115: Chapter 115 The Eligible One Takes Down the Main Character!

If one were to say that, just this afternoon, the gap between the two games hadn't been fully realized yet.

alliance of valiant arms was still able to maintain a shred of reputation thanks to its massive spending on publicity and marketing.

Then, by the time evening arrived, public opinion across the entire internet had completely flipped, and positive trending searches related to crossfire dominated the top spots on all major social platforms.

The popularity of Zombie Mode continued to climb at a staggering speed.

On Douyin, video clips from Zombie Mode livestreams were constantly being pushed to users' recommendation feeds; even players who weren't interested in shooter games would take a second look when they scrolled past these videos.

The excitement and satisfaction of crossfire's Zombie Mode could be felt just by watching the videos.

The comment sections of every video were packed with players who had just switched over from alliance of valiant arms.

"I played alliance of valiant arms for three hours this morning, but after playing one round of Zombie Mode this afternoon, I can never go back."

"This is the satisfaction a shooter game should have. What do you even call alliance of valiant arms? A car repair simulator."

"Who was it that said Zombie Mode was an obsolete mode? This mode is clearly more fun than any other FPS mode."

By evening.

A video of Zombie Mode movement techniques uploaded to Bilibili quickly surpassed one million views.

In the video, the player jumped continuously within the Bio-Pyramid, jumping from the ground to a wooden crate, from the crate to a wall, and then bouncing left and right on top of the wall.

A large group of zombies followed behind, but not a single one could catch up.

The comments didn't stop from start to finish.

"Is this guy part monkey?"

"So this is how you can play this game? I've been crouching in a corner waiting to be caught for ages."

"This is the correct way to play Zombie Mode. Camping is just for beginners; movement techniques are the essence! I've been practicing constantly."

Just as the video was about to end, the movement expert in the video had just typed out a taunt.

The next moment, a voting prompt popped up.

A group of people were spamming F11 in the chat box, and just a few seconds later, the person who had been showing off their movement was voted out of the room. The video ended there.

Watching this scene, the comments exploded instantly, with "hahaha" filling the entire screen.

Even though Zombie Mode had just launched, and even though these movement techniques had only just been discovered.

The other players in crossfire had already mastered how to deal with these movement-focused players.

That was the universal solution: vote them out!

If you show off your movement at the start of a round, it's fine, but if you are the last survivor and you're still jumping left and right here.

Then don't blame us for voting you out immediately!

Meanwhile, in the evening.

A brand new entry also surged to the number one spot on the Weibo trending list at lightning speed, with an equally high level of discussion.

"alliance of valiant arms is a scam!"

Clicking on this entry led to a compilation video of previous hype from various streamers and mindless praise from many media outlets.

In the first half of the video, Old C said in his livestream that alliance of valiant arms was the most satisfying shooter he had ever played, while another streamer claimed that Escort Mode was a revolutionary innovation.

A gaming media outlet's review article was titled "alliance of valiant arms Redefines the Shooter Game."

In the second half of the video, the footage cut to actual gameplay.

Repairing cars. Getting blown up by rockets. Continuing to repair cars.

The kill feedback was just a line of small text, and the shooting sensation was so dull that you couldn't even tell if you had hit anyone.

Putting the comparison together, the effect was quite ironic.

The view count for this video exceeded three million within a few hours.

The comment section completely exploded.

"This isn't a scam, it's a robbery."

"Why didn't you mention that the 'realistic' feel needed getting used to when you were taking their money?"

"Where are all those streamers who were hyping it up before? Come out and show yourselves."

Almost all streamers on Douyu and Huya who had been broadcasting alliance of valiant arms had now gone offline; even the few who were toughing it out in the afternoon couldn't hold on any longer.

All the media outlets that had praised alliance of valiant arms beforehand had sheepishly deleted all their articles and even closed their comment sections just hours after the game's open beta launch.

With Zombie Mode as a comparison, alliance of valiant arms' Escort Mode was being ruthlessly bashed by countless angry players.

"Escort Mode is just repairing cars and grabbing rockets. Whoever grabs the rocket gets to have fun, while everyone else is just tagging along."

"I played five rounds of Escort Mode; four were spent repairing cars, and in one, I was killed on the way to grab a rocket."

"Has the designer of this mode even played it themselves?"

That night, the final entry surged onto the trending list.

"The Discarded Product Overthrows the Mainstream!"

...

The next afternoon, Tencent Group headquarters.

The atmosphere in the conference room was so oppressive it made it hard to breathe.

The long table was filled with people on both sides, but no one spoke.

Pony sat at the head of the table, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the tabletop.

"How did alliance of valiant arms perform yesterday?"

Vice President Chen Yongnian stood up, his voice sounding dry.

"There were 2.8 million player logins."

Theoretically speaking.

This number was already quite exaggerated; after all, dota 2 and heroes of the storm, with their global publicity, only had three million players on their first day, and that was for the global market, not a single market.

And it took a collaboration with league of legends, which had 40 million daily active users, and a legendary skin giveaway event for crossfire to reach 3.3 million on its first day.

alliance of valiant arms' figure was only 500,000 less than crossfire's first-day numbers.

Yet, faced with this quite high number.

No one's expression in the room turned positive, and the atmosphere remained just as oppressive.

Because everyone understood.

Although the first-day performance looked good, the reputation of alliance of valiant arms had completely exploded; it was impossible that they hadn't seen the overwhelming negative reviews online yesterday.

So they had long understood that this game had likely been sentenced to death; it hadn't captured the players' needs at all, and Escort Mode was being completely crushed by Zombie Mode.

They could already foresee what would happen to this number once the first-day events were over.

Pony was silent for a moment, then spoke again, asking the question everyone wanted the answer to.

"How many players have logged in today, as of now?"

Sweat beaded on Vice President Chen Yongnian's forehead as he glanced at the latest data on his phone.

"Five—fifty thousand."

His voice grew lower and lower.

Pony leaned back against the chair and closed his eyes for a moment.

"What's the projected total for today?"

Vice President Chen Yongnian's lips moved, and he squeezed out a few words from his throat.

"I'm afraid it won't even reach one million."

There was a deathly silence in the conference room.

Not even one million.

The numbers couldn't even be called a halving; it didn't even compare to CS.

You have to realize that after the impact of crossfire, CS, because it focused on competitiveness, ended up differentiating itself from crossfire and still maintains over a million daily active users.

Yet alliance of valiant arms, only on its second day, no longer had those kinds of numbers.

Pony opened his eyes and asked again.

"What do you project alliance of valiant arms will eventually stabilize at in terms of daily active users?"

Vice President Chen Yongnian was silent for a long while.

Then he spoke, his voice so low it was almost inaudible.

"Based on the current online reputation and the rate of player churn, I'm afraid it will only end up at around 500,000."

Hearing this number, there was a deathly silence in the conference room.

500,000.

Tencent had spent who knows how much in resources on publicity—buying trending searches, getting streamers to endorse it, bribing media outlets, and collaborating with all of Tencent's games to give away Q-Coins.

And in the end, it only bought them 500,000 daily active users.

This result was simply too absurd; it meant that all their initial investment had basically gone down the drain. With this number of daily active users, it would just be considered a second-tier product within Tencent.

Meanwhile.

Just when there was incomparable silence in the conference room, Sun Qiang's phone vibrated.

He looked down at the screen.

His expression changed within a few seconds.

He looked up, his voice trembling slightly.

"crossfire just announced yesterday's results."

He turned his phone screen around to let everyone see the number on it.

"As of 3:30 PM yesterday."

"crossfire reached six million concurrent players."