"By the way, how is the progress on your current technology?"
"Very fast. I expect the game to officially launch early next year. Right now, the demo is already ready for testing. I originally planned to show the boss the demo, but… now might not be a good time."
The department head nodded. "Yeah, it wouldn't be appropriate to report this to the boss right now. But he'll probably only be angry for a few days. Once his mood improves, you can show him the results—I'm sure he'll be very pleased."
Seeing that several recent projects had failed, the department head felt that if this young man's project made significant progress, it would have great potential.
"Alright, I'll keep working hard," the young man said, his eyes shining.
In his heart, he had already formed a very ambitious goal.
He wanted to follow the example of Cyberpunk 2077—to promise ultra-long-term content updates and turn his game into a long-term project.
Judging from the current prototype of his infinite-world game, it still fell short of the ultimate form he envisioned.
But he felt that launching the game next year wouldn't be a problem. Players would surely be captivated by the endlessly random worlds.
After all, so many successful open-world games already existed. Many players had clearly expressed how much they loved this type of game.
Back on Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's side, Takayuki finished tracking several projects. The 2020 Olympics was a key focus, but his own games were just as important.
Returning to his office, he turned on his computer and casually browsed for interesting games on BattleNet.
Randomly checking out newly released games on BattleNet had now become part of his job.
He enjoyed seeing people in this world develop interesting games—experiencing video games different from those of his previous life.
At the same time, he also wanted to learn how developers in this world made games.
Although mainstream game development methods had largely spread from his own influence, there were always rebels who took different paths and created games that diverged from his expectations.
Even Takayuki believed that he should always keep learning rather than becoming complacent.
"Games launched today… a total of 163. Hmm… that's quite a lot."
Takayuki filtered all the games released within the day and reviewed them one by one.
For games that clearly lacked effort—looking like random doodles—he marked them for closer inspection later. If they turned out to be reskins or games made purely to pad the numbers, he would directly take them down.
Since the earlier mass takedown of low-quality cyberpunk-style games, hardly anyone dared to object to Takayuki's takedown decisions anymore.
Developers who were dissatisfied could file appeals—but the moment they learned that the takedown decision came directly from Takayuki himself, they immediately fell silent.
After all, this was the "God of Games" personally deciding their game was unworthy. That meant he had at least played it—and the developers themselves knew exactly how much effort they had put in. There was no room for argument.
"Padding. Padding. Padding."
Takayuki began playing the games he had marked.
After trying them, he found that every single one was indeed a padding game.
Some didn't even have gameplay—only a start screen, with no actual playable content.
They weren't even half-finished products.
At the very least, they could have included a short story summary when starting the game—then Takayuki might have considered them minimally sincere.
But these developers were unbelievably careless.
"Strange…"
Takayuki frowned, deeply puzzled.
There were far too many sloppy games.
In just one day, fifty or sixty games were obviously rushed and perfunctory—and actual gameplay confirmed how bad they were.
That such games passed review meant the BattleNet review team clearly hadn't been doing their job.
It seemed he needed to have a serious talk with Bellrade, the head of the BattleNet platform.
Takayuki usually left business operations to Matsuhashi Minoru, but when it came to games, he wouldn't be lenient.
He made a note about Bellrade in his notebook, planning to call him shortly.
For now, though, Takayuki continued evaluating the remaining games.
Out of the 163 games, only about a dozen could be considered passable.
And among those, maybe two or three were genuinely fun.
The odds were depressingly low.
The main problem was simply that too many games were padding.
No—this couldn't wait.
Takayuki picked up the phone and directly called Bellrade.
"Boss, what can I do for you?" Bellrade answered quickly, even though it was still late night in the U.S.
"Bellrade, tell me—what has your BattleNet review department been doing lately? Why are there so many games that are clearly terrible?"
"Huh?" Bellrade froze.
"It seems you don't even know what's going on. Your management of BattleNet lately has been… inadequate."
"Th-this… Boss, I—"
Cold sweat broke out on Bellrade's forehead.
Takayuki was usually friendly and approachable, often mingling easily with employees.
But once he became serious, the pressure was suffocating.
"Boss, I'm not fully aware of this situation either. I'll investigate immediately," Bellrade said nervously, then quickly hung up to contact his subordinates.
Bellrade had always been diligent since taking charge of BattleNet, but as the platform expanded, his responsibilities kept growing.
The PC BattleNet platform was no longer his sole focus.
BattleNet on other consoles was now producing results more easily.
Takayuki patiently waited for about ten minutes. During that time, he replayed a few games released over the past few days.
Recently, he had occasionally been checking out newly released PC BattleNet games—something he hadn't paid much attention to before.
Now that he had discovered so many padding games, he couldn't help but feel baffled.