Chapter 278: An Industry That's Guaranteed to Scare Lin Wan Away!
October 3rd.
Three days had passed, and Pei Qian had been keeping a close eye on the situation after Turn Back Before It's Too Late went live.
After all, he had high hopes for this game—it absolutely could not afford to "succeed."
First off, the players' reviews were just about what Pei Qian had expected.
In short: it was getting roasted!
Especially under the official Weibo post, where players were leaving all sorts of sarcastic comments.
On the game's official store page, tons of players were also leaving one-star reviews.
The forum discussions were extremely heated as well, and the polarization was getting worse by the hour.
The TPDb website had already collected quite a number of reviews for the game, including those from both consumers and casual players online.
Currently, Turn Back Before It's Too Late had a TPDb score of 7.2, noticeably dragged down by the player ratings.
As for media reviews, not many had come out yet—after all, it was still early, and most gaming outlets hadn't even finished the game yet, so there wasn't enough data to form an aggregate score.
On this front, Pei Qian wasn't too confident. After all, media critics didn't put as much emphasis on difficulty—they tended to judge based on overall quality, artistic value, and depth.
That meant some gaming outlets might actually give Turn Back Before It's Too Late a decent score simply because of its production quality, which could still pull up the TPDb rating later.
But regardless, the game's reputation among regular players was already collapsing right out of the gate—which was perfectly within Pei Qian's expectations.
Whether the TPDb score went up or not didn't matter; as long as the game didn't make money, that was all that mattered.
Pei Qian checked the player refund data and found that fewer than 30% of players had refunded the game. He was a bit disappointed by that.
What was that supposed to mean? He'd already dropped so many hints telling players to refund, yet the refund rate was under 30%?
They actually endured the graveyard mobs, the machete-wielding elites, the death epitaph screens, and the final countdown warnings?
That made no sense!
And even that 30% refund rate had to be partially due to the marketing.
Plenty of people bought Turn Back Before It's Too Late purely because of Tengda's golden reputation—many of them had no idea it was a masochistic game and stumbled right into it.
Once those unsuspecting players realized what kind of nightmare they'd signed up for, their first reaction was, naturally, to refund.
But even then, the refund rate was still under 30%. That left Pei Qian deeply unsatisfied.
Of course, there wasn't much else he could do.
He'd already done everything possible to make the game painful—if players still refused to refund, then they genuinely didn't want to refund. It's not like he could hold a gun to their heads and force them to quit.
He could only wait and see how things developed.
Although the nearly 30% refund rate hadn't met Pei Qian's expectations, it was still pretty high compared to other games. Combined with the game's mixed reputation, the initial results were still fairly promising—in his terms, at least.
Pei Qian also checked up on the situation over at Aili Island.
A few users had started uploading videos of Turn Back Before It's Too Late, but none were complete or comprehensive guides—most were just casual playthroughs recorded on the fly. The quality wasn't great, and the popularity was pretty mediocre.
That, too, was exactly what Pei Qian had expected.
Anyway, as long as Teacher Qiao doesn't release a walkthrough video, everything will be fine!
These new players would need at least a week to slowly figure out Turn Back Before It's Too Late, and Qiao Liang always uploaded his videos about a week after release.
By that time, whoever was still playing would basically be die-hard fans—showing them walkthroughs wouldn't matter anymore. As for the ones who'd been scared off, they'd never come back anyway.
"Hmm, a good start. Let's hope it stays that way!"
Pei Qian closed his laptop and headed out.
It was Sunday, and he'd promised to treat Lin Chang to dinner at Mingyun Private Kitchen.
Lin Yu had already left Jingzhou because of her busy schedule, but Lin Chang seemed much more relaxed—probably because the two of them handled different business areas, with very different workloads.
. . .
Mingyun Private Kitchen.
Pei Qian happily gnawed on a crab leg, in excellent spirits.
Across from him, Lin Chang was also enjoying the food with visible delight, singing its praises nonstop.
But as the meal went on, the topic inevitably turned to Lin Wan.
"President Pei, about that matter I asked you last time—have you given it some thought?"
"It doesn't have to be a perfect plan. Just share your ideas, and we can figure something out together."
Lin Chang clearly cared a lot about this issue—it was obvious that the old man at home had been putting pressure on him.
They needed to get Lin Wan back under control as soon as possible.
Pei Qian thought for a moment. "I've been considering it. We could use the excuse of business expansion to assign her to another project."
Lin Chang blinked. "You mean, not let her keep making games?"
Pei Qian nodded. "Right. No more game development for her."
"Because if she keeps making games, the risk is too high!"
"She just led the Shangyang Games team to develop a hit mobile game. Her morale, her team's spirit, and the public's opinion of her are all at their peak. If she keeps this momentum and makes another successful game, things could spiral completely out of control."
Lin Chang agreed instantly. "Yes, that makes perfect sense!"
Lin Wan had only made one successful game and was already showing off in the family group chat—if she made another hit, wouldn't her tail be pointing straight at the sky?
This time, failure was not optional!
"But, President Pei, there's a problem." Lin Chang hesitated. "Making games is Wan's dream. If you reassign her to another department under the pretext of business expansion, will she even agree?"
Pei Qian looked confident. "Of course, we can't make it too obvious."
"And you're right—she wouldn't willingly give up her work in the gaming department."
"So, in that case, let her handle both—the gaming department and another division. That way, she'll be stretched too thin to manage either one well. The chances of failure will skyrocket naturally."
Lin Chang's eyes lit up. "Oh, that's brilliant!"
"But which division should we pick? And what excuse should we use? We have to think carefully about this—Lin Wan's sharp. If she suspects anything, the whole plan could backfire."
Pei Qian nodded. "Exactly. I've been considering a few options, but nothing's set in stone yet."
Lin Chang leaned forward eagerly. "Let's hear them."
Pei Qian picked up a piece of sushi. "Here's what I'm thinking."
"First, we have to let Lin Wan keep her title as director of Shangyang Games—at least nominally. She still needs to be officially responsible for a new game project."
"If we remove her from anything game-related entirely, it'll be too suspicious. She'd definitely resist."
"On that foundation, we give her a second job."
"This new role has to be related to gaming, so we can justify it as a 'strategic expansion'—something like, 'To support our gaming business, we need to enter the XX field.' That way, it sounds reasonable and hard to argue with."
"The two areas I've been thinking about are live streaming and smartphones."
Lin Chang couldn't help but exclaim, "Brilliant!"
Pei Qian's plan was perfectly clear—he'd go to Lin Wan and say, "In order to better promote our games, we're expanding into the live streaming or smartphone business, and you'll be in charge of this new division."
That way, Lin Wan would be juggling two roles at once. Her energy would be spread thin, and whether it was the new business or her game projects, both would have a much higher chance of failure.
And Lin Chang knew full well that Lin Wan was a very proud person. Any task assigned to her by President Pei—no matter how difficult she thought it might be—she would never refuse.
In that case… wouldn't that seal the deal perfectly?
Lin Chang was delighted. "So, President Pei, which one do you think suits her better—live streaming or smartphones?"
Pei Qian thought for a moment. "I think smartphones might be the better option."
He had, of course, considered other industries.
For instance, the shared-bike business—it would definitely lose money.
But that couldn't be handed to Lin Wan, since it had nothing to do with gaming. There wouldn't be a good enough justification to assign it to her.
On the other hand, live streaming and smartphone development could both be presented as natural extensions of the gaming business—ways to "expand the ecosystem" and "build a stronger moat" for Tengda's games.
Both industries had fairly high entry barriers, too.
Take live streaming, for example. The bandwidth costs alone were enormous. To handle around 2 million concurrent viewers in a given month, the bandwidth expenses could easily reach 40 million yuan per month.
After all, live streaming was nothing like online gaming—the data transmitted during gameplay was tiny in comparison, meaning far lower bandwidth costs.
Meanwhile, major streaming platforms that came later would have between 6 and 10 million concurrent viewers, with monthly bandwidth costs in the hundreds of millions.
Of course, you could try to do it "on the cheap," but even then, you'd need to invest at least 30–40 million upfront.
If the budget was too small and the project stalled halfway through because they ran out of funds, that would defeat the whole purpose.
Smartphones, on the other hand, were a much more manageable sinkhole.
You could throw in 10 or 20 million and call it a day—after all, when Xiaomi first started, they only had around 10 million in seed money.
Moreover, given the current market climate, live streaming hadn't really taken off yet—it was a blue ocean. But the smartphone industry? That had already become a red ocean, developing much faster than in Pei Qian's previous life.
Big names like Shenhua, Pineapple, and MSC were already tearing each other apart in the market. For smaller manufacturers, the coming years would only get tougher—failure was practically guaranteed.
Even better, Lin Yu just so happened to be in charge of Shenhua's smartphone division.
If Lin Wan released a new phone under her brand, Shenhua could immediately counter with something better and cheaper.
Wouldn't that be perfect?
Lin Chang quickly caught on, clapping his hands in delight. "President Pei, your plan is flawless—absolutely seamless!"
"I really owe you one for this."
"Don't worry, whatever difficulties you run into during the process, we'll do everything we can to help!"
"Oh, right, President Pei—your new game's been getting pretty bad reviews lately. Have you thought about managing the ratings a bit? Maybe cleaning up the comments? It's even trending on Weibo—should I help you take it down?"
"Don't worry, I know people over there. Just say the word, and it'll be handled in minutes."
Lin Chang, who oversaw Shenhua's entertainment division, was well-connected in that world.
He probably felt that he owed Pei Qian too much already, so he wanted to return the favor somehow.
Pei Qian quickly waved his hand. "No, absolutely not!"
"That's all part of the plan!"
Lin Chang immediately understood. "Ah, I see. Say no more. Then I won't interfere. But President Pei—whatever you need in the future, just say it. Your business is my business. You can count on me, no questions asked!"
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