Chapter 1 Sending off Old Liu

After seeing Old Liu off, Tang Yishu returned to her workstation.

"How did it go?" Li Yada asked.

Tang Yishu hesitated for a moment, "The game has a few too many bugs... so I sent him back to fix them, and then come back when the bugs are fixed."

Li Yada was slightly surprised, "Ah? Wasn't this game already launched? How can there still be so many bugs?"

"That doesn't seem right, does it?"

Tang Yishu fidgeted with her fingers, "This, I, I'm not sure."

Li Yada nodded, "Maybe companies outside are not as good as Tengda in all aspects, so the testing team is not very effective. It's okay, you did the right thing."

"It's normal for a game to have one or two bugs, but if there are so many bugs that it affects the normal game flow, it can only mean that the company's work is not in place, the testing department has not fulfilled its responsibilities, and there are internal management problems."

"If there are too many bugs that affect the player's normal experience, then it really shouldn't be released, but should be modified until there are no bugs before being put on the shelves. It was right to turn them down."

"It's okay, this is just one company, let's take a look at another one."

Despite saying that, Li Yada inexplicably had a bad feeling.

Because the first company at least had a game that was already launched, so in theory, there should be relatively few bugs.

The second company's game is still under development.

Although this game called *Empire's Edge* is almost finished, with only the final touches left, and testing must already be underway, the completeness is definitely not as good as those projects that have already been launched.

In all likelihood, there will be more bugs than *Heroes' War*, that knock-off of *Passionate Blood Ballad*.

So, here comes the question.

Is it just bad luck, and the game happened to have bugs, is this a coincidence?

Or are all outside game companies like this?

Li Yada went to work for Tengda not long after entering the industry, so she doesn't have much experience working in other companies.

In her impression, Tengda's games don't seem to be troubled by bugs very much.

Every time during development, bugs pop up like bamboo shoots after rain, the testing department keeps submitting bugs, and the development department keeps fixing them. Generally, before the game is launched, the bugs are basically fixed.

Even if some subsequent modifications are needed after the launch, the workload is often not very large.

So, she always felt that fixing bugs was just a physical task. If the bugs are not fixed by the time the game is launched, it can only mean there's a problem with the attitude.

If you can't even do this kind of physical work well, what else could it be but an attitude problem?

But now it seems that these outside companies really aren't very good?

"Forget it, I don't want to think about it. It was probably just a coincidence before. How could every company fail to fix bugs?"

Li Yada felt that she was overthinking, so she shook her head and stopped thinking about it, and continued to do her own thing.

...

After waiting at her workstation for more than an hour, the boss of the second company arrived on time.

Tang Yishu still followed the previous procedure and invited him to the conference room.

"Director Tang, hello, hello."

"I'm Yan Qi. The information about our company and my personal resume have already been sent over."

Tang Yishu nodded, "Yes, I've seen it. Please sit down."

After Old Liu left, Tang Yishu carefully reviewed the information given by Li Yada again. This time she had plenty of time, so she remembered everything.

Yan Qi and his company can basically be seen as the epitome of many mobile game startups.

He used to be the lead planner in a game company in Shanghai, and the project he led was considered successful, but the boss was too stingy. With a net income of six or seven million a month, the entire project team didn't receive a single penny of bonus.

The boss euphemistically said: the money earned should be used for advertising to earn more money.

He also drew a pie, saying that after a few months of advertising, the money earned by the game might double or triple, and everyone would receive a large bonus at that time.

Yan Qi had been in the workplace for two or three years, so how could he not know how exaggerated this pie was, so he decisively ran away.

He knew he had done the right thing on the day he resigned, because the boss just verbally tried to keep him, without mentioning a raise or bonus.

It can be seen that this boss simply didn't care whether the employees left or not.

This is a normal phenomenon. After all, the game has already been made, and it can earn millions every month with stable operation. Does it matter if the employees run away?

If a lead planner leaves, he can just recruit another one in the future. Anyway, there is no shortage of people in this industry.

After resigning, Yan Qi didn't want to be a senior wage earner for others anymore, so he had the idea of starting his own company.

He was originally from Jingzhou, and he heard that Jingzhou had been developing particularly well in the past two years, and the game entrepreneurship environment was also good, so he gathered a few friends in the industry and came to Jingzhou, established a new mobile game company, and received several million in venture capital from some local investors in Jingzhou.

After working for half a year, the game was made.

The game he made is called *Empire's Edge*, which is an ARPG mobile game, that is, an action game.

Logically speaking, this type of game has a relatively high threshold and is not suitable for startup companies, but thanks to the official editor and Yan Qi's previous work experience, the development went relatively smoothly.

Of course, limited by investment, it certainly can't be said to be particularly excellent, but Yan Qi felt that his own game could be considered of acceptable quality. After being put on the shelves, earning some small money to support the company should not be a problem.

For most mobile game startups, the idea of getting rich overnight may be too unrealistic. The first thing to consider is how to survive.

The game was almost finished, and Yan Qi also contacted many game channels.

For small companies, the more channels the better. As for the revenue sharing ratio, don't think too much about it. Just take whatever they give. Small companies basically have no say.

So, when he heard that there was a new game platform in Jingzhou, and it was quite close to his company's office location, Yan Qi was very happy and came immediately.

"This is the internal test version of our game. Only a small number of players are playing it now. But Director Tang, don't worry, there are very few bugs now, and they basically won't affect the normal game flow."

Tang Yishu nodded and took the phone.

"Okay. President Yan, this is the agreement, please take a look at it first."

"If you are satisfied with the terms of the agreement, and the number of bugs that appear in the game within half an hour does not exceed three, then we can sign the contract today."

Yan Qi took the agreement and felt a little surprised.

It's that simple?

He had also talked to other channel providers, and these channel providers were all more arrogant than the other.

Some offered very low revenue sharing, and some required major changes to the game. Anyway, they all made conditions, but some were particularly excessive, and some were relatively better.

He had never seen a channel like Chaolu Games Platform that only required the number of bugs that appear within half an hour not to exceed three.

Half an hour? Three bugs?

Yan Qi felt that there should be no problem, right?

Although the game *Empire's Edge* has not yet been officially launched, there are many bugs, but these bugs are basically concentrated in some mid-to-late-stage large levels and deep gameplay.

Half an hour is basically just playing through the early stages.

When the game was being developed and tested, because the novice guide had to be optimized, the early content had been modified many times, and there were the fewest bugs.

Yan Qi felt that as long as he wasn't particularly unlucky, he shouldn't encounter three bugs in a row within half an hour, right?

One of the two was testing the game, and the other was looking at the terms of the agreement. The meeting room was temporarily quiet, with only the sound effects of fighting in the game.

Yan Qi had just read the beginning. When he saw that the revenue sharing between the two parties was 50-50, Tang Yishu had already encountered the first bug.

The novice guide was directly stuck. Originally, during the guide process, there would be a gray mask on the screen to block it, highlighting the place where the player should click and indicating it with an arrow, but after clicking the button, the mask did not disappear normally, and the screen remained in a gray translucent state.

"Ah, this..."

Yan Qi was a little embarrassed.

It's not that it's strange to encounter bugs, the key is that it's too fast!

Moreover, he had never encountered this kind of bug in the novice guide, and even their company's testing team had never encountered it.

Before Yan Qi could explain, Tang Yishu had already skillfully closed the game process and re-entered it.

"It's okay, just continue to look at the agreement."

Yan Qi vaguely had a bad feeling, but he couldn't say anything, so he could only continue to read the agreement carefully.

...

Half an hour later, Yan Qi had read the agreement carefully twice, and the number of bugs found by Tang Yishu had finally been finalized.

Within half an hour, Tang Yishu found a total of twelve bugs of various sizes!

Among them, four bugs were very serious. Once they appeared, they would cause the game process to be unable to continue. Although the remaining bugs were not so serious, they also had a very bad impact on the game experience.

Yan Qi's face was a little unsustainable.

There are too many bugs, what's going on!

He even suspected that the program on his phone was installed incorrectly, and that he had brought the development version instead of installing the stable version.

Otherwise, how could there be so many bugs in the early stages of the stable version?

This doesn't make sense at all!

Tang Yishu seemed to have expected this result a long time ago, and handed the phone back, "It's okay, President Yan, it's normal for games to have bugs. You can go back and modify them again. As long as you can control the number of bugs within half an hour to within three, we will sign the agreement."

"By the way, have you read the agreement? Are you satisfied with it?"

Yan Qi nodded, "Satisfied, what's not to be satisfied with? These conditions are already very good for us."

"Don't worry, I've already remembered the bugs you encountered, and I'll have them fix them as soon as possible when I get back!"

"Fixing bugs is our duty, and we even have to thank you. If we hadn't happened to encounter these bugs, we might not have known that there were bugs in this place."

"If these bugs only came out when the game was officially launched, the losses would be huge."

Yan Qi thanked Tang Yishu profusely and left with his phone.