First Day Sales Break 200K!

The next day, while everyone was immersed in the oppressive unease and terrifying charm of Dark Forest, a notice was frantically reposted by major gaming media outlets.

It was a sales congratulations post from Shuo Guang, the developer of Dark Forest!

And at this moment, this congratulations was reposted and pinned by an editor from the Fourth Calamity Club.

Within an afternoon, a flame icon appeared, indicating this post was generating high discussion!

The title of this hot post was simple, clearly written by the editor themselves.

[Dark Forest First-Day Sales Break 240K! Double Harvest in Sales and Reputation! Developer Declares: To Thank Everyone for Their Support, a VR Game Will Be Released in One Month!]

This news was undoubtedly a bombshell, blasting players into a crisp, golden-brown shock!

What does first-day sales of 240K mean?

That's over sixteen million in cash!

An independent developer, with no team, managed to sell 240K copies of a horror game on its very first day?

What kind of skill and talent is this?

Domestic games in the past only managed to break 200K in their first week or first month.

No one had ever heard of breaking 200K on the first day!

Today was a first, and topping the charts was a horror game.

How ironic.

The top spot wasn't taken by mainstream games—shooters, racing, sports—but by a horror game that no one dared to touch, that everyone thought was a death sentence for any developer!

At this moment, netizens were flooding the comments below the post.

"Even though I guessed it, a domestic game selling 240K on day one is still shocking."

"The game quality is solid! I think this sales figure is well deserved! I bought it too, and I'm dying like a dog in the third zone."

"Anyone who still looks down on horror games, just slap this sales number in their face!"

"Honestly, they should show these game companies what a high-quality horror game looks like, let them see how trash their own garbage is."

"I'm more worried about garbage companies jumping on the horror game bandwagon, then we'll get a bunch of trash games on the market."

"The official says this game has over 10 hours of content, but I'm about to hit 10 hours and I'm still barely surviving in the second zone."

"I'm at 20 hours, still in the second zone too, but I'm about to head to the third zone."

There were many more discussions like this.

But what was surprising wasn't just the first-day sales.

What came next was even more explosive.

The post clearly stated that a VR game would be released in one month, and to stay tuned.

A VR game in one month?

When players saw this news, their first reaction was that it was fake.

Everyone knows what a mess the current state of VR games is.

Maybe developer Shuo Guang is a very capable person.

But that doesn't make him Superman.

Even big foreign studios make terrible VR games, what can one person do!?

Even if he hired employees to develop it together, so what.

Those big foreign studios boast experienced teams of hundreds, and they still make garbage, right?

And on top of that, it'll be out in a month?

The development time for any random game is more than a month, okay!

Go grab a random person on the street and see if they believe it.

Unless Shuo Guang already had a team and had been secretly developing it for a very long time!

Otherwise, there's no way he could be so confident.

If that were the case, then Dark Forest might not have been developed by him alone!

But in the end, it's all just speculation, with no solid evidence.

The game company found online only had Shuo Guang registered, no employees, and zero people with social insurance.

So everyone was taking a wait-and-see approach.

"Any big-dicked bros out there to spoil whether this is real or fake?"

"A VR game in a month? I may not be well-read, but I'm not an idiot either!"

"Don't mess with us poor gamers, you bastard!"

"If famous big studios can't do it, you think some no-name little company can?"

"I hope the official doesn't go messing with stuff even the big shots can't figure out. Isn't it better to just stick to PC games? Making tens of millions a day, why go chasing VR? If the quality is too bad, it'll really ruin your reputation and goodwill."

"Don't make a VR game! Don't mess with something that ruins your reputation! That big foreign studio lost a ton on VR, I still want to see Dark Forest 2, not watch you guys disband!"

"Oh wow, the guy above is already prophesying, huh?"

The news about a VR game coming out in a month stirred up discussion online for a while.

But far away in Shencheng, Meng Shu had no idea about any of this. Right now, he was washing pig intestines, with wrapped dumplings and trotters sitting nearby.

He was about to start making dinner.

Meng Shu smiled, his heart racing with excitement as he thought about the game's sales.

First-day sales broke 240,000 copies and were still climbing steadily—a result he honestly hadn't expected.

In just one day, he'd earned 16.56 million.

After deducting the 30% cut, his actual take was 11.59 million.

And that was just one day's sales!

One day!

A net worth of tens of millions!

So to celebrate, Meng Shu was making the dishes his parents loved most, things they rarely got to eat.

In this world, his mother was especially fond of dumplings.

But because she was always too busy with work to wrap them, she hadn't had any in nearly a year.

Today, Meng Shu specially made over sixty dumplings, each one plump and full of filling. The meat inside was hand-chopped by him, not from a grinder.

He also added carrots and water chestnuts, minced them together, and finally sprinkled in chopped scallions before wrapping them. That way, they'd taste crisp and smooth.

Not like the stringy, greasy texture from a meat grinder.

As for his father, in his memory, every New Year meant eating pig trotters.

The way he'd gnaw on them was unforgettable.

And the pork intestines—back when Meng Xiaoran was still a middle schooler, she hated them, saying the smell was too strong, so their father gradually stopped eating them.

But Meng Shu knew very well that his father really wanted to eat them.

Once, when they were walking home together, he'd seen his father staring at a street stall selling braised intestines, unable to look away.

Back then, Meng Shu was too clueless to understand what that meant.

But not anymore.

Today, he planned to make his father in this world a braised pig trotter and dry-fried pork intestines.

As for the little Meng girl.

A plate of braised chicken wings would be enough to satisfy her.

While handling the ingredients, Meng Shu took the chance to browse the system shop for suitable games to use as case studies.

Under the attribute panel, the number of scared players for Dark Forest had gone from 67,000 to 239,000.

That meant out of the 240,000 people who bought the game, 239,000 had been scared.

And the Fear Points had jumped from 143,000 to 568,000.

With such a huge sum in hand, Meng Shu was thrilled. He immediately entered the shop and started picking out games.

He couldn't develop a VR game alone.

Art resources and original music composition required manpower—the system wouldn't give them to him for free anymore, and he couldn't handle it all by himself.

Not to mention porting the game to console platforms.

So hiring people was inevitable.

Plus, he had to make a VR game within a month.

That meant the game's scope couldn't be too big, and it had to be fun enough.

So he needed a small, refined, enjoyable game that wouldn't get boring easily.

And for that kind of game—

Meng Shu's gaze landed on an expansion pack for a major title.

In that moment, his target was set.

The DLC for Resident Evil 7.

21 Points.