70: Chapter 70: The Popularity Brought by Going Viral

Shancheng, a university dormitory.

Zhou Lei sat in front of his computer, the login screen for dota 2 open on the monitor.

He stared at the login button for quite a while.

In the end, he let out a long sigh and didn't click it.

He wasn't exactly a hardcore dota 2 player; he had played a few dozen matches since the open beta, with a win rate barely over fifty percent.

He liked it, sure, but he had to mentally prepare himself for ages before starting the game every time.

Denying, losing gold on death, juking in the trees to break vision, item recipes—every single aspect felt exhausting.

He had no classes this afternoon and had originally intended to play a couple of games of dota 2.

But the moment he thought about having to pit his wits against others for over forty minutes once he got into the game, his wrists started aching already.

"Forget it, I'll scroll through Douyin for a while first."

He pushed his keyboard aside, picked up his phone, and leaned back in his chair.

He swiped his finger across the screen a few times.

After a few funny videos, a gameplay video of league of legends appeared on the screen.

He frowned and swiped up without even looking.

He had seen notifications for the league of legends open beta that day, but hadn't paid it any mind.

In his impression, the game was just a simplified version of dota 2 and wasn't interesting.

He swiped past a few more videos.

Another league of legends video appeared on the screen.

It was even the same footage.

Just reposted by a different gaming blogger.

Zhou Lei frowned and continued swiping up.

"Why does Douyin keep pushing things I'm not interested in to me?"

He muttered while swiping.

"If I see it again, I'm marking it as 'not interested'."

A few videos later.

The image on the screen changed again, still a league of legends video push. Looking at the thumbnail, it was the exact same video he had seen twice already, just reposted by a different blogger.

Looking at the video, Zhou Lei didn't swipe this time; he pressed and held, intending to select 'not interested'.

Having a game video he found boring constantly pushed to him would annoy anyone.

But the next moment.

Just as he was about to click 'not interested'.

He hesitated and muttered to himself.

"What kind of video gets pushed three times?"

He brought the phone closer and, in the end, didn't click 'not interested', but instead tapped to play it.

The video began to play.

...A few seconds later.

Zhou Lei sat up straight in his chair abruptly.

"Holy crap!"

His voice echoed throughout the entire dormitory.

"This is so cool?!"

The roommate in the opposite bed poked his head out.

"What are you yelling about?"

"Come over and look at this!"

Zhou Lei held up his phone.

"league of legends, someone using some kind of Zed to pull off a one-versus-three. It's so cool; I've never seen such a cool gaming play."

The roommate jumped down from his bed and crowded in front of the phone.

The other two roommates, who had been playing other games, also gathered around.

The four of them stared at Zhou Lei's phone.

Zhou Lei played the video again from the start.

A few seconds later.

"Holy crap, what is this?"

"Although I haven't played this game, this play is way too cool, right? How exactly did they do that?"

"Watch it again."

Zhou Lei played it again.

The four of them huddled around the small phone screen, still unable to help but praise it. Even though they had already watched it once, they were still blown away by the play inside.

"This is just too cool."

Zhou Lei leaned back against his chair, the image of that back-and-forth dashing still replaying in his mind.

"Can league of legends be this cool?"

"Has anyone here played this league of legends? Is this play very hard?"

Everyone shook their heads. Although they all knew about the game, and two of them had even pre-registered for it, they hadn't actually downloaded and played it in the end.

Seeing this, Zhou Lei also muttered to himself.

"I haven't played it either, but it does look interesting. It's so cool."

He paused.

"I can already imagine it."

"After pulling off this move while carrying a girl, I can hear what she'd say."

The four of them exchanged glances, looked up at the ceiling, and then started chuckling together, certain images already forming in their minds.

Even if there were no girls.

Pulling off a move like this in front of the bros would also be incredibly satisfying.

"You carry a girl? I think you'd just be the one getting killed in the background of the video. Based on my gaming talent, I'm sure it won't take long before I can pull it off!"

"I'm going to examine this game with a critical and studious eye. Of course, don't misunderstand; my goal isn't to carry girls."

"Stop talking nonsense, where do we download this game?"

The group scattered and returned to their respective desks.

Zhou Lei also placed his phone on the table and closed the open dota 2 client.

Afterward, he typed the official league of legends website into his browser.

Clicked download.

At the same time, the anxious voices of the other roommates rang out.

"What's the official league of legends website?"

"Just search for league of legends on Baidu."

"Found it, found it."

The same scene was playing out repeatedly all over the country, and was even being replicated overseas.

By the time this video was scrolled past by Zhou Lei.

The view count for this video on Douyin had already surpassed ten million, and the likes had long since broken a million.

It wasn't just Douyin.

On Weibo and Bilibili, this video had also surged onto the trending lists.

Of course.

There was Qin Mo's assistance behind this; the trending spots on Weibo and Bilibili at the start were bought by Inspur Technology.

After he scrolled past this video on Douyin, he immediately arranged for the operations team to push the video across all platforms. In addition to domestic platforms, they promoted it on overseas platforms simultaneously.

After all, he couldn't wait for this video to ferment slowly; that would be too slow.

And relying on the quality of the video itself, all he needed to do was get the ball rolling.

Under Twitter's gaming category, the triple kill video of Shadow Zed went straight to the number one spot on the trending list.

On the gaming sections of other overseas social platforms, people even specifically started threads to discuss this play, which also attracted a great deal of attention.

"The skill ceiling of league of legends is way higher than I imagined."

"Isn't this game a simplified version of dota? How is it even flashier than dota?"

"What's simplified is the barrier to entry, not the skill ceiling."

"I've been playing league of legends for three days, and I simply can't stop."

"dota 2 feels exhausting to me, while league of legends feels exhilarating."

Under this video on Bilibili and Weibo, the comments section had completely exploded.

"Is this a play a human can pull off? It made my scalp tingle!"

"So that's how you play the champion Zed."

"I've played Zed for three days, and now I feel like I'm playing a different champion."

"Is this what league of legends is?"

"Just how high is the skill ceiling of this game? I have to go try it too."

The client download volume for league of legends, after that video was released, started to jump upward at a terrifying speed.

Quite a few potential players, after scrolling past the video, all wanted to try their hand at it personally.

However, at this time.

Inside Tencent, there was still no reaction; they hadn't even taken any countermeasures or launched events, just letting things take their course.

They felt that these players attracted by gameplay videos wouldn't stay anyway; after all, high-level plays look cool, but are very hard to pull off oneself.

Once this group of players discovered they couldn't reach the level of the plays in the video, they would soon get bored and quit.

They didn't believe that league of legends could retain these bandwagon players based on its own gameplay.

And under the heated discussion across the entire internet.

Time continued to flow forward.

Soon, it was one week since the league of legends open beta.

This day was also the moment for the weekly update of the national internet cafe game popularity rankings.

On the data dashboard, dota 2 was firmly in first place; since the open beta, it had dominated the rankings and had never come down.

But what no one had expected was.

One week into the league of legends open beta, it had actually climbed directly to the second spot. CS was pushed to third, dota 1 was pushed to fourth, and heroes of the storm had already dropped to fifth!

It wasn't just the internet cafe market share.

In the search indices for the gaming sector on Baidu and Google, league of legends had also surged to second place over the past week! Second only to dota 2.

By this time.

Inside Tencent, they finally felt that something was wrong.