Chapter 153: President Pei’s Ruthless Gamble!
Chapter 153: President Pei’s Ruthless Gamble!
Wang Xiaobin was momentarily stunned.
“Launch a new server?”
Technically, opening a new server wasn’t hard. The only real question was would anyone actually come play?
Blood War Anthem had been in decline for a while now. With no money for advertising or promotions, and no presence on any rankings, it wasn’t drawing in new players at all.
The only ones still playing were die-hard veterans who had stuck around through thick and thin.
These players all had well-established accounts on the old servers, and had invested a ton of money and time into them.
Even if a new server opened—who would abandon their old account to start fresh?
Still, Wang Xiaobin raised his hand and made an OK sign.
“No problem. It’ll be up in no time.”
After all, the game was already on its last legs. Whether or not a new server launched didn’t make much difference.
Ye Zhizhou immediately created a low-level account on the new server… and then quietly waited.
Just a few minutes later—
The world chat in the new server suddenly exploded with activity!
“They actually launched a new server!”
“Aaaaah I didn’t get the first login—this sucks!”
“Any guilds recruiting? ++++”
“Hey comrades! Join our guild—peaceful growth, passionate teamwork, and a wealthy leader! We’re undefeated in battle and known for helping elderly grandmas cross the street! Come join us in this noble cause!”
“That slogan’s copy-pasted, right? There are no whales anymore—who’s leading the charge?”
“Says who? Our guild’s whale said they’ll cover the cost of everyone’s daily stamina potions! Just join!”
“Damn! Sign me up!”
Message after message flew through world chat—Ye Zhizhou could barely keep up.
“We still… have this many players?”
Ye Zhizhou was dumbfounded.
He had only opened the new server on a whim, after seeing that so many players were asking for it in the chat.
He never expected so many people would actually come flooding in.
Why?
What were they getting out of it?
Were they really just giving up their old accounts?
Something about this felt off—it had been a long time since he’d seen this kind of buzz.
Back in the day, Blood War Anthem had opened new servers regularly. After all, that was a common marketing tactic for games focused on in-app purchases.
But none of those launches had ever drawn this kind of excitement.
As he leveled up his new character, Ye Zhizhou thought about finding a large guild to go undercover in—he wanted to gather player feedback on the new version as quickly as possible.
But as he was playing, the screen suddenly froze—stuck on “Loading Resources,” the graphics turning into a pixelated mess.
Fortunately, the lag passed quickly and the game returned to normal.
Just as Ye Zhizhou was about to ask what happened, he heard Wang Xiaobin shout:
“Holy crap—the surge of players overloaded the server? The new server is FULL already?!”
Ye Zhizhou quickly opened the backend dashboard.
He saw that all the older servers had experienced a sharp drop in activity—practically deserted.
Meanwhile, the new server’s heatmap showed an instant spike, packed to the brim with players.
So many people had come in that new players couldn’t even get in—they were stuck in queue.
Ye Zhizhou was stunned.
Since he’d joined Shangyang Games, he had never seen server queues—not once.
Now it was clear that all those players who were filling up the new server… were migrating from the old ones!
Players had originally been scattered across dozens of servers, which made each server feel cold and lifeless.
But now, all the remaining active players were piling into the new server, clustering together. Naturally, it felt far more lively.
Ye Zhizhou quickly shouted, “Brother Wang, quick—open another new server!”
Wang Xiaobin’s mouse flew across the screen.
“On it. The system is already set to automatically launch a new server once the latest one hits capacity.”
He mumbled under his breath, “This is seriously wild. The players are this hyped for a new server? Don’t tell me our changes are actually working… and showing results immediately?”
Everyone on the design team was getting excited.
Many of them hadn’t played Blood War Anthem in ages, but now—even they were logging in to create new low-level characters.
“Everyone picks a different server so we can monitor what’s happening across the board.”
“Try to join one of the major guilds and sneak into their group chats. We need to see how both whales and regular players are reacting to this version!”
Ye Zhizhou was fired up.
He quickly assigned tasks to the entire design team: infiltrate the new servers and collect real-time feedback on the update.
Back when Old Liu was lead designer, he never did things like this.
To Old Liu, it was pointless.
His philosophy was to just look at the numbers and tweak the game accordingly. What’s the use of mingling with the player base and collecting subjective feedback?
But Ye Zhizhou didn’t agree.
He always believed that a designer must play the game they’re making and get immersed in the player community to gather the most authentic responses.
If the designer doesn't even like their own game, how can they expect players to?
Ye Zhizhou had barely played for a few minutes when someone invited him to join a guild—then immediately added him to the guild’s chat group.
As soon as he entered the group chat, he was bombarded with messages:
“Quick! Go to world chat and start recruiting!”
“Everyone has to hit level 20 today—we need to start prepping for war!”
“Anyone have old friends who quit the game? Bring them back in!”
“I’ll check the old group chats now. I bet I can bring in ten people—all experienced veterans!”
Ye Zhizhou looked away for a moment, and the group chat was already flooded with over 99 new messages—he couldn’t even keep up.
What shocked him the most was that these players were actively bringing back old friends who had already quit the game, urging them to join the new servers.
This level of enthusiasm… Ye Zhizhou had never seen anything like it before—not even during Blood War Anthem’s peak when he first joined Shangyang Games!
He quickly jumped over to the forums.
He still remembered back when Old Liu released that infamous 888-yuan weapon—the forum had nearly exploded with outrage.
Players cursed the devs up and down, turning the patch note thread into a battleground with hundreds of angry replies. The backlash lasted weeks and didn’t die down.
Later, as more players quit, the forums became quieter—but the tone remained overwhelmingly negative.
But now? With this version update? The entire forum seemed to have transformed overnight.
The daily “curse-the-devs” posts had vanished.
Now, players were discussing guild formations, war strategies, and in-game mechanics.
It was a complete shift—from hostility to engagement.
Ye Zhizhou stared in disbelief at the forum posts and the buzzing player chat groups, trying to make sense of what exactly had happened.
“Could it be… this is what it means to be reborn from the ashes?”
A sudden clarity washed over him.
The original Blood War Anthem had already become stagnant—a still pond with no ripples. Under Old Liu and Du Ruijie’s leadership, everything had been squeezed dry in the name of revenue. The game was terminally ill.
Tensions between players and developers, between whales and free players, had escalated to a breaking point—utterly irreconcilable.
Because of the heavy monetization, most free players had left.
With too few players, in-game events couldn’t function properly.
Even whales, who had spent big, found themselves with no one to play with—no audience, no opponents, no fun. They felt their money had been wasted.
So the free players left.
Then the whales left.
And all that remained were a few loyal players, clinging on as the game slipped further and further into decline.
But now?
All the pay-to-win mechanics were gone—except one low-impact stamina potion.
That tiny, almost trivial change had completely transformed the in-game environment!
For free players, the game was now affordable—finally playable.
Previously exclusive paid items were now free.
On a new server, even casuals had a chance to experience the thrill of dominating in wars like a whale.
It felt like a massive giveaway event—of course people jumped in without hesitation.
Sure, some whales quit. But just as President Pei said—“Just ignore them.”
And not all whales left. A few stuck around.
So even though revenue had dropped by 70–80%, the remaining players had completely forgotten all the bitterness and resentment from before.
They were excited again. Passionate again. Ready to engage with the game like it was brand new.
Ye Zhizhou finally understood.
“Of course. President Pei had already seen the core problem with Blood War Anthem. He knew that simply adding new content or changing the art style wouldn’t fix anything. That’s why he made the call to eliminate all monetization!”
“This… this is like how a warrior would cut off his arm to save his life!”
“Slashing revenue to salvage reputation—that was the only way to save this game.”
A seemingly unsolvable problem was met with one bold move from President Pei—and a path to revival immediately appeared.
Ye Zhizhou’s respect for President Pei deepened immeasurably.
Of course, he also understood that this was only the beginning.
This move had saved the game’s reputation, yes. But at a steep cost: the game no longer made money.
With no more big top-ups from whales, revenue had plummeted by at least 80%.
Blood War Anthem had been making just 300,000–400,000 yuan a month. Now? They’d be lucky to hit 80,000.
And from now on, they couldn’t add any new paid features.
If they did, player backlash would be swift and brutal.
President Pei wouldn’t be able to save them next time.
Ye Zhizhou felt like they were in the middle of a clearance sale: traffic was up, yes—but if they kept burning cash without turning a profit, that couldn’t last either.
“Whatever. No use worrying about that now.”
“There’s no way President Pei hasn’t thought this through.”
“He must have a full plan. All I need to do is follow it exactly.”
For the first time, Ye Zhizhou felt a surge of confidence—not just in himself, but in the future of Shangyang Games.
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