Selling Fake Liquor; Starfield's New Arrangements

Inside a home in a residential neighborhood in Shancheng.

Galiang slumped on the sofa, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

A few days earlier, a court summons from Shencheng had arrived at his home.

He was the defendant, and the party suing him... was Starfield Game Company.

When he saw the summons, he was dumbfounded. A game company was actually making such a fuss as to sue him.

The suit accused him of false advertising that had caused the company financial losses.

He wasn't the only one. Many game review bloggers in his circle had received summonses from Starfield.

The people who received summonses all had one thing in common: they had taken Qisheng's money to smear Minecraft.

What they hadn't expected was that Starfield would sue every one of them after suing Qisheng.

It's over. This time it's really over.

Not only am I going to lose my account, I'll have to pay compensation too. How am I supposed to get by from now on?

It's gone. Everything's gone. I'll probably have to pay out all the money I've saved over the years.

If I had another chance... I really wouldn't dare do it again.

Just then, his phone made a sound. Was someone messaging him?

He checked it and saw that it was Pan Jiangming, another game review blogger in his circle.

[Gazi, once this lawsuit is over, we're definitely finished. Not only will we have to pay compensation, we'll lose our accounts too.]

[How about we team up and make a quick buck over the next couple of days?]

Galiang paused when he saw Pan Jiangming's message. Make a quick buck... That makes sense.

The account was still in his hands. He could easily cash in on it while he still had it. He was going to lose it anyway, so what was there to be afraid of?

[Brother Pan, how do you think we should do it?]

As soon as he sent the message, Pan Jiangming replied.

[Sell liquor.]

[Sell liquor?]

He didn't quite understand. How could they make a quick buck selling liquor?

While he was still wondering, Pan Jiangming immediately sent an explanation.

[I have a source for counterfeit Xiaomao liquor. It costs less than a hundred yuan, and we'd make over a thousand yuan in pure profit on every bottle.]

[Well? Want to make some money with me?]

Galiang's eyes lit up the moment he read the message.

He could make over a thousand yuan on a single bottle. If he could sell a few hundred bottles, it wouldn't matter whether he kept the account or not. It only had a little over a hundred thousand followers anyway.

[Let's do it!]

[Brother Pan, where are you now? Show me how.]

At Starfield Game Company.

Su Ye was staring at the packaging box in front of him when Deng Jiajia, standing beside him, said, "President Su, these are the building blocks they made. Please take a look and see if you have any other suggestions."

Su Ye reached out and opened the box, taking out a block about the size of a fingernail. It had the same proportions as a block in Minecraft and looked nearly identical.

Each block had a connector on the top and bottom, allowing them to be joined and assembled freely.

He picked up a few and put them together. The connectors joined smoothly without catching.

"Not bad. We can start production."

"Have that supplier make the first batch. We'll produce the second batch ourselves. Look into the production machinery, and if it's feasible, buy a few machines."

The profit margin on these was enormous. He couldn't let a contract manufacturer produce all of them and make that money.

Deng Jiajia nodded. "I understand, President Su. Do you have any other arrangements?"

Su Ye thought for a moment and continued, "For the first batch of blocks, we can hold an event on our official game server and give them away to players for free. After that, put together a team for me to handle the management and sales of the Minecraft building blocks."

"Oh, and call them Leshi Building Blocks."

"When you have time, register a new company. We'll transfer the building blocks to the new company for operation and management."

A game company was a game company. A physical business like Leshi Building Blocks had to be handed over to a new company.

As new games appeared in the future, all kinds of related physical businesses would surely follow. They couldn't all be kept under Starfield Game Company.

Once those arrangements were made, Deng Jiajia left the office.

Su Ye sat in his office chair scrolling through short videos and came across a game trailer posted by Qisheng.

After watching it, the corner of Su Ye's mouth twitched.

Qisheng couldn't pull off copying it, so now they're trying to release theirs first? Do they really think PUBG is just a shooting simulator?

Do they have any brains at all?

Qisheng had truly left him speechless. They were so damn stupid that he had no idea how they had managed to grow so big.

Two days later, news broke that Starfield had sued dozens of game review bloggers.

Actually, it hadn't so much broken as been made public by the game review bloggers being sued, who had posted apology videos.

Starfield hadn't completely crushed them all. Those whose offenses were serious had their accounts shut down, while those whose offenses were less serious only had to apologize publicly and pay some compensation.

As the matter was gaining attention, another story broke.

[Galiang and Pan Jiangming openly sold substandard liquor, passing it off as Xiaomao.]

The news caused an uproar online. Starfield taking dozens of game review bloggers to court had already made the trending searches.

No one had expected that Galiang and Pan Jiangming, two of those bloggers, had also been selling fake liquor to make a quick buck over the past two days.

The matter sparked a wave of heated discussion.

[Galiang and Pan Jiangming are really something, committing another offense right under everyone's noses. Starfield already took them to court, and they've spent the past two days selling fake liquor.]

[I know that fake liquor. The regular price is 1,399 yuan, and he was selling it for 1,199. I was even thinking of buying a bottle.]

[Incredible. What a pair of Crouching Dragon and Fledgling Phoenix, selling fake liquor together to make a quick buck.]

[Xiaomao posted a video. They're going to sue the two of them. Now they'll have to pay until they're bankrupt.]

[More than that. They've already made hundreds of thousands in profit selling fake liquor. From now on, their meals will be free too.]

[That's fucking prison!]

Around this time, topics concerning Starfield kept cropping up.

From the appearance of Minecraft, to its gradual rise to explosive popularity, to Qisheng's plagiarism and the ensuing lawsuit, right up to the present.

Starfield had now entered the public eye. In the past, someone might have heard the name Starfield and had no idea what it was, but now many people knew it was a game company.

As a result, Minecraft's download count kept climbing. Its total number of players had surpassed fifty million, and the number online today had broken the twenty-million mark.

There were now dozens of game servers on Xingye Gaming Platform.

The servers were basically full every day, and players had to fight for a spot just to get into one.

The game server creators had all jumped aboard the Minecraft express and made quite a bit of money.

Many creators of texture packs and shaders had also made a fortune along the way. That too was a dividend of the times.

P.S. These two chapters were mainly meant as a transition, so please bear with me, brothers. We'll get back to the game content very soon.