Who Did I Offend?

"This is the worst the clown has ever been trashed!"

"Honestly, clowns can bring people joy. What about Teacher Zhong?"

"Hey, the person above, hasn't Teacher Zhong brought us plenty of joy?"

"233333, thanks to Chen Xu for letting me discover Teacher Zhong. Whenever I'm in a bad mood, I just look at Teacher Zhong's old quotes and immediately feel better."

"But seriously, I'm still curious about what Chen Xu's new game actually is. It just feels unreliable!"

"Has he really gotten full of himself?"

"Hard to say, but considering Magic Mirror and Undertale, I'm still going to wait and see for myself."

"A dozen days or so feels pretty unbelievable."

Following Chen Xu's Official Blog post, many players who had been following him since Magic Mirror and Undertale began discussing it.

But broadly speaking, they all shared the same opinion: they did not think highly of it.

After all, the timeframe was simply too short.

Compared to the players, the industry and the media were even more abuzz.

At Sword Fire Thunder Studio under NetDragon, a game designer stared at the news online, his hands trembling.

Meng Zuo was Sword Fire Thunder Studio's lead designer, and he was developing a sci-fi game called Galaxy Heroes.

His primary goal was to enter it in this Sci-Fi Conquest Game event.

Being under NetDragon sounded impressive.

But in reality, there were far too many internal project teams. The Sword Fire Thunder Studio he led was merely one of them.

And not every project team could get approval for budgets worth tens or even hundreds of millions.

Within NetDragon, a few million already counted as a medium project.

Meng Zuo had set his sights on the Sci-Fi Conquest Game event because he wanted to take first place.

That would help raise his standing in both the gaming industry and NetDragon itself, allowing him to secure better resources and more development funding.

Everything had been going smoothly, but then Chen Xu suddenly announced that he was making a sci-fi game too and entering this competition, completely throwing Meng Zuo's plans into disarray.

It was not because he was overly wary of Chen Xu.

In fact, he shared the same opinion as many others: what the hell could Chen Xu possibly make in such a short time?

But the key issue was that the explosive popularity of Magic Mirror and Undertale had given Chen Xu an absurd amount of attention.

To countless gaming media outlets, Chen Xu was practically synonymous with traffic!

And for players, the popularity of Undertale had not yet fully faded. Every move Chen Xu made drew immense attention from them as well.

As for Zhong Mei's mockery, that was, in a way, also giving Chen Xu more attention.

That made things incredibly awkward!

Galaxy Heroes, which he was leading, had specifically set aside part of its budget for promotion.

And the campaign had already begun.

But now?

All the damn attention had been stolen!

There was nothing he could do. Although NetDragon was one of the country's leading distribution platforms, and they were a studio under NetDragon—

The channel side was handled by the Macro Play department, while their side was an independent R&D group.

The Macro Play department would not be kind enough to sacrifice its own performance metrics for them.

Want promotional support through NetDragon's channels?

No problem. Since they were colleagues and all part of the same family, they could give them an internal discount of 1% off.

What? No money?

Then why the hell were they coming to them?

Get lost already!

They were broke and still came asking? Did they think the department's performance did not matter?

Looking at trending headlines such as "Chen Xu's New Work Will Enter the Sci-Fi Conquest Game" and "Games Are Not Child's Play: Has Undertale Creator Chen Xu Become Full of Himself?"—

Meng Zuo felt his heart trembling.

There had not been much promotional funding to begin with, and now it had all been wasted for nothing!

"Who did I offend?!" Meng Zuo clutched his chest, his face full of anguish.

Looking at the Official Blog posts from Chen Xu's earlier spat with Zhong Mei, Meng Zuo suddenly wanted to tag Chen Xu, express his disdain for Chen Xu's new work, and create a showdown between the two sides to boost the presence of both himself and his new game.

But he stopped himself. It was not because he thought he would lose, but because he was different from Zhong Mei.

After all, although Zhong Mei's Hepatitis Culture and Sports was small, merely an indie game workshop, Zhong Mei was still its boss.

What about Meng Zuo? He was a producer under NetDragon. If he dared to jump out and start a fight, he would be screwed.

After all, he would have no justification. Even rebels in ancient times had to shout that the imperial court was corrupt and unjust, that kings and nobles were not born superior.

If he just jumped out and started arguing, it might feel good in the moment, but the aftermath would be troublesome.

Apologizing would be the least of it. What he feared was that the players' hatred of NetDragon would shift onto him, and he would conveniently end up taking the blame for other departments within the company as well.

Then everyone else would make piles of money while he received punishment after punishment. That would truly be enough to make listeners sad and onlookers weep.

Having the attention stolen was already miserable enough. If he ended up carrying some massive black pot afterward, it would be utterly unbearable.

But now?

He felt terrible!

Especially when Meng Zuo thought about how Chen Xu, the person responsible for all this, had absolutely no idea what was happening and had not even done it deliberately, he felt even more aggrieved.

How unfair was this to him?!

As the saying went, a gentleman's revenge could wait ten years. Although he could not blame Chen Xu for everything, Chen Xu was still connected to it.

So in that instant, he began imagining exactly what he would do when the time came.

"You stole my promotional buzz, so when the Conquest Game Competition comes around, we'll let the games do the talking!"

"Although I feel like you might not even pass the review, I still hope you win a last-place award so that the Game Department invites you to the offline awards ceremony."

"When the time comes, in front of countless players, Game Department officials, and gaming media, I'll give you a merciless handshake, then smile and say I've heard so much about you, and praise your new game for being really well made!"

Staring enviously at the headlines about Chen Xu, Meng Zuo took a deep breath and closed the page, continuing his elaborate fantasy.

Red carpets, media, handshakes, speeches—one month from now would be his perfect day of revenge!

At Nebula Games' office, Chen Xu had no idea someone was already imagining how to take revenge on him.

During this time, he had been incredibly busy. On one hand, he had to keep up with To the Moon's development progress; on the other, he had to interview and recruit staff.

Chen Xu had posted the relevant job listings on various gaming forums and communities.

With Undertale's reputation behind him, it had indeed attracted quite a few people from the game industry.

The problem was that too few of them satisfied Chen Xu.

After reviewing all the applications, Chen Xu sighed. "Ah! Hiring people is hard!"

According to the plan, the development department needed to hire another art assistant to help him and Ruan Ningxue share the workload.

At the same time, they needed a systems designer and a level designer.

But among those three positions, he had yet to find any promising candidates.

At that moment, there were two knocks on the office door. After Chen Xu answered, the door was pushed open, and a middle-aged man in his thirties entered.

Zhang Yida, the manager responsible for Nebula Games' marketing, handled game promotion and related business matters.

"CEO Chen, have the contact details for the relevant people all been confirmed?" Zhang Yida looked both impressed and hesitant.

"Yes, contact them directly." Chen Xu smiled and nodded.

After exchanging a few words with Zhang Yida, Chen Xu watched him leave the office.

Chen Xu then turned his attention back to the computer and continued developing To the Moon.