Chapter 165: The Race Begins

During the time Yin Jian was wholeheartedly focused on modifying the copy, although the ban had exerted some influence, Qiyou's latest game development competition was still backed by a massive influx of capital.

It successfully made roughly ten percent of the residents in the Xiaohua Starfield aware that Qiyou was preparing for a live-action game adaptation.

This instantly propelled Qiyou's daily internet search volume to an unprecedented and unmatched level, temporarily soaring into the top ten of the internet-wide trending search lists.

Leveraging this promotional wave, Qiyou's registered user base grew at a terrifying speed.

With the surge of massive user traffic, the platform's designers also ushered in a grand feast.

Driven by the colossal influx of people, the daily sales of games increased by at least double.

That was not even mentioning the games participating in the competition whose recommendations were currently displayed right on the platform's homepage.

The competition had grown increasingly fierce,

reaching a point where rankings would undergo drastic changes almost every single minute.

Games that had previously held high rankings but failed the review process

were plummeting in the ranks almost every second due to the lack of recommendations.

Among the top twenty, apart from the first-place game *Customs Guide*, every other position had shifted.

Several games that were originally ranked around the fortieth or fiftieth place surged forward as if aided by cheats, leaving everyone else in the dust and directly breaking into the top twenty.

Among them, the dark horse *Infinity* climbed the most aggressively,

shooting straight to 13th place,

just a single step away from the 12th spot.

However, although Yin Jian had hired a large number of streamers to promote *Infinity*, and achieved exceptional results in doing so,

the fact that numerous streamers specifically searched for and live-streamed *Infinity* inevitably caught the attention of observant individuals.

Quite a few busybodies began to voice their doubts across major forums.

[Asking how much traffic *Infinity* actually bought?]

A few days after the live streams began, I noticed that many media streamers were specifically searching for *Infinity* to broadcast.

I simply refuse to believe there is no shady business behind this.

After all, even for games in the top ten or so, those streamers simply found them directly via the homepage recommendations without relying on search engines.

Therefore, I am ninety percent sure that the designer of *Infinity* bought traffic for their own game.

Regarding this unfair behavior toward other games, I feel it is quite necessary to criticize it.

Moreover, the official Qiyou management should take some action against this, otherwise, it will be hard to convince the public.

------

Cat Book Fan: Who the hell are you? Other people paying for their own promotion is none of your damn business. If you're this free, why don't you go do something to benefit society instead of barking on the forums? Truly, lazy people have too much nonsense to say.

Blazing Red Snow: I'm the one who organized people to do it, so what? As a fan, helping promote a work I love is completely reasonable. As for your so-called unfairness, why don't you make the fans of other games voluntarily find promotion for the games they love, and let those designers properly learn from Master Force Me instead of thinking every day about just taking money from us players?

Heroic Mouse: Awesome, senior! Do you need a sidekick?

------

Aside from these skeptical voices, fans of various games were also starting threads and bickering with one another.

Everyone firmly believed that the game they liked was the absolute best, to the extent that some fanatical players would immediately reply that a game was inferior to Game XX the moment they saw someone praising another game's fun factor.

It was starting to take on a distinct fandom-like flavor.

Of course, many of these individuals were hired internet commentators,

specifically deployed by certain designers to build momentum for their own games.

Among these paid posters, there was one faction with combat power so formidable

that they were known as the "Force Me Haters."

Their threads uniformly used titles like "The Worst Game on Qiyou Turns Out to Be..." to draw interest,

successfully capturing the attention of the majority of people.

After all, the words "the worst" firmly hooked the curiosity of netizens,

which showed just how professional these Force Me Haters truly were.

Yet, once you clicked into these threads, you would find a massive amount of content criticizing the game *Infinity*.

In short, everything about it was supposedly terrible.

However, just when you thought *Infinity* really must be a terrible game,

the second half of these Haters' threads would take a miraculous turn.

First, they would describe a thoroughly miserable personal experience of their own, and then follow up by stating that after playing *Infinity*, they had attained salvation, feeling as though their entire being had been sublimated.

This left unsuspecting readers completely off guard, sparking an unimaginable curiosity about *Infinity*

and driving them to go play it for themselves.

"I couldn't hold back my sword, may the fallen comrade rest in peace."

After quickly typing out this line of text on his screen, Li Shang clicked send directly,

then nodded with satisfaction as he looked at the replies beneath the thread.

Although Master Force Me had not created a fan club,

under his own leadership, the Master's fans were truly invincible.

Not a single person could gain any upper hand against them in verbal debates.

"Master Force Me, did you see this?"

Li Shang gazed up at the sky, believing that Master Force Me would surely be deeply moved upon witnessing all of this.

"You might even shed tears because of it."

"But I just want to say, this is only what we fans ought to do."

Thinking of this, Li Shang prepared to continue brainstorming other ways to help promote *Infinity*.

After all, he was determined to be the cool man standing behind Master Force Me.

However, before he could even begin thinking, he saw that someone had replied to his previous post.

When he clicked open to check, he discovered that the other party was actually cursing *Infinity*.

He simply could not tolerate this at the moment, so he immediately opened his optical brain and roared in a private chat group.

Instantly, over a dozen group members responded.

Within mere moments, more than a dozen "rationally" analytical posts appeared beneath the comment that had called *Infinity* a trash game.

...

Time flew rapidly.

In the blink of an eye, it was approaching the end of July.

The rankings for the game competition were now basically stable.

The top few positions rarely changed anymore.

Meanwhile, the rankings of games past the top one hundred only shifted occasionally.

It could be said that the promotion slots for the Twelve Heavenly Kings were now basically locked in.

Inside the apartment,

Yin Jian looked at the leaderboard and finally let out a sigh of relief upon seeing *Infinity* ranked at the twelfth spot.

Crossing that final threshold had been truly difficult.

He had originally thought it would be simple, but as it turned out, the original occupant of the twelfth place sensed the crisis and began employing the exact same tactics as him,

surging all the way back into the top ten in a flash.

The designer who got squeezed out, feeling both unwillingly resentful and terrified of losing their promotion slot,

also began pulling out all the stops.

Thus, the frontrunners began to intensely卷 (involutionize/compete fiercely).

This left Yin Jian in utter agony.

In the end, he had to pay a tremendous price just to barely stabilize his twelfth-place position.

"I cannot afford the slightest slackness, not even on the final day."

Yin Jian looked at the game ranked thirteenth, whose follower count was currently around six hundred billion, neck-and-neck with his own.

Putting himself in their shoes, if he were in the opponent's position, he would fight with everything he had no matter what at the very end.

After all, there were only twelve spots for the Twelve Heavenly Kings; setting everything else aside, this achievement alone was enough to drive many veteran platinum designers half-mad.

For designers like them who had no other distracting desires, money at this point had merely become a string of numbers.

Therefore, higher achievements were undoubtedly their sole pursuit in game development.