Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 489: Chapter 472: Sorrowful Cries Everywhere

Yelang’s sigh carried a reason

Last night when Cloud Dream released the announcement, he had just gone offline to eat and wasn’t live streaming.

He quickly placed an order to buy the game and voted for [Not enough flavor! Double it!].

After finishing his meal, he logged in and faced the audience’s overwhelming request. Yelang lied nonchalantly, “I voted already!”

“Of course, it was for the first option! I’ve been smelling this shit for a week, and I’m more annoyed than you!”

However, in reality, after playing intensively for a week, most dedicated anchors could determine the prey information based on the appearance of feces.

Whether the smell of feces was strong or not had zero impact on them.

While Yelang and many other troublemaking players sighed, many other players finally breathed a sigh of relief.

They placed orders one after another, quickly casting their votes for the first or second option.

Some players didn’t want to smell anything bad, while others could tolerate some odor for the sake of realism.

Based on the current online discussions, players could generally accept these two options.

As long as the smell wasn’t strong enough to suffocate them.

Some people worried at first that splitting votes would lower the number of votes for both options, making it safer to combine them.

But now that both options had a significant lead, with the other options adding up to only 26%, they posed no threat.

Everyone was not so focused on pursuing an absolute 50% advantage.

The only thing everyone couldn’t figure out was: why did option [Five] still have 13% of the votes?

That’s hundreds of thousands of people!!

That would be [4 times] the smell!

What were these people thinking?!

[17:30]

Only half an hour remained until the voting deadline.

Unable to contain their excitement, players began posting victory threads like mushrooms after rain:

“Yay! We can play the [Pure Version] of the game!”

“This is a victory of unity!”

“Everyone, remember this day! We successfully thwarted Lincoln’s sinister intentions!”

In Cloud Dream’s virtual office, Samuel finally took a breath of relief: fortunately, things didn’t spiral out of control; otherwise, he wouldn’t know how to wrap things up.

However, looking at the sales data, he couldn’t help but sigh: the sales of this game seemed a bit too low compared to the past.

Were many players still hesitant?

Or was this game just too niche?

As he thought about it, a voice suddenly rang out, “Sister Shen! The sales data is a bit abnormal!”

“What’s wrong?” Samuel quickly snapped back to reality and looked at the backend data.

The sales curve, which had risen steadily since 12 o’clock noon, saw a steeper incline at the [17:30] mark.

This meant that the speed of player orders had rapidly increased!

“Why are so many people placing orders in the last half hour?” The girl who had spoken earlier asked, puzzled.

Samuel didn’t say anything.

He didn’t quite understand what was going on, but he wasn’t bothered—increased sales were a good thing for Cloud Dream, after all.

However, soon enough

“What’s going on?!” A male team member’s voice rang out again.

“What happened?” Samuel immediately looked over.

“Votes!” The male team member gave a brief explanation.

Samuel and the entire “Hunter” operation team looked up at the live voting data.

They saw that the number of votes for [Five, Not enough flavor! Double it!] began to skyrocket!

While the overall percentage hadn’t changed much yet, the total number of votes in the option was quickly scrolling!

In less than a minute, it jumped from [14%] to [15%].

After another two minutes, it jumped from [15%] to [16%].

Then from [17%] to [18%], [18%] to [19%]…

Such a “dramatic” change was finally noticed by the players online.

They were immediately filled with fear—if the [double the smell] option made a comeback, the consequences would be unimaginable!

With less than 20 minutes left until the voting deadline!

They couldn’t just sit back and do nothing!

Players who had purchased “Hunter: Call of the Wilderness” and were eagerly waiting to play the game immediately launched a collective counterattack.

Method of action—shaking people!

“Please! Anyone who sees this post, help out! Buy “Hunter: Call of the Wilderness”, cast a vote, and get a refund in half an hour!”

“Help vote for infinite merit! Buy now and refund in half an hour! This is free merit!”

“500 dollar cash red packet lottery! All players, show your voting record to enter the lottery, limited to voting records for [Deleting Odor]! Be careful, it can only be [Option One, Delete Smell]! Ends at 6 o’clock, even if you get a refund after the prize is awarded, it’s fine!”

“Group message, please help me chop one… vote! Refund in 20 minutes! Thank you!”

With time running out and tremendous pressure, this action to shake people was nothing short of madness.

Everyone used every method they could think of—posting, group chats, lottos, asking friends for help.

In order to appeal to as many people as possible, they basically mentioned the “refundable, no cost” guarantee in every case.

This large-scale effort to shake people indeed had an effect—the increase in votes for [Flavor Doubled], though still astonishing, had its percentage growth greatly slowed down.

But the players couldn’t breathe a sigh of relief—

Even with the slowed down increase, this option was still struggling to raise its percentage share.

Every 1% increase meant that other options would decrease by 1%!

In the last 10 minutes, option [Five] had already surpassed the other three options, including [Two, Cut Down Odor], and moved into second place!

The percentages were as follows:

[One, Remove the smell of animal feces]. [36%]

[5. Not strong enough! Double it!] [33%]

5 minutes countdown, the gap was closing:

[1. Remove animal feces odor] [37%]

[5. Not strong enough! Double it!] [36%]

At 6 o’clock in the afternoon, the voting channel closed.

The final result was finally released:

[1. Remove animal feces odor]  [37%]

[2. Reduce animal feces odor] [16%]

[3. Replace the odor of animal feces] [8%]

[4. Keep the current animal feces odor unchanged]  [1%]

[5. Not strong enough! Double it!] [38%]

Although it seemed that option [5] was a full 1% higher than option [1], this was actually due to the need for statistical data.

In reality, the difference between the two was less than 20,000 votes.

Compared to their respective more than two million voters, it was negligible, less than 1%!

Seeing this result, the players were devastated.

Countless people regretted their decision: “Why did I vote for [Reducing Odor]? We were just one step away from winning! Just one step!”

Super Tomato’s live broadcast room was filled with complaints due to his one vote:

“We have a traitor among us!”

“Tell me, did you do this on purpose?!”

“You’ve really hurt me!”

What’s even worse is that they still can’t figure out how they lost.

Where did so many players come from who wanted to smell the [Four Times] amount of poop odor?

Are you guys even human?

Some sharp players had already realized early on what was going on.

Like Super Tomato, who had already been analyzing things for everyone to shift the hatred of the players in the live broadcast room:

“We all know that Cloud Dream’s games can be refunded within 6 hours of purchase.”

“So even people who don’t play the game can come and make trouble for free.”

“Those who initially voted for [Double] are probably just here to cause a commotion. They never intended to play.”

People quickly realized this.

But many were still hung up on another issue:

“We brought so many people, so many votes! In just the last half-hour, the number of voters for [Remove Odor] more than doubled! How could those who [Double] have gotten more votes than us?!”

“I haven’t seen any posts canvassing for [Double]! Not a single one!”

“I actually saw two, but they were both deleted because of strong criticism, and they didn’t have any effect.”

Everyone was puzzled.

Super Tomato looked at the lively comments and hesitated for a moment, but eventually couldn’t help but say:

“Is there a possibility, I mean just a possibility! When you guys pulled outsiders to vote, the outsiders did come, but they wanted to watch your drama more than help you out?”

Instantly, the lively live streaming room turned cold.

One series of ellipses after another.

The live streaming room fell into an awkward and mysterious silence.

After a while, someone cautiously asked: “So, can we still play this game?”

Super Tomato was speechless.

Not only the players were panicking.

The entire “Hunter” operation team, including Samuel, was dumbfounded after seeing the final result.

Samuel didn’t hesitate to run to find Lincoln.

“The [Two Times] odor was already outrageous, but [Four Times]… it’s just unimaginable! This won’t do!”

Lincoln also felt that it was a bit too much, but-

“I’ve already changed it…”

At 6 o’clock in the afternoon, the game opened, and players were about to enter the game. Of course, the voting results had to be implemented once they were out.

They had to be accountable to the players!

As for the result getting out of control, it could only be considered the price of democracy. While there could be ways to make up for it, the result could not be ignored.

“So…” Samuel said helplessly, “Another referendum?”

“Another one?” Lincoln looked at Samuel in surprise.

“Remove [Five] this time!!!” Samuel glared at Lincoln, her eyes almost shooting fire.

Having such an unreliable boss was really leaving her speechless.

“Alright alright, don’t worry.” Lincoln reassured Samuel. “I’ve already thought of a solution! Am I really that careless?”

Of course, you are!!!

Get some self-awareness, will you!!

Samuel relied on her extremely strong willpower to restrain herself from shouting on the spot.

“So, what is the solution you’re talking about?”

Lincoln grinned proudly: “[Olfactory Control].”

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