32: Chapter 32 The Era of Live Streaming for Everyone Has Arrived!

During this month...

The team at Riot Games had expanded to over forty people.

IceFrog led the core design group to finalize the first batch of hero skills for league of legends. The art group began working on concept art and models, while the programming group set up the underlying framework and started writing the logic for the first version of combat.

Qin Mo went to Riot Games for an hour or two almost every day. He didn't interfere with specific development details, but he personally reviewed every core design.

In fact, many of the core designs were proposed by him personally.

At the same time...

Douyin's daily active users soared following the terrifying popularity of the final episode of The Rap of China.

On the day of the finals...

The top ten trending topics across the entire internet were split evenly between The Rap of China and Douyin.

The Weibo servers crashed for a full fifteen minutes, and the playback data on video platforms was nearly ten times that of the Singer finals during the same period!

At noon that day, Zhao Lei was in the open office area of Inspur Technology, staring at the real-time backend data. His voice was so loud that people at Riot Games downstairs could hear him.

At this moment...

It had been exactly six months since Douyin was launched.

As a certain number was surpassed...

Zhao Lei projected the backend data panel onto the largest screen in the open office area.

Daily active users: ten million.

Average usage time per person: sixty-three minutes.

The office area fell silent for a moment.

Then, Zhao Lei pulled several bottles of champagne from under the table, placing them one by one on the desk. The bottles clinked with a crisp sound.

“Weikan hasn't made a single move over the past month. Not only were all activities canceled, but there haven't been any subsequent updates. I spent some money to have someone look into it.”

Zhao Lei pulled the cork with a 'pop,' and the foam flowed down the mouth of the bottle onto his fingers.

“All Weikan activities have stopped.”

“Recommendation resources have all been withdrawn, the algorithm team has been disbanded, and the operations team only has basic maintenance left. Penguin has already kicked it out of their core project sequence.”

He raised the champagne bottle in his hand and shouted to everyone standing in the office area.

“We won.”

“This time, against Penguin, we won!”

The office area exploded.

Some were clapping, some were whistling, and some were pounding the tables with their palms.

Zhao Lei poured the champagne into a row of disposable cups, handing them to everyone who reached out.

Lin Xiao stood in the corner.

He held a disposable cup that someone had shoved into his hand, the wine inside trembling slightly. He pushed up his glasses and didn't speak, but his eyes were already red.

After their last project was plagiarized by Penguin, the Boss sold his few remaining assets. With the mindset of his last venture of this lifetime, he created a software with a name that sounded very strange to Lin Xiao at the time: Douyin.

And then...

Penguin came again.

Just like last time, there were overwhelming pop-ups, overwhelming smear campaigns, poaching manufacturers, poaching creators, and throwing mud.

But this time was different from the last.

They held out.

This time, they truly held out.

Qin Mo stood by the window, also holding a cup of champagne, watching the employees celebrating in the office area.

When everyone had quieted down a bit, he spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but everyone heard him.

“Starting next month, all employees in the company will receive a twenty percent salary increase, plus a double salary at the end of the year and performance bonuses.”

The office area was silent for a beat.

Then the cheers were so loud they almost shook the light tubes overhead loose.

Zhao Lei finally managed to squeeze out of the crowd and walk over to Qin Mo.

He was still carrying half a bottle of champagne, and the smile on his face was a bit stiff—clearly, he had been smiling too hard just now.

“Boss, there's one more thing to tell you.”

“The verdict for our lawsuit against Weikan for plagiarism came out yesterday.”

He paused.

“We lost the lawsuit. The court said that similar functions cannot be considered plagiarism and that healthy competition is welcome.”

Qin Mo held his champagne, his expression unchanging.

“It's as expected. Suing them wasn't about winning the lawsuit in the first place.”

“I know, it was to piggyback on their publicity, but seeing them win the judgment still doesn't sit right with me.”

“I don't know when I'll finally be able to vent this frustration.”

Qin Mo set down the champagne, the corners of his mouth curling up slightly.

“You'll feel better very soon.”

“When our league of legends is finished, do you think Penguin will come to sue us?”

“dota's copyrights belong to them. When that time comes, we'll give them back the exact words they used back then: similar functions cannot be considered plagiarism, and healthy competition is welcome.”

Zhao Lei was stunned for a moment.

Then he burst out laughing, laughing so loudly that several nearby employees turned to look.

“Letting them taste what it's like to be plagiarized—that's even more satisfying than winning a lawsuit.”

Qin Mo also smiled again.

“Besides, although we lost the lawsuit, it's not like we can't make use of it.”

“Kicking them while they're down is also quite interesting.”

“Furthermore, Douyin's users have reached a point where we can fully open up live streaming permissions...”

...

That afternoon, a topic quietly climbed to the bottom of the Weibo trending list.

Weikan Wins Lawsuit; Douyin Plagiarism Case Dismissed.

Clicking on it revealed excerpts from the court's judgment.

For a moment, all netizens felt that this trending topic was bought by Weikan to clear its name, but the netizens weren't buying it at all.

The comment section exploded instantly.

“Weikan still has the face to buy trending topics?”

“Copying someone else's stuff and then counter-suing them—I'm impressed by this thick skin.”

“Weikan's daily active users have dropped so much they aren't even fit to carry Douyin's shoes. This legal victory is just a final deathbed struggle.”

“I've lived long enough to see the one who copied the homework win.”

“Was this trending topic bought just to get themselves cursed at?”

“I suggest Weikan change its name to 'Smile,' because you guys are a joke.”

While those inside Weikan were feeling bewildered by this sudden trending topic...

That night...

Inspur Technology's servers were running at full capacity.

Over ten million Douyin users across the country simultaneously received a push notification.

Douyin live streaming permissions are fully open. Everyone has the right to broadcast. Click the button below to start your live room immediately.

Welcome to the era of national live streaming!

...

The Xiao Yang brothers both sprang up from the sofa in their rented apartment at the same time.

They stared at their phone screens in a daze for several seconds.

Last time they broadcasted for twenty minutes, they had to shut it down dejectedly, and they had planned never to touch this thing again.

But below this push notification, there was a line of small text—Comedy creators can try presenting daily filming bloopers in a live stream format.

This was specifically pushed to these comedy bloggers.

“They specifically sent us a suggestion?”

Xiao Yang was stunned for a moment.

Da Yang slapped his thigh, feeling like it might actually work.

“No filming videos today. Let's go live directly.”

The brothers set up the phone on the coffee table and opened the live room.

This time they didn't just sit there; instead, they brought the same skills they used for their comedy skits directly into the live room.

Da Yang imitated Xiao Yang's embarrassing incident of mistaking someone at the supermarket yesterday for the camera, while Xiao Yang dismantled his story from the side and put a plastic basin over his brother's head.

The bullet comments flew by rapidly, and the number of people online jumped from dozens to hundreds, and then from hundreds to thousands.

At the same time, tens of thousands of phone screens across the country lit up with live room feeds.

Old Chen set up his phone in a shoe factory warehouse.

He held up a pair of leather shoes that had just come off the line to the camera, and in somewhat non-standard Mandarin, he read out the questions from the bullet comments one by one.

A viewer asked if the shoes were waterproof. He simply picked up a basin of water and poured it over the shoes. Water splashed everywhere, but the inside of the shoe remained dry.

The bullet comments went wild. The screen was filled with messages like “Honest,” “Followed,” and “This streamer doesn't play around.”

A food blogger was eating barbecue at a roadside stall and casually started a live stream.

Hundreds of people flooded into the live room, asking all at once where the shop was, the average cost per person, and what dishes were good.

The proprietress saw the dense bullet comments on the phone screen and leaned in to shout at the camera that Douyin friends would get a twenty percent discount at the shop.

The blogger pointed the camera at a table of sizzling, oily skewers, took a bite himself, and said indistinctly to the camera, “This is the flavor.”

In another city, Su Xiaomo started a live stream while her roommates were away, introducing her outfits. After several of her videos on Douyin went viral, she could finally afford to buy some nice clothes.

The number of people online wasn't high, only a few dozen, but the bullet comments from those few dozen people never stopped from beginning to end.

They were either praising Su Xiaomo's outfit or asking about makeup techniques.

That same night...

Tens of thousands of ordinary people did the same thing at the same time.

They clicked on that function that once belonged only to big streamers and said their first words to the camera.

Then they discovered that people were actually watching, and people were actually sending bullet comments.

A brother working at a construction site washed his face after work and sat on his dormitory bed in his work uniform to start a live stream.

He couldn't sing or dance; he just chatted with the bullet comments about the things he encountered on the construction site.

As they chatted, the number of people online broke a hundred. He said he had been in this city for four years and it was the first time he felt like someone was listening to him speak.

Within just a few days of Douyin live streaming being fully opened, the phrase “National Live Streaming” hit number one on the Weibo trending list.

The comment section was flooded with organic support.

“Last night I came across a live stream of a big brother working on a construction site eating lunch. Thousands of people were watching, and there were more bullet comments than meat in his bowl.”

“This thing seems really addictive. I tried it today and chatted to the camera for two hours, then found out over a hundred people were listening.”

“My grandma found a live room teaching people how to knit sweaters. Now she's insisting I help her apply for live streaming permissions.”

“This is true national live streaming, not just for internet celebrities.”

The convenience of being able to start a broadcast at any time from a phone was something that platforms like Douyu and Huya could never compete with.

Just a few days after the national live streaming permissions were decentralized...

The total number of daily live rooms on Douyin had already approached ten thousand.

There were live rooms with almost every style and type of content imaginable.