Channel Backstab

In Xu Meng's opinion, the task issued by the Game Life System should have been completed here.

But for some reason, the system with its very low presence didn't react.

By midnight that night, the first day of the Frost Snow Project Remastered's server launch ended, and its revenue across all channels soared to an exaggerated 38 million! Of this, more than two-thirds came from mobile devices—that is, players using phones and tablets to play the game.

This also led to Frost Snow Project climbing to the top of the mobile game daily sales charts on multiple platforms.

—It even broke into the top three on several platforms.

This was the mobile game chart, not the ACG Game chart!

Truly the dark horse! For the former Zhu Meng, this was an unattainable dream.

But for the current Frost Snow Project, it was just the beginning.

There was still a whole month of June, and Frost Snow Project still had its Ultimate Skill of new gameplay hidden. This battle to turn the tables was far from over.

By the end of the month, the total revenue of Frost Snow Project would definitely give the entire industry a huge shock.

Xu Meng was full of confidence in this!

Overnight, the heat that Xu Meng had painstakingly created for Frost Snow Project began to slowly cool down.

The Weiguang hot search had long disappeared, and even the most popular topic yesterday, "Zhu Meng Boss Burns Programmers," was gradually decreasing in discussion.

Everyone was now gossiping about a certain female celebrity's affair.

The trailer on P Station, which Xu Meng had used reverse promotion to hype up and had briefly risen for two days, was also running out of steam, with the number of views stopping at 4.6 million.

—More people had gone to Weiguang or Dream Ferry to watch the "uncensored" version.

But this decline in popularity was just an illusion—

In the ACG Game circle, the popularity of Frost Snow Project was still in a league of its own! Before the version updates of Abyss of Gods, Warring Kingdoms, and Divine Bird, there were no other opponents that could be considered a match.

The player online rate and activity were also far higher than the industry average.

The total number of players was still growing steadily.

From an ACG Game perspective, this growth rate was already quite considerable.

But compared to the explosive growth brought by the hot search, it was much slower.

—Yesterday, from the server launch to midnight, Frost Snow Project added a full 7 million registered users in 12 hours, averaging nearly 600,000 new users per hour! But today...

Although it was early in the morning on a weekday, there was still a user growth of tens to hundreds of thousands per hour, which in the ACG Game circle was already a result that countless companies envied and wished they could achieve themselves.

Even Song Zhicheng, the old veteran, was excited to see this growth, and reported the good news to the boss almost every hour.

Only Xu Meng looked at the slow growth curve, filled with the feeling that once you have seen the best, everything else seems mediocre.

He just felt it was too slow!

This led to him not being very interested in working the whole morning. He simply slacked off and didn't care about anything else, focusing on studying the Intelligent Collaboration Development Tool in his office.

Over the past month, all departments of Zhu Meng had become accustomed to this tool and were amazed by its iteration speed.

Especially the Programming Department, which understood the technology, was even more astonished.

Only Xu Meng knew—

He hadn't done any iteration for this tool.

The iteration that the employees felt was actually the Intelligent Core of this tool growing on its own.

Just like how an AI Large Model swallows massive amounts of training data and constantly iterates to become smarter, the Intelligent Core of this [Intelligent Collaboration Development Tool] was also gradually remembering everyone's operating habits in the high-intensity use by Zhu Meng employees, greedily absorbing knowledge in drawing, modeling, programming, and even communication and creation, like a sponge absorbing water, never satisfied.

And this continuous integration and evolution, reflected in its use, was that it became more and more handy and efficient.

Everyone was busy working and didn't have time to think too much.

—Normal people wouldn't think that the boss could develop an AI Large Model by himself, let alone that Zhu Meng, a financially strapped and near-bankrupt company, could afford the massive amount of training data required.

But Xu Meng was different. Having experienced sudden death, he paid close attention to his workload and made sure to leave time for leisure and relaxation.

So he quickly realized:

The potential of this Intelligent Core was far more than just that!

Its Speed of evolution proved that its learning ability far surpassed the AI Large Models on the market.

It might not even need such a terrifying amount of data training to achieve rapid evolution.

Which is to say—

Maybe Zhu Meng could afford to raise it on its own!

If it really grew up, that would be incredible! Developing games, testing bugs, fixing bugs, collecting information, online arguments, daily jokes...

How much help could that be?

Xu Meng became interested and began trying to copy the Intelligent Core separately, while thinking about which interfaces to add to this core and what "teaching materials" to feed it.

Once he fully immersed himself in research, time flew by quickly.

Xu Meng was only distracted for a moment, and it was already noon.

Little Assistant Chen Mengling gently knocked on the door, waking her working boss: "Boss, it's time, we should leave for the dinner."

"Oh, okay." Xu Meng woke up from the world of 0s and 1s, shaking his slightly itchy head, "I'll be right there."

He quickly saved the code and was about to get up and leave.

But just then, an anxious voice suddenly came from outside the door—

"Boss, something bad has happened!"

In the office, Xu Meng and Little Assistant exchanged glances, question marks appearing on their heads.

Chen Mengling: Why does this sound so familiar?

Xu Meng: Isn't this your line? The office door was wide open, and an anxious Song Zhicheng didn't bother with formalities, walking straight in:

"Boss, something bad has happened, something's wrong!"

"Don't worry, take your time, what's wrong?" Xu Meng reassured him.

But Song Zhicheng couldn't calm down at all: "The Frost Snow Project has been taken down by the channels!"

Now Xu Meng couldn't stay calm either: "Which ones?"

Like most ACG Game peers, in order to attract as many users as possible, the Frost Snow Project had several cooperative channel versions in addition to its own official Server.

Unlike those small game companies that packaged their games and handed them over to channels for operation, Xu Meng and Zhang Yang were very ambitious and aimed for a large company model from the start.

Although they didn't have enough say to achieve multi-platform interoperability from the beginning, they made real efforts to achieve this step when they had the strength in the future.

—The key rights to the game's long-term operation were held in their own hands, even at the cost of losing some promotional resources.

Among these channel versions, the most important was of course P Station, the old home of ACG.

The rest were game distribution channels built by mobile phone hardware manufacturers, and third-party app stores that were established by internet companies in the early days.

As for the more demanding console platforms and overseas Servers, Zhu Meng, as a novice company, didn't have the strength to do them.

—In fact, only Abyss of Gods and Warring Kingdoms in the ACG Game circle had made achievements in these two areas, while Divine Bird had only opened overseas Servers and had not landed on console platforms.

"Snow Factory Le Commerce, Green Factory Cloud Intelligence, Bear Factory Mobile Assistant," Song Zhicheng quickly replied.

Xu Meng was stunned for a moment, converting Song Zhicheng's habitual industry jargon in his mind before understanding the situation.

The first two were mobile phone hardware channels, and the third was a third-party app store—backed by Bear Claw Search, Xia Country's largest search engine.

"What's the reason?" Xu Meng asked, "They can't just take down our game for no reason, right?"

As soon as he finished speaking, he realized: "Because of the character's suggestive content?"

But Song Zhicheng immediately shook his head, "That's part of the reason, but more importantly: we've been reported by too many people."

"Reported? Is it a smear campaign? Or that group of feminists?"

Since the Frost Snow Project began its transformation, it had been attacked by extreme feminists and smear campaign organizations, so Xu Meng immediately thought of them.

"It shouldn't be a smear campaign," Song Zhicheng shook his head again.

"Most of the smear campaigns come from rival companies. They are measured in their attacks against us and won't cross the line."

"This is also a kind of industry understanding and self-preservation because once the line is broken, they won't be able to benefit either."

"So, is it those feminist activists?"

"Most likely." Song Zhicheng nodded, "Those brainwashed extremist feminist organizations have absolutely no scruples."

"They have been inciting female netizens to report the Frost Snow Project. Now, there are too many people being incited, so many that the channels can no longer ignore it."

"Not only that, but they are also threatening the channels with uniform messages, saying that if they don't remove the Frost Snow Project, they will report the entire channel to higher authorities."

"And then they removed our game?" Xu Meng confirmed.

"Yes, just a few minutes ago." Song Zhicheng said helplessly, "Not only was the game removed, but we can't even log into the server."

This time Xu Meng was really stunned.

The Frost Snow Project being attacked by extremist feminist organizations was not surprising to him—it was almost expected.

But what confused him was: are these channel operators so easily bullied?

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