Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 484: Chapter 467: Illegal Gambling Case in the Virtual World!

Frankly speaking, if NetDragon made this game, Lincoln would not hesitate to wave his cash to dig up the talents.

It’s just that considering that Flying Fox isn’t an easy partner either, it’s a bit embarrassing for everyone to do so.

Lincoln reacted like this, and one can imagine how excited the players were.

Players who stayed up all night playing games like Lincoln don’t have Mavis to urge them to catch up on sleep.

After finishing the game, they transformed into die-hard fans of Flying Fox, frantically posting “Flying Fox is awesome!” wherever they could.

Various game media and self-media outlets also followed up in time, singing high praises for “The Last Moment.”

“Full score game,” “Perfect game,” “The final glory of VR games” … all kinds of overstated compliments were poured out like water.

Game industry insiders, being practitioners themselves, could deeply appreciate the greatness of the game—from the exploration of hardware capabilities to the game’s storyline, pace arrangement, and detail handling, they were full of admiration for every aspect of the game.

And along with that, they felt the inevitable regret.

That morning, Flying Fox’s “The Last Moment” became the undisputed center of attention in the player circle!

So much so that Cloud Dream’s unprecedented release of 40 million [Mirage 2.0] units didn’t cause much of a stir.

On the contrary, this news caused a massive sensation overseas.

Cloud Dream hadn’t publicized its collaboration with Australian and Russian companies before the deal was settled.

However, in Australia and Russia, as soon as the collaborations started, gossip began to circulate. Upon successfully returning to their countries with Cloud Dream’s contracts and technical staff, everyone couldn’t wait to spread the news.

They didn’t make much money from Cloud Dream’s console and games, and they didn’t have much say in the game’s operations either.

But they were still incredibly excited about the collaboration’s success!

Of course, it wasn’t because Cloud Dream had charmed them, but because there were bigger profits waiting for them—game event organization application rights and domestic brand partner settlement bonuses.

—How much can you earn from players? It’s all about earning the capitalist’s money!

Besides, if Cloud Dream’s game events are well organized, they can make a fortune too.

And the most critical part is—this money can be earned continuously!

All they need to do is to go through the usual procedures, such as clearing the channels, promoting the events, and maintaining after-sales services – all of it without any pressure.

Who wouldn’t be excited about that?

Players in both countries were just as thrilled.

They couldn’t wait for their local partners to purchase in bulk from Cloud Dream and supply the goods. Even if it meant spending a lot of extra money on logistics, they immediately placed orders with Cloud Dream and bought the Mirage console.

As long as the server is connected, they can enter the virtual world at the first opportunity.

This caused the 40 million Mirage consoles to drop in inventory like flowing water—players from Southeast Asian countries were also eagerly placing orders!

Especially those from Siam—Lincoln even hesitated to call them “players” since many of them went in just to play cards.

On Thursday, a funny piece of news came out—undoubtedly amusing to the netizens and media of Daxia.

Police in Siam cracked down on a case of illegal gambling in the virtual world.

This case was nothing short of absurd—

Eight people set up a gambling stall in the virtual world to play cards.

Some played cards, some placed bets, and some were responsible for calculating the changes in chips.

After every 10 rounds, everyone would go offline, transfer money to each other, and settle the gambling stakes.

After the transfers were completed, they would go back online and continue to gamble.

This method of gambling was supposedly foolproof—Siam police couldn’t see what was happening in the virtual world, and Cloud Dream officials couldn’t control what users were doing offline.

So how did the case finally get solved?

It’s tough to organize such a small-scale gambling stall among strangers—

The trust issue is hard to solve: no one knows each other, so how can I know if I give you money, will you give it to me?

So these people were actually acquaintances.

As a result, one unlucky gambler lost too much, got desperate, refused to pay, and got coerced by the other gamblers to go to an ATM and withdraw money, even getting beaten up in the process.

Having both lost money and been beaten up, he couldn’t take it anymore?!

In the heat of anger, this guy went straight to the police station and turned himself in.

Then the police arrested all of them based on the group chat and transfer records he provided…

The players first heard the news from Mario, the “Hermaphrodite Friend,” in his live broadcast room.

At that time, the viewers in the live broadcast room were all laughing.

By the way, there are a considerable number of overseas anchors in Cloud Dream’s live broadcast rooms. Thanks to the straightforward comment and voice translation functions, the interaction between the anchor and the viewers has almost no barriers.

Only occasionally does a misunderstanding arise, especially when dealing with proper nouns like names and places.

Many game media outlets looked for the related news when they heard about it and successfully found it!

So, this case immediately became a hot topic.

At that time, Samuel asked Lincoln if he wanted to respond or if there was any way to prevent it.

Lincoln immediately shook his head and refused.

Such a thing is impossible to regulate.

Unless you completely ban all Siam’s players from playing cards in the virtual world, it would still be challenging to enforce even that.

With the high degree of freedom that Lincoln gave players in the virtual world, these people could run into a game, chop down a tree, and manually carve a set of mahjong tiles.

If they wanted to block even this aspect, it would involve another set of more complex algorithms.

Lincoln was just too lazy to do this.

If they really wanted to gamble, they could use the mobile phone chat software and throw dice to gamble. This really wasn’t something Cloud Dream needed to manage.

Just like that, the inventory of [Mirage 2.0] consoles rapidly decreased while Flying Fox’s “The Last Moment” reputation continued to ferment.

However, when compared, the reputation of “The Last Moment” is difficult to transform into sales.

Existing users are not a problem, and under the influence of word of mouth, many can still be activated.

But using word of mouth to drive more hardware device sales to create new users is extremely difficult.

Even the small inventory left by Flying Fox is very slow to decrease.

Boss Lü Hui of Flying Fox even felt that even if Cloud Dream’s 40 million Mirage 2.0 stockpile was cleared, his less than 1 million devices still would not be enough…

Ultimately, a set of VR equipment is simply too expensive.

Compared with that, Cloud Dream is much better: each Mirage console sold also drives the sales of their other games.

Just like everyone’s daily shopping, after buying a big-ticket item, it is easy to bring home many peripheral items. Users who buy a Mirage console are likely to buy a few games as well.

Are the games expensive?

A bit expensive.

But compared to the console, it’s very cheap.

So almost every time a console is put on the shelf, it’s a natural game promotion event.

That evening, Night City’s [Circular Concert Hall] quietly held a new “concert”.

Without any promotion, it was just the players who were using the “rewatch” function to relive Alex’s concert that happened to stumble upon it.

During the ongoing concert, the music suddenly slowed down, stopped, and the lights dimmed.

When the lights came back on, it was the King of Heaven Franklin – who started his career as a singer, then turned movie star, and now rarely holds concerts – standing on stage.

At first, everyone was excited and invited their friends to come and watch this surprise concert together.

But after just two songs, some fans realized that this looked very familiar…

“Isn’t this… the same performance from Franklin’s concert three years ago?”

Some people immediately looked up the video for comparison, and it turned out it was indeed identical.

Of course it was identical! This was a “screening right” that Cloud Dream spent money on and only after being remade did it become a virtual reality version.

This was an alternative for when they could not invite the King or Queen of singers – Lincoln would rather play videos than invite strange young idols to sing some mediocre songs.

In the end, although the Princess arrived with great fanfare and invited Mavis, this work was not put aside and has been remade into eight concerts so far.

These will be reproduced in the [Circular Concert Hall] once a week.

For each complete concert experience, players can receive a special “record” item, which they can use in their own game world to enable the “rewatch” function in the [Circular Concert Hall] at any time.

This is similar to an alternative collection system, which turns the [Circular Concert Hall] into a functional, personal “record player” for players.

The only exception is Mavis’ [Time to Meet] concert.

For any player who enters the Circular Concert Hall and unlocks the “record player” function, this [Time to Meet] record will be directly unlocked.

Many players who couldn’t watch Mavis’ concert in full due to the online chaos caught up through this system.

Interestingly, with the sales of Mirage consoles skyrocketing, many talent agencies that had been contacted earlier began to feel regretful and started reaching out to Cloud Dream proactively to say, “we could consider cooperation”.

After Mavis’ concert, they became even more open, expressing their hope for cooperation opportunities.

Cloud Dream didn’t refuse, but now when they came, it wasn’t about Cloud Dream paying for their cooperation.

You came to my place, shouldn’t you pay me?

Not asking for much, just a small fee for renting the venue – Lincoln actually didn’t care about the money, he was just being petty and trying to vent his frustrations.

For initially treating me with some little-stream idol.

Compared to that, Mavis received very high courtesy – come whenever you want! We’ll give you top pay, not only free of charge, but we’ll pay you!

This is Lincoln’s philosophy of cooperation, full of the assertiveness and chivalry of “making a friend”.

The next day, the third Night City Indiscriminate Death Race went as usual.

[King of the Track] failed for the third time to win the championship, and ended the broadcast in shame.

Before signing off, he issued a statement for the fourth race: aiming for the championship!

Meanwhile, Super Tomato’s [Villager Breeding Machine] upgraded once again to Version 3.0 – [Fully Automatic Villager Breeding Machine]!

Completely liberating hands while also creatively adding love triangle and NTR elements, maxing out the drama.

According to Cloud Dream’s custom of launching new content after a week of testing, he’s already working overtime to edit the videos, eager to present his excellent creations to the audience.

As for Lincoln, his weekend went by quite simply: on Saturday morning, he practiced his fists and rode his horse; on Sunday morning, he practiced his fists and rode his horse…

And so on, until the new week arrived.