Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 357 How did the trillions come about!?

Overall, however, the reports were somewhat exaggerated.

At least there are some clues to follow.

The problem is that even if you add all these things together, they won't amount to a fraction of the 100 billion yen in revenue.

With the strong operation of StarCraft and the support of the remastered swimsuit version, the monthly global revenue of "FGO" has exceeded 1.2 billion RMB.

"Final Battlefront" also performed exceptionally well, with global revenue historically surpassing 500 million.

But even combined, these two main products only generate 1.7 billion in revenue.

Later, although the demo of "Floating Dreams" became a hit in China, it did not generate any profit, and the best-selling "Cat Cat" was only in the hundreds of millions.

Although the Starry Sky Games platform sells a lot of games, most of its commission is used to subsidize others.
These are things that Chu Chen already knew, and naturally, a respectable media outlet like Asahi also knew them.

Therefore, in the latter two-thirds of the report, the focus of the report suddenly took a sharp turn.

The terrifying aspect of StarCraft Games extends far beyond its gaming business.

[A fact that many people are unaware of is that Starry Games invested in 'Titok,' a short video app that is currently experiencing explosive growth worldwide, from its early stages and is now one of its major shareholders.]

The article then shifts its focus, beginning to analyze Titok's astonishing increase in value.

The article points out that, according to reliable sources in the investment community, in August of this year, the internationally renowned General Atlantic made a new strategic investment in Titok, amounting to two billion US dollars.

Following this round of financing, Titok's latest valuation has soared from $16 billion in February 2017 to $22 billion in just six months!

Seeing this, Chu Chen finally understood where the 100 billion yen came from.

These Japanese media outlets, in their attempt to create a big news story, actually included Titok's valuation growth in Starry Sky's "revenue"!

This algorithm is absolutely outrageous, it's ridiculously absurd!
Because Titok's valuation was becoming increasingly outrageous, Chu Chen did not choose to fully participate in this round of financing while maintaining control.
Instead, they diluted their shareholding and eventually maintained it at 28%.

Prior to this round of financing, Starry Sky's stake in Titok was worth approximately 30% of $160 billion, or $48 billion.

After the financing, Starry Sky's stake is worth approximately 28% of $220 billion, or $61.6 billion.

The book value increase is $13.6 billion.

At the current exchange rate, this is roughly over nine billion RMB.

With this 9 billion increase as a base, then indeed, without even considering StarCraft's other game revenue, exceeding 100 billion yen is a certainty.
The problem is that Asahi is really cunning; they use such a grand title, spend the first half of the content talking about games, and only then do they release this thing at the very end.
"He's a fucking genius."

After learning the whole story, Chu Chen was speechless.

"These guys will write anything to create a big news story."

"But the problem is, this news is flying all over the world now, what should we do? Should we issue a statement to clarify immediately? This has too much of an impact."

Song Yueying was clearly encountering this for the first time, and the media was so "over-praising" of Xingchen that she was unsure how to handle the situation.

Regardless, this report is still somewhat positive for now.

Chu Chen pondered for a moment. This kind of "praise to death" was really hard to clarify. How could he clarify it?

If things go wrong, it might backfire, since the core of this report is that Xingchen holds a large number of Titok shares and has thus gained huge paper profits, which is indeed a fact.

Moreover, even if it is not dealt with, this matter has both positive and negative effects on the development of Xingchen. As the saying goes, the strong are not afraid of others knowing that they are strong.

Years ago, what Chu Chen found most annoying about reading online game novels was that the protagonist would be ranked number one in the server-wide announcement, but the author had to write it anonymously.

"Let's not respond for now and see how public opinion develops."

Chu Chen hung up the phone.

He then took out his phone and started browsing Twitter and Weibo.

On Japanese Twitter, the Asahi newspaper's article did indeed cause a sensation, but the direction of the sensation was a bit strange, with two trending topics on Twitter that were somewhat related to this article.

One is a man who earns 100 billion a month.
The other is #The Foreigner Who Most Wants to Get Married#
In Japan, where everything can be made into entertainment, nobody cares how Asahi calculated Chu Chen's monthly income of hundreds of billions of yen; they accept this premise from the start.

While some people are indeed concerned about the impact of StarCraft on the Japanese game industry, most people's first reaction is simply to gossip.

This reaction, coupled with Chu Chen's existing fan base in Japan and the large number of photos and videos of him in the Japanese gaming community, all contributed to this.

And so, very soon
The news started to take a turn in its spread in Japan, and this shift in topic led to the inexplicable hashtag #ForeignersMostWantToGetMarried#.
It's just as Japan would expect.

Compared to Japan, Weibo in China is much more lively, with various opinions focusing more on industry news. The Chinese people's fondness for "political commentary" is on full display at this moment.

The bottom few spots on the trending topics list were almost entirely occupied by stars.

#StarrySkyGames' monthly revenue is about to surpass Tencent's# [Breaking News]

#Titok's shareholder is actually Starry Sky Games# [New]

Among these terms, the level of discussion among domestic players is far more exaggerated than that in Japan. Just click on the first term and you'll see posts coming in incredibly fast.

"Holy crap! Really?! 100 billion yen a month? Even a printing press couldn't do that fast!"

"The source of the news is the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's three major newspapers, so it's probably not unfounded."

"Hey upstairs, I just checked the original article. There's a problem with the algorithm. It included Titok's valuation in the calculation. It's pure clickbait!"

"Even without valuation, StarCraft's revenue in August was absolutely astronomical! The FGO + Final Battle swimsuit monetization scheme is a classic case of knowing what's going on. I alone contributed almost 2 RMB!"

"No, the focus of this news is Titok, isn't it?! I always thought Titok was ByteDance's own product, but I never expected that one of its major shareholders was StarCraft Games? When did these two companies get together?"

"Case solved! No wonder the operations of the Titok Japan region were handled by people from Starry Sky. I thought it was just a simple business partnership, but it turns out they're all family!"

In the comments section, there were expressions of shock, skepticism, explanations, and memes, but more than anything, there was a wonderful atmosphere of "Wow, Xingchen is awesome!"

Most domestic gamers and netizens don't actually care about rigorous financial data.

There were two main points that shocked them.

First, Xingchen Games' revenue figures are genuine. Second, Titok's valuation is incredibly high, and Xingchen is actually Titok's major shareholder!
(End of this chapter)