Chapter 16

Li Mu slept until a little past noon, but he had only slept for less than six hours. His mind was preoccupied with the thoughts of Stone Age Overlord, so the quality of his sleep was poor.

When he woke up, his parents had already gone to work. Li Mu decided to call Zhao Kang to go to the internet cafe together to check the current spread of Stone Age Overlord.

Before the release of Stone Age Overlord, he had specifically registered a new QQ number, left the number on the cheat, and noted that business cooperation should contact him. He was eager to know if anyone would contact him.

Just as he walked into the living room, the phone rang.

It was Zhao Kang.

He, like Li Mu, hadn't slept well.

Although he didn't understand the technology or the cheats very well, he had spent the whole night in front of the computer, experiencing what Li Mu had described about the water army. He felt the design of the self-ask-and-answer trap and the magical, subtle power it had.

Tasting the sweetness, he also wanted to go to the internet cafe quickly to see how their labor would be received by netizens.

The two agreed to meet at the entrance of the neighborhood and then head straight to the internet cafe.

The first post had already reached 80,000 clicks, with 54,301 downloads and 9,791 replies.

Not just Zhao Kang, even Li Mu was stunned.

Zhao Kang excitedly tallied the download numbers from several forums. In just twelve hours, the downloads had already reached around 120,000.

Free good things, in this era of scarcity, could indeed unleash an incredibly powerful cohesive force, gathering these netizens together. They downloaded the free cheat, used it eagerly, and didn't forget to post thanks and recommend it to their friends and fellow gamers.

Li Mu thought carefully. Back in the day, the free candle cheat for Legend, with its single weak function, had spread to almost all Legend players in a short time. This era was truly the golden age of the internet. Planting a seed online could grow into a towering tree!

...

In a residential house in Zhongguancun, Beijing, about seven or eight young people were already sweating profusely.

These people were the entire team behind Abe Cheat.

They were formed by the merger of Abe and Qianyu, two cheat teams. Initially, the two teams had fought fiercely. Qianyu had released a paid version of the cheat first, and Abe, seeing Qianyu's profits, quickly developed a similar cheat and released it for free, severely impacting Qianyu. Eventually, the two teams merged to make more money together.

In the months since the merger, they had basically monopolized the cheat market for "Stone Age" and made substantial profits, with the income in June exceeding 200,000 yuan.

They had planned to capitalize on the summer vacation in July, aiming for 300,000 yuan in revenue. They had already started rebuilding their sales team, preparing to bypass provincial agents and directly root themselves in the retail market. However, just as they were feeling confident, one of their developers saw Zhao Kang's post last night.

At first, the developer had dismissed it, but after downloading and trying the trial version of Stone Age Overlord, he was immediately chilled to the bone.

Subsequently, the entire team was stunned by this sudden appearance of the cheat.

Back when Abe had disrupted the market with a free trial version, they had caught Qianyu off guard, like a ruffian giving Qianyu two choices: either no one makes money, or everyone makes money together.

Qianyu had eventually compromised. The appearance of such a disruptor was like a reckless outlaw who had nothing to lose. They hadn't made money before, so they had nothing to lose. But Qianyu was different; they had tasted the sweetness and couldn't afford to give it up.

Now, someone was using a similar method to disrupt the market again.

Worse still, the functions of Stone Age Overlord were far superior to Abe Cheat, and it was much more convenient and smooth to use.

It was like "Xuriyanggang" preparing a ticketed concert in a city with "Spring" as the gimmick, only to have Wang Feng himself come to the same city and do it for free.

This was bullying! It was impossible to compete!

The leader of the merged team was Sun Peng, the founder of Qianyu. After Abe disrupted the market, he had absorbed Abe's team, essentially sharing the profits. However, because Abe Cheat had gathered a large following during its free period, they decided to continue with Abe Cheat.

Sun Peng had thought that with the two teams merged, there would be no real competition in the market. But what was this sudden appearance of Stone Age Overlord?

From the morning, Sun Peng's phone hadn't stopped ringing.

In an era where both making and receiving calls cost money, Sun Peng's heart was bleeding.

Every call was from his agents.

Agents were typically divided by province, with Abe Cheat finding one agent per province to handle the expansion in cities and counties. The sales terminals were the numerous internet cafes.

Now, many people who had bought Abe Cheat from internet cafes were demanding refunds. The reason was simple: it was too much of a rip-off. They had just bought it a few days ago, and now a much better, free version was available online. Who could stand it?

Though some of the customers demanding refunds were being unreasonable, the situation was indeed infuriating. The users who had paid had no place to vent their anger and couldn't find Sun Peng, so they went to the internet cafes that sold them the cheat.

For the internet cafe owners, selling cheats was a side business. Their main business was the daily influx of netizens. Offending these people would hurt their business.

So, the internet cafe owners immediately protested to the agents, and the agents, unable to withstand the pressure from the internet cafes, all had the same demand: refund the users who hadn't reached the end of their subscription period.

Some agents even proposed a seemingly fair refund plan: 15 yuan per month, 0.5 yuan per day. The remaining days in the user's account would be refunded at 0.5 yuan per day.

Sun Peng wanted to refuse, but he couldn't. His marketing model was unhealthy, and he had no say in the matter.

He was responsible for the cheat's development and the distribution of monthly activation codes. The codes were distributed to provincial agents, who then distributed them to the internet cafes.

Since the sales terminals were the internet cafes, and selling cheats was just a side business for them, they were unwilling to pay in advance to the higher-level agents. Therefore, the flow of funds and the distribution of activation codes were in reverse order.

The funds were collected by the internet cafes and settled monthly with the agents. The agents, after receiving the payments from the internet cafes, would then settle monthly with Sun Peng. Each activation code sold had to ensure a 4 yuan profit for the internet cafe owner; otherwise, a cafe might sell only a few dozen or a hundred codes a month, and the profit would be too small to bother with. The sales, record-keeping, and payments to the higher-level agents would only earn a few hundred yuan a month, just enough for a network administrator's salary.

After all, a typical internet cafe had only a few dozen machines. How many customers could it attract in a month? And among these customers, some came to chat, some to play single-player games, and only a small portion played "Stone Age." Among these, even fewer would spend money on cheats.

After the layers of deductions, each activation code left only 8 yuan for Sun Peng. This 8 yuan had to cover significant costs, including rent, equipment, servers, and the salaries of several technical personnel, which were several thousand yuan each. The total cost for this alone was tens of thousands of yuan, plus the living expenses of the team members.

In the team, two people and Sun Peng himself held shares. After dividing the profits, he was left with very little each month.

Even if he refused the dealers' refund requests, it wouldn't help. The money from this month's sales was in the hands of the internet cafes, which directly refused to hand over the money. Even the provincial agents couldn't do anything about it.

Sun Peng, clenching his teeth in anger, said, "Fine, refunds can be given, but the accounts of the refunded users must be reported to us, and we will block them all!"

The distributors ignored him. They were also shrewd enough to realize that the popularity of Stone Age Overlord could quickly overshadow Abe Cheat, and there would be no future cooperation.

After taking calls for over an hour, Sun Peng's face turned green, and the seven or eight people in the studio looked dejected. They were all technical personnel with some programming skills, but their skills were average. They knew the gap between themselves and the creators of Stone Age Overlord was significant, like the special effects team of the web series "The Lost Tomb" seeing the special effects of a Hollywood blockbuster.

"Boss, what should we do?"

In this guerrilla-like team, Sun Peng played the role of the boss. The distributors were in his hands, and everyone depended on him to make money.

Sun Peng's face was grim. "The distributors are being very stubborn, insisting on refunds. It looks like we won't be able to settle the July payments."

"That's over 100,000 yuan!" They had calculated the sales, and after deducting the distributors' and sales teams' profits, their studio had already made over 100,000 yuan, which they would now lose.

At this moment, a technical person blurted out, "Their total downloads have exceeded 200,000!"