The money was enough, but even so, in a less noticeable corner, there were still three or five people sweating profusely, rummaging through drawers. Their pockets were turned inside out, and piles of loose change littered their workstations. Someone was whispering for help, “Not enough! Not enough!” It turned out one of these young guys had also been hit in the face by the money bomb, but being a man of honor, after dizzily returning to his department with the money, he loudly announced it and, under everyone’s encouragement, generously shared the spoils. By noon, they had gone out for a lavish spending spree, but now, they found themselves in a mess they couldn’t clean up. The guy who had been hit was nearly in tears, but what could they do? They were all single, living paycheck to paycheck, not usually carrying much cash. Seeing their manager, who was so anxious he was almost scratching his head, they felt like jumping off a building.
Later events, alas, were like a dream, not worth looking back on. Sun Chen shook his head in frustration, pulling his thoughts back to the present. The top priority now was stability. This newly established game zone was the result of two sleepless days and nights of hard work. With less than twenty minutes until the server opening, there was no turning back. After the fool left, the top executives, furious, summoned Sun Chen, the technical director, nearly drowning him in their spittle. Given their menacing looks, if not for the fact that his work was irreplaceable in the short term, they might have really considered skinning him alive. This new server was a direct order from the top, and he had only forty-eight hours to get it done.
Though the executives didn’t explicitly say it, they hinted that in this new zone, codenamed “Virtual Sky,” a feature allowing players to earn double experience points through tipping should be added. Simply put, it was an open door for players to level up quickly with real money. To put it more bluntly, in this so-called Virtual Sky zone, as long as players were willing to spend, the tipping system for double experience points had no upper limit; players could level up to the supreme level in a minute if they so desired. This was a desperate move, abandoning the game’s core feature of player balance! Although he knew it was a short-term fix with long-term consequences, Marumi, cornered, had to make this painful choice. The executives subtly conveyed that if they couldn’t appease this group represented by the fool, the game, which depended on its balanced system, could be shut down at any moment. The fools had this power!
