[Random Attribute Card]: Permanently boosts one random attribute, with an increase of 1 to 3.
On one hand, it's great—it's a permanent boost. On the other hand, it could've been a much better reward, but it ended up just being a stat boost card. Overall, kind of a letdown.
[Programming] Lv14 → Lv16!
There wasn't any noticeable change, and feeling slightly annoyed, William decided to go to bed.
In the morning, he passed by the second floor and saw Cynthia's door open, meaning she was already up.
He went downstairs and saw someone moving around in the kitchen. A light, pleasant smell was drifting out.
"Want some?" Cynthia was wearing an apron and holding a spatula, frying eggs in the pan.
"Can I?"
"Of course." Cynthia slid the eggs onto a plate and placed it on the island in the middle of the kitchen, next to the sink. "But if we're going to cook at home, we'll need to make time to go grocery shopping."
"Let's do it after work then."
"Mm."
After finishing the eggs, he realized there wasn't anything to drink in the fridge. He'd have to grab some soy milk from downstairs at the office later.
"Do you know how to drive?"
Sitting in the taxi, William was thinking it might be time for the company to get a car. Taking a taxi every day to work wasn't a long-term solution.
Cynthia glanced at him. "Yeah, I do."
"That's good."
Although William could drive, he didn't have a license at the moment. If neither of them could drive, buying a car would be pointless—he definitely wasn't going to hire a full-time driver just for this.
After buying soy milk downstairs, the workday began.
Cynthia's job was to follow up with WeChat Games based on William's ideas—basically to give them a signal that they were open to working together, and also to find out how the investment meeting went.
William planned to work on the next update for Classical Poetry Crossword.
Originally, the new mode was meant to be more fun, but since the game had unexpectedly become the hottest learning app around, he figured he might as well lean into the educational side.
With that in mind, the new mode became a poetry chain game.
There are two ways to play it. The first is the original line-matching style, where one line follows the next from a real poem, like "Before my bed, the bright moonlight / I suspect it's frost on the ground."
The second way is rhyming chain mode. For example: "Before my bed, the bright moonlight / Time flies fast / Seeing each other again, you're thinner…" and so on.
Both versions were easy to make and didn't need any new words added to the database—just some coding.
The two-level bump in his programming skill made William code a little faster. He could feel a slight improvement, though it wasn't a big one.
Focused and efficient, he finished coding the new mode in half a day and pushed the update.
The new mode doubled the game size, from 15MB to 30MB. It wasn't on purpose—because of different code structures, the game needed two separate word banks. They held the same content, but using separate databases was the only way to avoid mixing up the rhyming chain mode with the other two.
William had even thought about stuffing the game with junk code just to inflate the size, but remembering how strict Blue Star's laws were, he gave up. There were probably rules somewhere specifically made to catch that kind of thing, and it wasn't worth the risk.
Right now, *Classical Poetry Crossword* has been downloaded over 200 million times. By midnight tonight, the number will hit a scary new high, which means the studio is about to receive its biggest payment ever.
But since this is actually the studio's first payout, even if it's tiny, it still counts as the biggest.
After finishing some work, William decided to get up and move around. Sitting too long might mess up his back.
As he walked behind Cynthia, he noticed she was wearing headphones and watching a drama.
"What did Tencent say?" William pulled up a chair and sat down next to her.
Cynthia clearly didn't catch that the first time. She paused the show and took off her headphones. "What did you say?"
"What did Tencent say?"
"Oh, a few advertisers are in talks. Looks like we can land maybe 1.4 million."
"That's not much." William pouted. Where's that 'small goal' they talked about?
"That's not much?" Cynthia shot him a look. "Do you know how much it usually costs to put an ad in an app? A thirty-second ad barely earns a few cents per view. What more do you want?"
That number was way lower than William expected. Compared to that, the ad revenue from Jump Jump was actually really solid. The reason it felt small was because he was comparing the wrong things.
"By the way, I think Telecom just released a new policy."
"What?" William suddenly had a bad feeling.
Cynthia picked up her phone from the table, opened Weibo, and pulled up the trending list. "Looks like it's about traffic-based revenue sharing. I haven't read the details yet."
As soon as she said that, William's heart sank. Right now, most of their income came from traffic-based revenue. And the main reason he refused to put their games on the WeChat mini app store was exactly because it didn't offer that kind of revenue share.
He pulled up the full policy and read it carefully. Right then, he knew: the days of easy money were over.
The new rules made two major points. First, there would now be a cap on revenue sharing for free apps. Once a certain amount is reached, the revenue share stops. Right now, the cap is set at 700.000 dollar.
The second point: downloads from app updates would no longer count toward revenue share. In other words, any traffic gained from updates won't earn anything.
The policy takes effect immediately. It's unclear whether last night's numbers will still be counted.
What a headache.
Seeing his face darken, Cynthia asked with concern, "What's wrong?"
"See for yourself." William handed her the phone.
A moment later, Cynthia's face turned just as grim.
She knew how Earth Games made money. Actually, anyone with a bit of industry knowledge would know. A lot of people online had already done breakdowns of how much Earth Games earned from traffic share. And now that Telecom dropped this new policy, many were already guessing that it was specifically aimed at Earth Games. Whether that's true or not, no one could say for sure.
"I can reach out to some of my old clients, see if they're interested in advertising in the game," Cynthia offered.
"No need."
Each ad only brings in a few cents. Sure, forcing every user to watch one could still make a decent amount, but it's not sustainable. Worse, it could ruin the company's reputation. Instead of filling the game with ads, it'd be better to just charge for the game directly.
That said, William had no intention of changing the current games to paid ones. He already had a clear idea of which games should be free and which should cost money—and these small games weren't part of the paid plan.
A game's value should come from the game itself, not a price tag. Once you put a price on it, people expect it to be worth that price. You can't just rely on fans' goodwill to keep the company alive. Do that for too long, and you'll run out of fans.
No doubt about it—today was a terrible day. So bad that after lunch, William just announced they were done working for the day and dragged Cynthia out to pick a company car.
Sure, their income had taken a hit, but eating and living still had to go on. Plans were plans. And the money they had now would last a while anyway.
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