Who would still start a business seriously after being reborn?

Chapter 536 Samsung's Counterattack

Samsung's counterattack came quickly.

In just half a month, before Momo Games could even absorb players from the Actoz Asia server, problems arose at their nodes in various countries.

Although Cheng Yi had already held meetings to discuss several possibilities for Samsung's counterattack, the current situation still made them somewhat flustered.

Kong Feng rushed to Cheng Yi's office.

I saw Cheng Yi playing on the Asian server with Lin Qingyin.

Upon seeing Kong Feng walk in, Cheng Yi said, "Samsung's counterattack has begun?"

"Yes, the Thai server node has an average latency exceeding 800ms and a player disconnection rate of 47%."

"Indonesia server, data transmission in the core city area has been interrupted for 12 minutes."

"In the Manila cluster in the Philippines, ISP route tracing shows that more than 70% of game data packets are maliciously redirected to inefficient paths."

Kong Feng explained the current situation to Cheng Yi in detail, as if he knew it by heart.

Cheng Yi's character is currently stuck, with the characters and monsters around him frequently disappearing.

His expression was very calm as he smiled and said, "Samsung has been operating in Southeast Asia for many years. Telecommunications infrastructure and ISPs in which they hold shares are their home-field advantage. This move of theirs is a fatal blow, directly cutting off our lifeline."

Kong Feng said urgently, "President Cheng, the player forums and social media are in an uproar. There are insults, complaints, and demands for refunds. The public opinion is extremely unfavorable to us. If this continues, the reputation and online player base we've worked so hard to build will be..."

“I know.” Cheng Yi interrupted him, looking at Lin Qingyin beside him, and asked, “Qingyin, has the analysis report come out yet? Have you found the attack pattern and the source?”

There were two computers in front of Lin Qingyin. One computer was logged into the Asia server of Honghuang Zhanji, and the other computer was running a program.

Her fingers flew across the screen, scrolling through complex data streams and network topology diagrams like a waterfall.

She frowned and said, "It's basically locked down. The attack wasn't a single hacking act, but a legitimate interference using the privileges of the underlying ISP. The main methods are concentrated in three areas: DNS poisoning, route hijacking, and QoS priority downgrading."

"They really think highly of us," Cheng Yi couldn't help but laugh.

Samsung has actually launched a three-pronged attack, which shows they're really angry.

DNS poisoning occurs when a player's device is deliberately redirected to an incorrect or invalid IP address by their local ISP's DNS server when resolving the game server's domain name, resulting in connection failure or connection to a fake server.

Router hijacking occurs when a player's data packets are maliciously redirected by the ISP's routers to take longer, more congested, or lower-performance network paths during transmission, significantly increasing latency and packet loss.

QoS downgrading is when ISPs intentionally lower the priority of data streams marked as "Honghuang Zhanji Asia Server" on their network equipment. When the network is congested, game data packets are dropped first to ensure that other high-priority traffic can pass smoothly. Therefore, most players feel that the game is laggy, but web pages can be opened quickly.

"Shameless!" Kong Feng said in a deep voice, "They are abusing their infrastructure privileges to act like thugs. We can't possibly buy up the telecommunications backbone networks of all the Southeast Asian countries, can we?"

“Samsung doesn’t need to buy it; they just need to make a suggestion or give a hint,” Cheng Yi said with a smile. “I just received a message from Chen Zhi that Somchai, the CEO of Siam Telecom, Thailand’s largest telecom operator, had dinner with the president of Samsung Electronics Southeast Asia yesterday, and today, network problems in Siam Telecom’s coverage area have suddenly erupted.”

"There are also similar situations with Indonesia's Archipelago Interconnect and the Philippines' Pacific Rim Communications. These telecom giants all have intricate investment or business partnerships with Samsung."

Kong Feng fell silent.

The competitor is no longer a gaming company like Actoz, but Samsung, which dominates the network infrastructure in Southeast Asia.

This is utterly despairing.

They could use legitimate rules and their network privileges to launch an attack that, though invisible, was enough to annihilate them.

Kong Feng said in a deep voice, "Then what should we do? The players can't wait much longer. If the game continues to lag, everyone will leave."

"Run?" Cheng Yi smiled and said, "Where can they run to? We've already crippled the Legendary Asia server. Who else in Asia can compete with us? Players have no choice. Even if it's a bit laggy, they'll still play. They just need an outlet for their anger. Since Samsung wants to destroy players' love for 'Honghuang Chronicles,' then we'll let that anger burn back on them."

"Cao Zhengze will be here soon, and the two of you will need to work together."

After Cheng Yi finished speaking, he sat down and continued to control the character on the computer.

He and Lin Qingyin had both reached level 2000. In the first continent, level 2000 was the maximum level. Since the second continent had not yet opened, he and Lin Qingyin were freely fighting and killing in the game.

Both of them were equipped with top-tier gear and had each spent nearly a million yuan on in-game purchases.

The two of them, working together, were practically untouchable in Zone 2.

To kill them both, the other side would have to send dozens of people.

It felt incredibly good.

Although the server was a bit laggy, it was still within Cheng Yi's acceptable range.

Even with all the lag, it's still much smoother than those private servers for legendary games.

Those legendary private servers are the ones that are so laggy that you have to keep looking back every step of the way.

However, even with the lag, it didn't dampen the players' enthusiasm.

That's the charm of online games.

As long as there are no substitutes, players are quite resilient.

A short while later, Cao Zhengze hurriedly walked into Cheng Yi's office and said, "President Cheng, you called me?"

"Yes, Samsung has made some underhanded moves against our Primordial War Chronicles. You and President Kong should team up and hype this up properly."

"it is good."

"Mr. Kong, please post an open letter to all players of the Honghuang Asia server in the largest and most eye-catching font on the game launcher, login interface, in-game announcements, and official forum."

"What exactly is it?" Kong Feng quickly took notes.

Cheng Yi immediately said, "There are three points. Remember them clearly. The first is honesty. We need to clearly inform the players that the serious network lag and disconnection issues we are currently experiencing are not due to a malfunction of the game server itself, but rather because we have detected that external forces are maliciously interfering with and restricting our game data by controlling the internet infrastructure in parts of Southeast Asia."

"Secondly, we want to shift the blame and express our stance of standing with our players in this fight against the pandemic. We strongly condemn this despicable act of using a monopolistic position to trample on the player's gaming experience and undermine the fair competition environment. We point out that behind this behavior is a dirty business operation by certain international giants to suppress competitors. Remember, we do not have any evidence yet, so do not name Samsung, otherwise we will face legal issues again."

"Okay." Kong Feng quickly wrote it down.

"Third, we promise to offer a reward. Momo Games will spare no effort and use all its technology and resources to break through the blockade and protect the rights and interests of players. At the same time, we will establish a network justice reward fund to solicit rewards from technical experts and network security experts around the world."

"Any clue that can provide conclusive evidence of which organization is maliciously limiting the traffic to 'The Legend of the Primordial Era' will be rewarded with US$1000 million. If a technical solution that can effectively avoid or counter this ISP-level interference is provided, the reward will be US$5000 million."

Kong Feng exclaimed, "President Cheng, isn't this reward amount too high?" "Actually, it's only $1000 million. I was just creating a buzz with the $5000 million, not actually intending to pay it," Cheng Yi laughed. "Lin Qingyin is already handling this matter. In a few days, our lag problem will be significantly reduced."

"If someone proves that Samsung did it, what should we do? Should we declare war on them?" Kong Feng asked with some concern.

That's Samsung.

A dominant force in Asia.

Even companies like Toshiba are ranked behind Samsung.

Looking across Asia, it seems there is no one that can rival Samsung.

"Declare war?" Cheng Yi sneered, "The war began the moment they made their move. If we show weakness, it will only embolden them. I want all the players in Southeast Asia to know that they're not having a good time because Momo is incompetent; someone is sabotaging them from behind. I want those paid executives at the telecom companies to sleep on the edge of their seats, worried about being reported by their own people. And I want Samsung's friends to think carefully about the cost of offending millions of angry players for Samsung's sake."

"Understood." A flame ignited in Kong Feng's eyes as he said, "I'll get on it right away and make sure this announcement reaches all channels."

"Okay." Cheng Yi nodded and said, "Go find Zhao Gang and ask his team to help you tidy up the manuscript."

"Okay." Kong Feng nodded and said, "I'll go now."

After Kong Feng left in a hurry, Cheng Yi glanced at Lin Qingyin and smiled, "How's the network bodyguard test progressing?"

The network bodyguard is a prototype of a distributed intelligent routing technology that he envisioned for combating network censorship and interference in the future, before his rebirth. As early as half a month ago, Cheng Yi had handed over this general idea to Lin Qingyin for secret research and development.

"The core algorithm and proxy node scheduling logic are basically complete and are currently undergoing stress testing," Lin Qingyin replied quickly.

The essence of this network bodyguard is a distributed intelligent proxy network. When a player starts the game, they will first connect to a lightweight client. This client will detect the quality of multiple network paths from the player to the game server in real time, and then perform intelligent routing through a large number of encrypted proxy nodes deployed around the world.

Its principle is similar to the network accelerator developed by Lin Qingyin, which is similar to an accelerator grafted onto the game server.

Because it automatically selects the optimal and most stable node, bypassing polluted DNS and malicious routing paths to transmit game data.

At the same time, it can identify QoS tags and attempt to dynamically spoof packet characteristics to avoid being downgraded in priority.

However, this can only solve part of the lag problem, bringing the game server latency within a range that players can play normally. To completely solve this problem, the network operators still need to lift the sanctions.

"How long will it take to go online?" Cheng Yi pressed.

“Large-scale deployment of proxy nodes takes time, especially to cover key areas in Southeast Asia, which will take at least 48 hours,” Lin Qingyin estimated.

"Okay." Cheng Yi nodded slowly.

This issue actually reveals a core problem: rootlessness.

This is also why Cheng Yi has always insisted on promoting internet cafes as the primary focus.

If Southeast Asian countries had a huge number of Momo internet cafes, the network operators in those countries would never have such a crooked idea.

For example, Momo Internet Cafe pays nearly 100 million yuan in internet fees to China Telecom and China Netcom every month.

As for the servers, we have to pay them more than 60 million every month.

With monthly expenditures of nearly 200 million, even if Samsung were their parent company, they couldn't possibly sanction Momo Group.

This is called a binding of interests.

Now, the Primordial Era is like a tree without roots, completely unable to withstand the sanctions of these people.

Cheng Yi dialed Chen Zhi's number. As soon as the call connected, Chen Zhi said in a hurried tone, "Damn, our company's phones are ringing off the hook. I don't even dare to go out now. There are players wandering around everywhere."

Cheng Yi laughed and said, "Starting a business is never easy; you'll get used to it."

"You called me, so you must have found a solution, right?" Chen Zhi's tone was filled with anticipation.

"Hmm, more or less." Cheng Yi nodded and said, "I have a few things to ask of you."

"Okay, go ahead." Chen Zhi couldn't wait for this matter to end.

Cheng Yi said, "Use all available channels to keep a close eye on Somchai in Thailand, Bayan in Indonesia, and Alvarez in the Philippines. Just keep an eye on these three, especially their private itineraries, which clubs they go to, and who they meet. The more details the better."

Chen Zhi laughed and said, "We really think of the same thing. I've also thought of this method, but I've been hesitant. I've found out about Bayan in Indonesia. I plan to have the people from the Indonesian casino tie up that bastard Bayan and take him to international waters. If he doesn't produce evidence that he was instructed by Samsung, I'll feed him to the fish."

"No." Chen Zhi's crazy idea startled Cheng Yi.

This tactic should only be used when the strength of the two sides is unbalanced. If the two sides are evenly matched, or if one side is at a disadvantage, this tactic should absolutely not be used.

Despite the fierce competition between IBM and Microsoft, the battle remains largely confined to the level of commercial attacks.

why?
Because once one side starts this trend, it triggers a nationwide match-3 game.

I'll take down five of you today.

You'll take down five of me tomorrow.

As they worked, it was eventually the turn of the higher-ups.

The two sides are evenly matched, and the final result will be a battle of who gets more kills.

Cheng Yi said, "You just need to keep a close eye on things for me, you don't need to do anything else."

"Fine," Chen Zhi said, still somewhat reluctant.

This kind of thing can simply be solved by tying someone up; in Southeast Asia, this method is perfectly normal.

Anyway, their Tianqin Group has very good relations with the militaries of several Southeast Asian countries.

Casinos are not, in the eyes of ordinary people, places that simply lure in a nouveau riche to fleece them.

News reports often feature stories of wealthy individuals losing hundreds of millions at casinos, making it seem as if all the wealthy are complete idiots.

In reality, the true purpose of casinos is to help the wealthy rationalize their losses.

Their Tianqin Group, on the other hand, frequently helps military leaders in Southeast Asian countries to justify their losses.

(End of this chapter)