71: Chapter 71: The Penguin's Response, League of Legends' Aggressive Onslaught!

It is worth noting.

Just the day before the internet cafe data update, CS officially announced its latest daily active users.

Because the game genres are different, the MOBA game war did not significantly affect CS; CS's daily active users remained at around 1.3 million.

However, after the internet cafe, Baidu, and Google data were updated.

league of legends had surpassed CS by quite a margin.

Therefore, extrapolating from CS's data, the daily active users of league of legends one week after its open beta had reached at least the 1.5 million level!

It was even possible that it exceeded two million!

After all, being higher than CS's daily active users and lower than dota 2's daily active users meant it was in the range of 1.5 million to 3 million; league of legends' daily active users were at some figure within that range.

It is worth noting.

league of legends only had one million daily active users when it launched its open beta; a week later, it had skyrocketed by at least 500,000.

It was even possible that the daily active users had doubled to reach two million!

This kind of explosive growth in data was quite exaggerated.

You have to realize.

Back then, even dota 2 didn't manage to double its daily active users in a week; at most, it barely managed to raise its peak daily active users to five million, and ultimately, it maintained at three million.

As for heroes of the storm, it went downhill as early as the fourth day of its open beta.

And league of legends' data showed that this game had huge potential; otherwise, it wouldn't have seen such a massive surge in daily active users one week after its open beta.

Everyone had underestimated it before!

The key was that inside Tencent Group, they didn't know if league of legends' daily active users would continue to skyrocket, or just how high they could go.

Meanwhile.

With the release of the latest internet cafe, Google, and Baidu data, many gamers across the entire internet were also shocked by these figures.

"Second on the internet cafe rankings? It actually surpassed CS? CS has 1.3 million daily active users, does this league of legends actually have 1.5 million?"

"I think it's more than that. The previous video of Shadow Zed was too popular; it even became popular abroad and caused a sensation in the global gaming circle. It definitely brought more than 500,000 players to league of legends."

"Even such a viral, mainstream-breaking gameplay video couldn't let league of legends surpass dota 2; dota 2 is still too fierce."

"Interesting, interesting. Could league of legends really challenge dota 2?"

...

Tencent Group headquarters.

The atmosphere in the conference room was completely different from before.

Last time, they were popping champagne here, celebrating dota 2 firmly occupying the position of the world's number one MOBA, and they had completely disregarded league of legends.

But at this moment.

The atmosphere in the conference room was somewhat oppressive, and no one even spoke.

Ma sat at the head of the table, and the projection screen in front of him displayed the national internet cafe game popularity rankings and the game indices from Google and Baidu.

These two sets of data.

dota 2 was ranked first, and league of legends was ranked second.

The proportional gap between the two names was hardly anything at all.

"The retention rate of this game is likely far beyond our estimates."

Sun Qiang's voice broke the silence, but as he spoke, he looked at Ma at the head of the table, fearing he might say the wrong thing.

"If it were only a high download volume, it would be impossible for its internet cafe market share to rush to second place within a week."

"This shows that the vast majority of people who came in have stayed."

"The one million players on the first day of league of legends' open beta likely haven't dropped off much either."

After Sun Qiang finished speaking, Vice President Chen Yongnian pulled up another set of data.

"President Ma, we also compared the search index curves of league of legends and dota 2."

"After dota 2's open beta, its search index slowly declined and then stabilized on a plateau."

"After league of legends' open beta, its search index has been rising."

"Especially after that Zed gameplay video came out, it directly jumped a major step. The gameplay characteristics of league of legends are indeed very easy to attract potential players and casual users."

Ma leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers on the tabletop rhythmically.

He remained silent for a long time.

"Has league of legends still not announced its daily active users?"

Sun Qiang shook his head.

"No, the official blog only posted one battle report on the first day of the open beta."

"It hasn't released any data since then."

"I'm afraid it won't release any data at the one-week open beta milestone either."

Ma's brows furrowed even tighter.

"They are hiding it."

Vice President Chen Yongnian chimed in.

"If the data were growing slowly, they would definitely continue to post battle reports to maintain the hype."

"Not posting means the data is growing even faster than they expected, so fast that they don't want their opponents to know."

There was silence in the conference room for a while longer.

Ma stood up and walked a few steps in front of the projection screen.

"I didn't expect this either."

His voice was not loud, but every word was quite clear.

"After the first day of this game's open beta, the daily active users have actually been increasing."

"And the magnitude of the increase is far beyond normal levels."

He turned around, looked at everyone in the conference room, and after a moment of thought.

"This shows that league of legends has extremely high player stickiness."

"It is not false data piled up by marketing."

"There are really people playing it, and people staying."

"The simplification of league of legends is effective; it has indeed attracted quite a few casual players, and the number of these casual players is not small."

He sat back down and leaned against the back of his chair.

His expression was uncharacteristically serious.

"We cannot just sit and wait for death."

"From now on, dota 2 will simultaneously launch several countermeasures."

"First, launch collaborations and online events to increase the activity of veteran players."

"Second, optimize the beginner tutorial to lower the difficulty for new players to get started."

"Third, further refine the matchmaking pool; new players will only be matched with new players, preventing novices from being crushed and discouraged by veteran players."

"Fourth, optimize the store, launch recommended items and one-click equipment purchase functions to lower the barrier to understanding; at the very least, buying equipment shouldn't be what stops those who want to try dota 2."

Vice President Chen Yongnian was stunned for a moment.

"President Ma, recommended items and one-click equipment purchase?"

"Isn't this something from league of legends?"

Ma glanced at him.

"If it's useful, we learn it."

"league of legends has proven that these things are effective for beginners, why can't we use them?"

Vice President Chen Yongnian nodded and jotted down a few notes in his notebook.

The atmosphere in the conference room loosened up a bit.

"With Tencent Group's scale supporting us, we don't need to fear league of legends."

Sun Qiang spoke up from the side, his tone carrying a hint of confidence.

"dota 2's ecosystem globally is already stable. No matter how much league of legends grows, it can't steal dota 2's players, but we can steal their players back."

"Before, we were indeed careless, but it won't have too much impact on dota 2."

"It's not too late for us to respond now."

Ma did not reply.

His fingers were still tapping on the tabletop.

The rhythm was very slow.

"Get these optimizations done first."

He stood up.

"Stop posting battle reports; push highlight videos across the entire web."

"This time, league of legends comes on strong..."

"But wanting to surpass dota 2 just with this, isn't that thinking a bit too simply?"

Soon.

The news that dota 2 was about to launch an optimized version quickly climbed to the hot searches on major gaming forums.

By the very next day, dota 2 had urgently launched the optimized version, clearly aimed at league of legends.

And league of legends remained silent.

Time continued to flow forward.