Chapter 709 - 298: Did You Photoshop That?
Li Yang relaxed at home for a few days before starting work.
In the middle of July, he officially began the last season of his professional career.
He participated fully from the first match of the summer tournament.
This was his third year; the first year was to boost the overall popularity of the tournament, successfully elevating it to a phenomenal level.
The second year was to stabilize the tournament, achieving the same goal. Currently, the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds tournament brand generates over 20 billion in revenue annually, and Aurora Studio makes over 30 billion a year.
This is a relatively restrained result. Bai Qing has never fully opened the in-game purchase projects, focusing instead on grinding and luck.
Some people get lucky and draw a rare skin with Game Coins, immediately purchased by countless wealthy players for tens of thousands.
Such news is very common in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
With more regular players, wealthy players have a sense of superiority, balancing the entire ecosystem.
There’s no fundamental difference between games and life; in life, a sense of superiority is built on regular players.
Without regular players, no matter how rich a wealthy player is, they wouldn’t know whom to show off to.
If all the regular players are driven away, the game isn’t far from shutting down.
Therefore, regular players must be given opportunities to make a fortune overnight or accumulate account wealth bit by bit through grinding. It must not be that there’s no luck, grinding is useless, and players are incapacitated by various cheats.
Over four years, the game has reached nearly 200 million users worldwide, and Li Yang feels as long as Bai Qing doesn’t mess up, maintaining this popularity for another four or five years won’t be a problem.
He actually knows that for the next seven or eight years, there won’t be another phenomenal game like this. The game being tested, Genshin Impact, counts as phenomenal, but in terms of the tournament aspect, there’s no competition, and its overall competitiveness isn’t strong.
So, this is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ best opportunity.
Before the next phenomenal game comes out, it can freely reap market benefits without rivals.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ success depends on the right time, place, and harmony among people.
Domestically, Wilderness Action and Penguin’s own Infinity Rules haven’t formed competitiveness.
Primarily, Penguin Game was dragged down by Blue Hole, continually hoping Blue Hole’s Battlegrounds could pass approval, but for years it hasn’t succeeded.
Even though they made a mobile version of Battlegrounds, it also couldn’t pass approval domestically, and the mobile game space was entirely occupied by PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Their two mobile games, Combat Grounds and Army Attack, both suffered losses due to lack of approval.
Aurora Studio’s mobile game hasn’t started monetizing yet.
Currently, it’s in the user acquisition stage; once monetization begins, it’ll be more formidable than the PC version.
The result regarding the vehicle self-combustion incident came only at the end of July.
It was a man-made event, and the investigation and evidence-gathering process were lengthy, with the car owner not cooperating much.
It wasn’t until the court’s decision at the end of August that Li Yang released the announcement.
"Don’t talk about big companies oppressing people. If everyone doesn’t believe that, then I have nothing else to say. This incident was a self-directed act, all evidence stands up to scrutiny, and a closed-loop of evidence is formed. The company’s legal department has sued the car owner, hoping everyone can be law-abiding citizens, and not go to extremes for minor benefits, jeopardizing their life for it."
It wasn’t found out which car company orchestrated it; major car companies generally don’t come out directly for such matters, usually hiring agents.
These things are hard to investigate with considerable resistance from various aspects, making it difficult to implicate other brands.
However, it’s solid evidence that the car owner accepted money, facing not only jail time but also Extreme Shadow Cars’ astronomical compensation claim.
This matter greatly damaged the company’s brand, with the interview videos where the car owner swore becoming evidence for the compensation claim.
"By the way, I will personally monitor the media that stirred the situation initially. If anyone doesn’t repost, I’ll note it down. As always, regarding product quality issues, we will refund three times the price at any time. We are responsible for our product, and we’ll be uncompromising against those who slander the company.
Aside from me personally, Extreme Shadow Cars has never bought ads from any media. We focus solely on our product, not intending to compete or compare with other brands in the media. If you don’t like our product, don’t buy it; the choice is yours. Also, please don’t view us as enemies because you’re not worthy!"
Li Yang could roughly guess which car companies were behind it.
Either it’s a few domestic new forces, where Extreme Shadow Cars placed them in hell mode at the start.
Or it’s the traditional BBA, where Extreme Shadow Cars captured their market.
Those veteran foreign car companies spend absurd amounts on marketing each year, and resorting to any means isn’t surprising.
Domestic veteran companies should not be involved; Extreme Shadow Cars doesn’t have any competitive relations with them for cars under 300,000.
Li Yang’s warning to those media wasn’t just talk.
Three days later, Li Yang glanced and found that basically, no media followed up on this matter, and the media that initially stirred the situation acted blind one by one.
So he sent a list to Xiangnu.
"Limit the flow of accounts from the media on this list on the Kuai Pai platform, use bot comments, especially on New Jingbao! Directly reduce the account traffic distribution to the lowest level, let them pay to increase the traffic points, and after running the volume for two days, find an excuse to deduct the traffic points!"