Chapter 269 - 180: Have Players Already Made Their Money Back? (Part 2)

At this point, everyone was watching closely.

Tianba Studio needed to release a statement, either to clarify "false rumors" or to publicize their future plans; otherwise, sales growth would remain sluggish.

"Then let’s make it public!"

Transitioning from a paid game to a free game, Tianba Studio was already quite experienced, after all, their previous game "Star Emperor" was handled the same way.

Various compensation plans, even the game announcement notes, could be directly copied from "Star Emperor".

It’s worth mentioning.

"Star Emperor" moved to a free model because basically no one was buying the game, so rather than letting it languish, they might as well turn it free to boost popularity.

However, the situation with "Don’t Leave After School" was slightly different. The reason this game switched from paid to free wasn’t because no one was buying it; rather, Tianba Studio needed to develop new income streams.

Otherwise, they couldn’t even afford to maintain the servers!

This was no joke...

With more and more players flocking to "Don’t Leave After School," all five zones underwent a round of server expansion.

But even so, server pressure remained high, and the player engagement in "Don’t Leave After School" was exceedingly high, with an absurdly large average number of online players; Tianba Studio was really struggling to keep up.

"The enthusiasm of the players online is just too exaggerated! At three or four in the morning, our game still had 400,000 people online..."

Yang Dong sighed and said, "For hot zones like Zones Three and Five, every night from 19:00 to 23:00, there’s always at least 100,000 people in queue, with a minimum wait time of 30 minutes."

But you can’t blame the players for their enthusiasm.

In the end, it all comes down to how unique "Don’t Leave After School" is as a game.

Playing other games not only wastes time but also money, with both grind and pay-to-win elements, it’s a sure way to waste one’s life.

Playing "Don’t Leave After School" is different.

Gather a few friends to play marbles, enjoy entertainment modes; not only does it relax the mind, but it also allows you to share in the advertising revenue of the zone based on game time and match counts.

Isn’t this worth playing for?

To put it bluntly, ever since "Don’t Leave After School" introduced the game partner mechanism and entered the era of "zone autonomy", players’ engagement and online hours multiplied several times over.

Yang Dong told Chen Ba.

There’s a player in Zone Two of "Don’t Leave After School" whose reality job is unknown, but they rack up over 12 hours of gameplay every day.

Not just on a particular day, but every single day!

This is practically treating "Don’t Leave After School" as a full-time job, and one they willingly work overtime for.

"Oh? There’s someone like that?"

Chen Ba, curious, asked, "By doing this, can they really earn enough in-game income to support themselves?"

"Yes, they can."

"Their in-game income mainly comes from two parts: their share of various ad revenues in their zone, and selling marbles..."

Because of long online hours and honed skills, they can earn a lot of marbles in the game.

These marbles are essentially an alternative form of Game Coins, which they can sell to wealthy players, acting as the game’s "Gold Coin merchant".

As a result, their monthly income is not bad, at least comparable to a factory assembly line salary!

"Professional gamer..."

Chen Ba, somewhat admiringly, said, "This is someone genuinely treating gaming as a job and making a living from it."

Actually, these players are similar to League of Legends boosters and companions, or game merchants in some online games, who live off gaming as professional gamers.

However, making a living in "Don’t Leave After School," compared to boosters, companions, and game merchants, is relatively easy.

Because boosters, companions, and game merchants, to the core, are part of the service industry, needing to always maintain a customer-first mindset.

But in "Don’t Leave After School," earning money doesn’t require bowing down to serve anyone, nor does it need any smiles, as there’s no concept of a customer; you simply play as a normal player.

"Won’t this be exploited?"

Chen Ba considered a possibility.

That game studios might use scripts or multi-tool software with multiple computers to farm ad revenue in "Don’t Leave After School"?

"This situation does exist."

Yang Dong nodded, noting that recently he discovered quite a few farming studios eyeing the game.

However...

"Don’t Leave After School" is, after all, a product of Tianba Studio, and Tianba’s games always have a traditional craft.

What craft? Of course, it’s distinguishing whether the player behind the screen is a real person or a "fake"!

The exact implementation of this technology, Chen Ba couldn’t explain, crediting it to the miraculous AI determination mechanism of the Iron Fool System.

In any case, studios, script kids, or cheat dogs, none can escape its eyes, and deceiving the AI audit is practically impossible.

Because of this.

Those farming studios aiming to cash in "Don’t Leave After School" not only failed to gain anything but got their wool fleeced by Ba in return.

Don’t ask, because buying the game costs money; isn’t 68 bucks money?

Newly bought accounts immediately got banned, equivalent to donating 68 bucks to Ba, and these studios created dozens or even hundreds of accounts, resulting in substantial losses.

"From this perspective, us switching to a free game actually benefits these studios? After all, the account cost is low, almost non-existent..."

"That’s not entirely the case."

Yang Dong shook his head and explained, "The Nobug Platform also cracks down hard on these studio registered accounts in bulk."

Registering a Tianba Account may seem costless, but the process is fairly cumbersome, requiring multiple identity verifications.

Yang Dong strictly implemented Ba’s directive of "one person, one account," rigorously opposing the use of secondary accounts.

Under normal circumstances, one ID card and one phone number can only register one Tianba Account. Want a secondary account? You’ll need additional ID and phone numbers.

The cost remains quite high.

Moreover, even if you’ve created a heap of secondary accounts, they’re useless; Tianba Studio has the means to identify the player nature behind the screen, and accounts can be banned at will.

Really, just give up on unscrupulous farming.

Ba’s wool can only be collected by normal players, while non-normal players dreaming of profiting is nothing but a pipe dream.

Fun fact!

Among the 1.5 million existing players of "Don’t Leave After School," about two-thirds have already earned back the 68 yuan spent on the game through watching ads.

"So many?"

Yang Dong hadn’t looked closely at the data, and hearing that so many players recouped their costs surprised him.

"Is it a lot?"

Chen Ba chuckled and did the math for Yang Dong.

The cost of one ad starts at around 300,000, with varied durations; some might last only a week, while others could be a month, the longer the time the higher the ad fee.

Based on a minimum of 300,000, the earnings of around 220 ads could essentially offset the cost for 1 million players purchasing the game.

"Don’t Leave After School" has been using this model for three months, with a total of five zones. Averaging it out, just over 40 ads per zone are enough.

months, 12 weeks, 40 ads.

Honestly, that’s not an exaggeration; the actual zone ad quantity has long exceeded this number.

Theoretically, all players of "Don’t Leave After School" could earn back their game’s purchase money.

However, some players log in too infrequently and have enabled pure mode, refusing any ad disturbances, which is why one-third of players haven’t earned back 68 yuan.

"Whoa!"

Not calculating, not knowing, the math was startling.

After hearing Ba’s calculation, Yang Dong was speechless and said, "So we developed a game, sold it to over a million players, turned out the ones paying are a bunch of advertisers?"

How abstract!

Over a million players freeloading a game worth 68 yuan, this scene would be jaw-dropping in the game industry.

Yet with "Don’t Leave After School", why does it seem so normal?