After that, his parents and little sister kept asking question after question, determined to get to the bottom of it.
Little Meng clung to her brother's arm, her eyes shining with the excited look of, Bro, our family is rich now!
But his parents were more worried and nervous, afraid their son had done something illegal to earn so much money.
Left with no choice, Meng Shu looked up the company's credentials on his phone and only put them at ease after showing them the legal representative's information.
Even though his parents still seemed not to understand it.
As long as they knew it had come through legitimate channels, they did not think too much about the rest.
Then, persuaded by Meng Shu, his parents chose to resign, though they said they would not quit without notice.
After all, quitting without notice would forfeit the month's wages being withheld. Though it was only two or three thousand yuan, his parents had lived hard lives and knew the value of money. Those two or three thousand yuan had been earned with blood and sweat, and they refused to give it up no matter what.
So even Meng Shu, with tens of millions to his name, could only helplessly stop trying to persuade them.
After finishing the hotpot, Little Meng went straight back to her room and searched online for the games her brother had made.
Half an hour later, his sister showed up in Meng Shu's room carrying a VR headset. She said she did not dare play alone, then simply took over her brother's computer and started playing "21 Points."
She kept playing until after one in the morning, shrieking from time to time. Unable to sleep, Meng Shu finally drove her back to her own room.
Ever since the Visage project officially began, Meng Shu had been swamped every day.
Not only did he have to work on developing the game, he also had to go to the Motion Capture Room to direct the movement shoots.
On top of that, Xia Nianzhen's Mansion scenes kept being revised over and over under his supervision, with one area or another always failing to feel right.
She was not an architect, after all, and her grasp of building dimensions and structures was not especially precise. This kind of game was also a challenge and learning experience for her, so mistakes were inevitable.
In comparison, modeler Qiu Yuan and Animator Xu Hong were doing much better.
They sent him project files for confirmation almost every day.
Amid such busyness, the game's development proceeded steadily.
President Meng had no time to hire people for game ports, nor did he have time to buy himself a house or scout for new office space.
He had thrown himself completely into game development, giving it everything he had.
Another month passed, and under his pace of work, every aspect of Visage had made considerable progress.
For instance, with Meng Shu's guidance, the scenes Xia Nianzhen was responsible for had been recreated to more than ninety percent accuracy. He only needed to make a few adjustments himself for the rest.
Qiu Yuan, meanwhile, had received approval to recruit a modeler of his own to share his enormous workload, and progress remained steady.
Then there was Animator Xu Hong. He occasionally went into the mocap suit himself for Meng Shu to record, then worked overtime afterward to refine the movement files. He was diligent and responsible.
With the combined efforts of everyone in the company, the first two chapters of Visage were completed in only two months.
Of course, Meng Shu had done the bulk of the work.
Luckily, he had a development engine so simple even monkeys could use it. Otherwise, there was no way he could have completed the game's first two chapters in such a short time.
In the original world, this game had taken several years to develop!
Fortunately, the game focused on its story and atmosphere, so it did not have any particularly remarkable music. That saved Meng Shu the trouble of composing tracks.
There was still some basic music, though. The sheet music included in the concept design had already been given to Infinite Network Entertainment, who would arrange for a record company to produce it. That was part of their job as the publisher.
With that effort, another week passed, and the game's progress sped up like a train that had finally gotten onto the tracks.
But at that moment, Meng Shu received an urgent call from Infinite Network Entertainment.
The caller was Supervisor Lian, who had been communicating with him all along.
"Plagiarism?"
In his office, Meng Shu sat with one leg crossed over the other, frowning as he listened to Supervisor Lian's report over the phone.
[Yes, President Meng. Haven't you been following the latest game releases? One of them is extremely similar to Dark Forest. It's also a survival horror game, called Jungle Terror.]
Meng Shu fell silent.
Could that name possibly be any lamer?
"Mm. So what about it?"
Supervisor Lian was stunned by Meng Shu's complete lack of reaction and asked in confusion.
[President Meng, this game copied your gameplay, and apparently some of the setting as well. They stitched in elements from other games too. It's basically Dark Forest with a different skin and some extra things added before putting it up for sale.]
"I know. What's the problem?"
Supervisor Lian fell silent.
[President Meng, someone copied your game! How is that not a problem!?]
The woman's voice on the other end sounded astonished. She seemed unable to understand why President Meng, as a businessman, appeared so unconcerned about this.
In her view, they were using his game's popularity and traffic to sell their own game!
Even if the developer did not care, they, as the publisher, had to take a stance!
No matter how one looked at it, they were making money off their game!
Meng Shu sat before his computer, shrugged, straightened his posture, and placed his hand on the mouse.
"Which platforms?"
[Huh?]
Supervisor Lian froze for a moment, then quickly understood.
[Cyber Platform and Xiyou Platform. Xiyou is our domestic competitor, backed by a publicly listed company much like ours, called Jiyou Network.]
Jiyou Network?
He had never heard of it.
Meng Shu shook his head, opened Cyber Platform, and searched for "Jungle Terror."
The instant he saw the search results, he froze, disbelief appearing on his face.
Well, damn!
This game actually...
Cost 168 yuan!?
Was this some blockbuster?
Mine only cost 69 yuan!
"This game costs that much?"
Meng Shu clicked into it casually, intending to take a closer look.
Supervisor Lian immediately explained when she heard that.
[That's Jiyou's usual style. The games they develop are generally priced two to three times higher than average, and the games they publish cost twice as much as similar titles on the market regardless of quality. They've even raised prices suddenly after seeing good sales just one hour after release.]
Meng Shu frowned when he heard that. Why did this feel so familiar? But after thinking about it for a moment, wasn't this just the parallel-world version of SE?
The absurdly high regional prices, the sudden price hike for NieR: Automata, and the famous pricing unit Octopath Traveler—all of it treated local players like suckers to be fleeced.
Later, when the heavily invested Marvel's Avengers and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy failed in the market, players had celebrated by popping champagne.
Meng Shu had little goodwill toward this kind of company. After saying he understood, he watched every video and examined every screenshot in Jungle Terror's store display.
In the end, he came to one conclusion: it was crudely made garbage.
If Dark Forest had deliberately adopted a pixel-like art style, then Jungle Terror's visuals were simply atrocious.
It also used a vertical top-down perspective, but the character movement looked floaty and lacked Dark Forest's sense of weight. The shooting felt impossible to judge without playing it himself, but the sound effects already sounded extremely cheap.
The game's visuals looked very clean overall, unlike Dark Forest's dim and eerie atmosphere.
Clearly, the materials had not been properly processed during modeling, making the game look new and sterile.
As for the rest, he did not know much yet, since he had not played it.
And the developer was not stupid. Naturally, its screenshots and videos showed the game's better side.
The bad parts could only be discovered by playing it himself.
Meng Shu scrolled down with his mouse and looked at the game's description.
It was lengthy, but the gist was:
'You are an ordinary intelligence agent. While carrying out a mission, you obtain information capable of changing the outcome of the war. While fleeing with the intelligence, you accidentally enter this dense forest. Then you discover that an unknown entity exists within this area—the witch! During the day, you must explore the forest and search for useful items. At night, you must use those items to fend off the witch's attacks. Your goal is to survive, cross the forest, and deliver the intelligence!'
Mm. Judging from the description alone, it sounded fairly interesting, but...
Meng Shu looked at the game's reviews. They were not pretty.
A random player with 0.4 hours played:
"I thought this was a spiritual sequel to Dark Forest, but what the hell is this?"
A random player with 3 hours played:
"Two-minute loading screens, invisible walls everywhere, garbage graphics, bizarre shooting hit detection, and witches with brainless health stacking. This game gave me a damn aneurysm. Fuck!"
A random player with 1 hour played:
"I'd believe you if you told me this game was for money laundering. You had Dark Forest right in front of you and still couldn't copy it properly. Horror games have been ruined by trash developers like you! And this isn't even a horror game!"
A random player with 1.4 hours played:
"Not recommended. The game obviously hasn't been polished. The poor quality is visible to the naked eye, optimization is bad too, and the price isn't consumer-friendly. Those who know, know. Jiyou, you really outdid yourself. Buy it only after a discount. For this type of game, play Dark Forest instead. That's what a horror game should be!"
A random player with 1.4 hours played:
"Can you even make a fucking horror game? If you can't, stop polluting this category, damn it! You saw someone else making money and immediately threw out some garbage to cash in, then charged 168 for it. You're obviously planning to grab a quick buck and run. Get lost!"
A random player with 0.5 hours played:
"I'm an idiot."
After reading the reviews, Meng Shu had a general understanding of the game and could not help chuckling.
That made Supervisor Lian even less able to figure out what this young entrepreneur was thinking.
[President Meng, this game already constitutes suspected plagiarism. We're preparing to have the legal department sue them.]
Meng Shu shook his head at that.
"I don't really care. Do whatever you want, since you're the publisher. But like I said before, I'm not worried about other companies making horror games and splitting the market, nor do I care whether they copy my game."
"In a sense, their plagiarism will promote us indirectly, regardless of whether their quality is good or bad. That's a good thing. Besides, they only copied the gameplay and some settings. The story and such are still original. In that regard, they at least have some professional integrity."
"But if copying gameplay could successfully lead to a lawsuit, more than half the shooters on the market would be in trouble. Besides..."
Meng Shu smiled and lit a cigarette.
"...without their inferiority, how would our superiority stand out?"
"So let them copy it. I don't care. But releasing it during the period when Visage's trailer is being announced... I don't know whether that counts as a good thing."
Supervisor Lian keenly caught the keyword in that sentence.
[Visage... a trailer? President Meng, has your game progressed far enough for a trailer to be released?]
Meng Shu took a drag of his cigarette and slowly exhaled. Hearing that, he smiled.
"Not only can we release a trailer, we can also announce the release date while we're at it. Perfect timing—help me promote it on Weibo too. After all..."
Meng Shu pressed a switch key, and his computer screen quickly jumped to Danmu Network's video upload page.
The progress bar displayed 100%, along with a notification that the video had passed review!
"...the trailer just finished uploading."
The game trailer was difficult to describe, so the trailer was written in the style of a movie trailer.
Thanks to 'I Want to Eat Bananas' for the monthly ticket support!!
Before you continue