At first, this trending topic didn’t attract much attention. It wasn’t until it got connected to Lin Shuwen’s Weibo post that netizens became curious.
In the evening, Lin Shuwen posted a set of lifestyle photos on Weibo.
The photo in the bottom right corner showed Lin Shuwen in casual clothes, sitting on a gaming chair with a guitar in her arms. On the computer screen behind her was a rather interesting background—a row of large red text that read: “The zombies mercilessly ate your brains.”
At first, Lin Shuwen’s fans just thought her wallpaper was kind of funny.
But as the trending topic appeared, Lin Shuwen’s fans quickly discovered that the game mentioned in the trending topic was exactly where the “The zombies mercilessly ate your brains” on Lin Shuwen’s computer came from.
This got Lin Shuwen’s fans all excited, and they rushed off to download the game.
What Sister Shan had people release was Plants vs. Zombies up to level 2-6, along with a fun bonus level called Wall-nut Bowling.
There weren’t many levels—you could beat it in about half an hour.
After trying it out, Lin Shuwen’s fans and curious passersby who downloaded it all felt the game was pretty fun. Some even went to Lin Shuwen’s Weibo to leave comments asking if there would be more content.
But what nobody expected was that Lin Shuwen actually deleted her Weibo post after being asked.
Now both Lin Shuwen’s fans and regular netizens felt something was off.
About half an hour later, Lin Shuwen posted a new Weibo, and its content instantly caused a huge uproar.
The title of Lin Shuwen’s new post was just one sentence: “I’m begging everyone to stop downloading Plants vs. Zombies.”
The content of the post explained the situation with Plants vs. Zombies.
After reading it, netizens learned that this game was actually a new work from Zhuoguang, the game company that had previously developed 2048, and it was scheduled for official release on Christmas Eve.
Because Lin Shuwen was friends with the boss of Zhuoguang, she had gotten an early internal test version—which was the photo netizens had seen earlier.
And just a few hours ago, Zhuoguang’s servers had been hacked, causing part of the game to leak. For a small company like Zhuoguang, this was a devastating blow.
Lin Shuwen was speaking up for her friend, hoping netizens would stop downloading Plants vs. Zombies and instead support the official version on Christmas Eve if they wanted to play.
The moment Lin Shuwen’s post went up, Sister Shan directly bought it onto the trending list. Within minutes, the phrase “Plants vs. Zombies game leaked” shot up Weibo’s trending topics.
With Lin Shuwen’s popularity and influence behind it, the topic quickly climbed to the top of Weibo’s trending list.
“Holy crap! So this game was maliciously leaked?”
“Hackers are really disgusting! Wenwen’s post says the boss of Zhuoguang spent 2 years painstakingly polishing this game, and it just gets leaked like this?”
“Right?! I thought Zhuoguang’s 2048 was pretty fun, and this game is really interesting too. A conscientious game company like this won’t go under because of a leak, will it?”
“I wonder how much this game costs? If it’s not too expensive, I’ll go support the official version when it comes out.”
“I’ll go too. It’s not that I sympathize with them—I just played it earlier and genuinely think it’s great. I really want to play the later levels.”
“+1, trash games can leak all they want—I don’t want to play after a few minutes. But this game feels really good, worth supporting the official version.”
Netizens who came to spectate saw the overwhelmingly positive comments under the Weibo post and got interested in Plants vs. Zombies too.
Of course, not all these positive comments were from regular passersby—especially the ones about buying the official version, most of which were posted by paid commenters hired by Sister Shan.
But the onlookers had no idea who was posting these comments, and they subtly influenced some netizens’ thinking.
After that, things developed just as Sister Shan had envisioned. Netizens cursed the leakers verbally, but their actions were anything but slow—they immediately went to find the leaked game and tried it out.
The onlookers already had a favorable first impression of Plants vs. Zombies, and combined with the game’s genuinely high quality, many got won over and spontaneously voiced their support for the game. In just one night, Plants vs. Zombies-related topics shot into Weibo’s top three trending.
When Rong Mu saw how effective Sister Shan’s move was, he was so excited he couldn’t sleep all night.
The next day, Rong Mu showed up at the company with dark circles under his eyes and happened to run into Zhao Ningyuan, who also had dark circles.
Zhao Ningyuan hadn’t slept all night either.
But unlike Rong Mu, who hadn’t slept out of excitement, Zhao Ningyuan hadn’t slept out of worry.
The Plants vs. Zombies leak gave Zhao Ningyuan the feeling of being betrayed by his girlfriend who leaked company secrets.
If Plants vs. Zombies suffered because of this, his career in this industry would be completely over—he’d never have a chance to turn things around.
Zhao Ningyuan had been holding onto a sliver of hope, but when he saw Rong Mu with the same dark circles, he went completely numb.
At that moment, Zhao Ningyuan had only one thought in his head: “This is the end!”
The other people at the company also felt somewhat desperate when they saw how Rong Mu looked.
Rong Mu noticed the atmosphere in the office was a bit off and was about to ask when “Luo Ming” happened to come out of the office.
“Everyone, development for the PC version of Plants vs. Zombies is complete. President Rong will handle the publishing side, so we don’t need to worry about that. Our next task is to start working on the mobile version of Plants vs. Zombies.”
“President Luo, is the game publishing really going to be okay?” Su Qing, the art team leader, asked tentatively.
“No problem at all! Everything is going according to plan.”
“But hasn’t our game already been leaked?” Zhao Ningyuan couldn’t help asking.
Rong Mu suddenly understood—so that’s why the atmosphere in the office was so weird!
“Ahem! Everyone, don’t worry. I was really worried too when I first heard the news yesterday, but after reading the comments online, I actually felt much more at ease!” Rong Mu cleared his throat and said.
“Why would President Rong feel at ease?”
“It’s simple—because netizens’ reviews of our game are mostly positive, and not that much of the game leaked. My guess is this won’t hurt our game’s release at all—it’ll actually serve as free advertising and boost our game’s exposure. I’m confident our sales won’t be low.”
Rong Mu’s words were firm and forceful, but paired with his dark circles and haggard appearance, they weren’t very convincing. The company staff just assumed Rong Mu was trying to comfort them.
And so, with even their own people not feeling very optimistic, time came to Monday, December 23rd.
Luo Ming and Lin Shuwen had also switched back.
At 11:50 PM on December 23rd, Zhuoguang was still brightly lit. All the employees, including the boss, were still at work—because Plants vs. Zombies was about to go live!
