Luo Ming heard Rong Mu’s exclamation and leaned over to take a look. Then he said with a surprised expression, “That’s definitely a lot.”
The backend clearly showed the number of paid copies at 63,286.
63,000 copies might seem like half of the 120,000 sold domestically in a single day.
But what was the domestic situation like?
That was Sister Shan playing tactical games—hyping up related topics to an extremely high level of popularity and maximizing the emotional engagement of netizens.
Not to mention anything else, the trending hashtags for Plants vs. Zombies were still up on Weibo right now!
But overseas? There was no Sister Shan and her tactics over there. Steam hadn’t given them any promotional resources at all. Relying purely on the entertainment value of those two streamers, Plants vs. Zombies had managed to achieve nearly half of its domestic first-day sales. That was incredible!
“Er Ming, I finally get it. Why you insisted on releasing Plants vs. Zombies on Steam from the very beginning. Compared to overseas, the domestic environment just isn’t suited for this kind of buy-to-play game.”
Luo Ming didn’t say anything. He had indeed been targeting the overseas market from the start—he just hadn’t planned on investing this heavily in finding streamers to promote the game abroad.
Luo Ming’s release strategy had been much more conservative. He wanted to go the route of building up word-of-mouth and turning things around. The specific tactics would only become usable once the PS4 launched.
He never expected that after Sister Shan took over the publishing work, she’d immediately and decisively pull off a “Christmas Battle” strategy, choosing to spend big money on YouTube streamers for promotion.
Now it seemed Sister Shan’s approach was clearly the more suitable one.
“Er Ming, so our Plants vs. Zombies has finally opened up sales overseas?” Rong Mu asked.
“Our game quality isn’t bad—you can tell from the mere 7% refund rate.
With stable game quality and follow-up promotion keeping pace, theoretically speaking, our game already has the soil to become a big hit.”
“So next, do we just wait to bag the money?” Rong Mu asked excitedly.
“No. What we need to do next is the most important thing of all—we need to start implementing anti-piracy measures.
The hotter Plants vs. Zombies gets, the faster pirated and cracked versions will appear.
Once a cracked version shows up, fewer and fewer people will pay for our game, and our profits will take a hit.
So at the very least, we need to make sure there’s no large-scale circulation of cracked versions within the first month of release.”
Rong Mu’s expression immediately turned serious. He’d heard Luo Ming say long ago that no matter what game it is, early word-of-mouth is the most important thing.
The better the early word-of-mouth, the faster the game’s initial revenue generation—especially for buy-to-play games. The initial launch period is almost always the peak of a game’s sales data.
At a time like this, anti-piracy really was the most important thing.
“So Er Ming, what exactly do we need to do?” Rong Mu asked.
“Anti-piracy is like anti-cheat—it’s virtually impossible to completely eliminate. As things stand, the best ways to prevent piracy are two: one, speed up the release of fun DLC updates.
The other is a unique encryption method. I’ve already written it—it’s called Denuvo, or D Encryption in Chinese.
Our game already has Denuvo installed, and it’s written in the user agreement. Barring any surprises, those pirates have already discovered my Denuvo.”
“What exactly is this Denuvo you wrote?” Rong Mu asked curiously.
“Simply put, Denuvo is a digital rights management technology that prevents games from being cracked. With this protection in place, the encryption reactivates whenever device information changes, and each account can only activate 5 times per day.
For example, if you want to log into your account and play Plants vs. Zombies on different computers, you switch from one to the next and run the game. By the sixth computer, you won’t be able to launch it—you’ll have to wait 24 hours.”
“Holy crap! Does that even work? Players paid for legitimate copies of our game—what gives us the right to restrict them to changing hardware info fewer than 5 times a day?
I paid my money. I have 10,000 computers, and I want to play on each one of them. That’s my right as a legitimate user!” Rong Mu said with a frown.
“You’re right. Denuvo will definitely make players feel their rights are being infringed. That’s why I only added it to the user agreement and didn’t directly publicize the agreement’s contents to players—you could say I exploited a loophole!
What I originally had in mind was that after Sony’s PS4 launches, I’d use this anti-piracy method to strike a deal with Sony—get them to give us promotional resources for Plants vs. Zombies, and have them take the heat for us at the same time.”
“Er Ming, how long can this method delay the appearance of pirated copies of Plants vs. Zombies?” Rong Mu asked after a moment of silence.
“About half a month.”
“Does Sister Shan know about this?”
Luo Ming shook his head.
“Then I’ll talk to Sister Shan about it in a bit and see what she says. Besides this Denuvo, you mentioned speeding up fun DLC updates—do you have new level designs in mind?” Rong Mu asked.
“It’s not level design—the first batch of DLC updates I’m planning is mainly plant upgrades. Players will be able to use in-game currency to buy more versatile and more interesting plants.”
“You mean adding more upgrade plants on top of the existing shop system, right?”
“Yes. I’m planning to release this DLC in about half a month. By then, barring any surprises, the first batch of pirated copies will have appeared.
Updating the DLC at that point can maximize the incentive for players to buy legitimate copies.
The next update will be a week after that. For that one, I’m planning to add multiplayer elements to Plants vs. Zombies.”
“But isn’t Plants vs. Zombies a single-player game?” Rong Mu asked curiously.
“Even single-player games have plenty of online and multiplayer elements to tap into. There’s a lot to work with there.
Take Steam, for example. Steam has an achievement system, and every achievement has a data point.
Steam specifically displays what percentage of players have earned each achievement.
If you’re playing a legitimate copy without an internet connection, you absolutely won’t have that data—and pirated copies definitely won’t either. That’s also a big part of the fun.
We can borrow this idea from Steam and add an achievement system to Plants vs. Zombies, while also displaying how many players have earned each achievement.
This update can also push some users who enjoy collecting and socializing to buy legitimate copies.
With these two DLC updates plus my Denuvo, dragging things out for a month shouldn’t be a problem.
As for after a month, I’ll remove Denuvo. There’s no point in guarding against thieves forever. At that point, whether people choose pirated or legitimate copies, we’ll just let nature take its course.
Of course, we’ll still need to release DLC later on, but each DLC update will be about reigniting the popularity of Plants vs. Zombies.
Or when we launch spin-off titles for Plants vs. Zombies—like Plants vs. Zombies Mobile—we can use that to draw players’ attention.”
After hearing Luo Ming’s words, Rong Mu looked at him with admiration all over his face.
He truly hadn’t expected that Er Ming had already thought of so many anti-piracy methods before the game even launched.
He’d even written Denuvo and added it to the game.
“Er Ming, you really are a genius in this area—dong dong dong!” A sudden knock at the door interrupted Rong Mu’s words.
Rong Mu frowned and asked, “Who is it?”
“President Rong, someone’s here to see President Luo.”
“Tell them to wait—”
“Wood, I know the person who’s here. You go talk to Sister Shan about the anti-piracy stuff first. I’ll meet with him.”
Rong Mu nodded and turned to leave.
A moment later, receptionist Li Yunting led Tong Mingwei in.
After Li Yunting left, Luo Ming smiled and greeted him: “You must be Mr. Tong, right? Hello! I’ve heard Wenwen mention you.”
“President Luo is too kind. I’m here to throw in my lot with you—I wonder if President Luo can spare a bowl of rice for me?”
“Mr. Tong, there’s no rush about work matters. Have a seat first and let’s chat.”
Tong Mingwei nodded and sat down on the guest sofa.
“Mr. Tong, Wenwen told me—you’re quite interested in AI, and the only reason you’d come to my company is because you heard about my idea for an intelligent chatbot, right?”
“That’s right. President Luo’s idea is very interesting. I think this concept has the potential to change the future of an entire industry.”
“Mr. Tong, to be honest with you, similar products have actually already appeared on the market…”
“I know.” Tong Mingwei cut Luo Ming off.
“You know?”
“Yes. What President Luo is probably referring to is the intelligent voice robot built with iBot as its algorithm model—a large-scale pre-training method suitable for visual tasks.
I’ve looked into that robot. It’s not what I want to build, and it has nothing to do with the neural network architecture you mentioned, President Luo.”
Luo Ming sighed upon hearing this. He hadn’t expected Tong Mingwei to have already done so much homework. In that case, whether he said the rest or not made no difference.
“It seems Mr. Tong has made up his mind.”
“So can I stay?” Tong Mingwei asked.
Luo Ming nodded.
“Thank you, President Luo.”
“Mr. Tong, don’t thank me just yet. You know the situation here—it’s a ragtag outfit with nothing to speak of. My plans for the company don’t include anything AI-related for the time being.
The next phase is two mobile games. Then, once we’ve accumulated enough capital, we’ll start developing a news app centered on big data, similar in function to a portal website.
Only after that app takes off will there be any possibility of work involving AI technology.”
Tong Mingwei was clearly well-prepared for this. He nodded and said, “I understand President Luo’s plan. This portal-style app is meant for big data collection, right? At that point, the collected big data can be used to feed the AI.”
“What you just described is also one of the app’s functions, isn’t it!” Luo Ming said, following Tong Mingwei’s line of thought.
“Then I have even less of a problem. President Luo has already made the relevant plans and is working toward that goal. I’m willing to stay at Zhuoguang and progress together with the company!”
