Someone immediately reacted, shouting towards the technical team.
“We can handle it, we can handle it! We have a reserve of 300,000 users! Just now, Chen Zong messaged me on DingTalk, and I’m already in contact with the Japanese Server operator…”
“What the hell, why didn’t you say so earlier, you traitor!”
“Hey, hey, hey! Don’t blame me! Chen Zong hadn’t said anything, so how dared I speak up!”
“We’re taking off, brothers!”
“Wuwuwu, my overtime wasn’t in vain…”
“We’ve made it, we’ve made it! Chen Zong! Shouldn’t we get a big red envelope?”
The entire studio instantly transformed from its previous dead silence into a bustling marketplace, no, even livelier than a marketplace, as if it were about to lift the roof off.
There was no other way; this game wasn’t just Chu Chen’s brainchild alone.
Over the past six months, following Chu Chen, they had all developed some attachment to this project, and seeing these numbers now, they were naturally astonished.
Not to mention, everyone knew Chu Chen had sold his house to continue making the game; if the project failed, the company might just fall apart.
Now, the golden scales opened towards the sun, reflecting the light of success.
With the game project a success, everyone’s mood improved significantly.
As a result, for the entire day that followed, everyone at Starry Sky Studio, except for the programmers and operations staff, didn’t really work much; everyone was incredibly excited.
At noon, Chu Chen allowed for “any takeout you want,” meaning employees could order whatever they liked, and the company would pay.
He also included a “milk tea on demand” offer.
By the afternoon, everyone’s mood had eased somewhat, but only somewhat.
Basically, for the entire day, everyone’s state was: check the online data for a bit, then shout “awesome,” and then nervously glance at the Japanese Server again.
Then, as expected,
At 9:30 PM, the Japanese Server still crashed…
Under normal circumstances, a small operator intentionally causes server crashes when launching a new game.
Or rather, it’s not intentional; it’s more like inevitable.
Because normally, server rental is based on bandwidth, and the bandwidth requirements are naturally high during launch.
But the problem is, with the normal rate of player attrition, by the second or third day, the number of players is often only one-third to one-fourth of the launch day’s peak.
In other words, if you estimate 1 million players at launch and you truly prepare the server for that scale, by the third day, forget about the server rental fees; just the losses from severely excessive bandwidth will make your heart ache.
If the developer operates the game themselves, they most likely wouldn’t try to save this money.
But the problem is, in most cases, the operator runs the game.
Operators have no emotional attachment to the game; in their eyes, the game is just a tool for making money. The first priority is not to lose money themselves, and only then do they consider making a profit.
Therefore, what strategy do many small operators ultimately choose?
They match the launch bandwidth to their estimated normal-state data, and the inevitable result is that if the popularity exceeds the operator’s expectations, it will crash.
Chu Chen, of course, would not make this mistake.
In fact, Starry Sky’s Japanese Server was initially prepared with at least 500Gbps of bandwidth, and since the networking essence of Final Battlefront was essentially data-based cricket fighting, the bandwidth pressure was not significant.
Theoretically, 500G of bandwidth could support 200,000 to 300,000 concurrent online users, yet the Japanese Server still crashed at 9:30 PM.
This was mainly due to an unexpected contingency: with the popularity of “Final Battlefront,” sellers of “starter accounts” appeared.
They had specialized registration scripts, earning profit by registering accounts, farming initial resources, and reselling resources that were originally free in the game.
Initially, Chu Chen didn’t pay much attention, as the gacha costs in “Final Battlefront” were already very low; theoretically, players could obtain all cards just by playing long enough.
However, he never expected these account sellers to even try to make money from such small pickings.
A large number of registration scripts entered the fray, consuming a significant amount of bandwidth and causing the Japanese Server to crash.
Even though Chu Chen discovered it early and immediately closed the email registration template, the influx of these scripts coupled with the continuous rise in online users still caused the Japanese Server to crash.
Fortunately, Chu Chen had anticipated this possibility during development, so immediately after the “Final Battlefront” Japanese Server crashed, a compensation announcement for a 10-pull gacha was issued.
At the same time, thanks to Chu Chen’s module isolation feature during the development phase.
“Final Battlefront” ultimately crashed, but not entirely; instead, the PVP gameplay was put under separate maintenance.
Players could still register for the game and play PVE, which has lower bandwidth requirements.
After the Japanese Server crashed, a group of people frantically contacted the Japanese Server operator; some of Starry Sky’s staff even went directly to the Japanese Server operator to coordinate the server integration and increase bandwidth.
They were busy until almost 12 AM.
The new Japanese Server was deployed and went online, and the game’s PVP issue was resolved.
By the time everything returned to normal, it was already past midnight, and all the first-day test data was available for viewing in the operations backend.
The air still carried the lingering warmth from the intense busyness, mixed with the smell of coffee and energy drinks, but the three programmers who followed Chu Chen paid no attention to these things.
“Quick, quick, open the top-up data and take a look.”
Their voices were a bit tired, but their excitement was hard to hide.
His gaze swept over the three of them: Xiong Rui, Xiong Ping, and Xiong Wei, known as the Three Xiongs of Starry Sky, three talents Chu Chen had found online when he founded the company.
At this moment, exhaustion was also written all over their faces, with dark circles under their eyes. Logically, what should be done now is to tell them to go home and sleep immediately.
But Chu Chen found that these guys seemed even more excited than him, each craning their necks, staring intently at the screen, as if they wished they could pluck out their eyeballs and stick them on it.
“Then let’s take a look together.”
That’s good. For the past few hours, he had been busy with the Japanese Server and hadn’t had time to examine the data in detail himself.
Now was the perfect time to understand everything at once.
With a gentle click of the mouse, the backend data page refreshed.
The first-day report card for “Final Battlefront” was finally fully presented before everyone’s eyes.
Numbers jumped out one by one, striking everyone’s nerves.
First-day registered players exceeded 600,000!
The peak concurrent online users reached an astonishing 170,000!
As soon as these two core data points were revealed, the Three Xiongs, who had been somewhat restrained just moments before, instantly became a bit restless again, and low cheers echoed in the slightly empty office.
This start was simply dream-level.
It’s important to know that the original Auto Chess in his previous life took almost two months to reach these numbers. To some extent, this was indeed as Chu Chen had expected.
The original Auto Chess was, after all, a game attached to DOTA2, and DOTA2’s popularity… rather than being a help, it was more of a barrier.
Now, Starry Sky’s “Final Battlefront” was riding the wave of the ACG trend, with a lower barrier to entry, plus stimulating new player incentives. Having these numbers was slightly above expectations, but not by too much.
However, as everyone’s gaze continued downwards to the payment-related data, the atmosphere grew even more enthusiastic.
Payment penetration rate: 0.4%.
This meant that for every thousand registered players, only 4 people chose to top up.
ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User): 212 yuan.
This number meant that, on average, those 4 paying players each contributed 212 yuan.
Finally, the aggregated total revenue settled at: 501,400!
Five hundred thousand!
For a new game’s first day, this number was absolutely beyond expectations.
At this rate, as long as subsequent retention wasn’t too bad, breaking ten million in monthly revenue was practically a certainty.
