
Sun Peng's face was very ugly. "The agent's attitude is very stubborn. He insists on refunding the users. It seems like we will not be able to pay back the money in July."
"That's more than 100,000 yuan!" They had calculated the sales. After deducting the profits from the agent and the layers of profits from the sales, their studio had already earned more than 100,000 yuan. It seemed like they would not be able to get it back …
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