Tokyo Video Game Tycoon.

Instructing players on how to develop entirely new gameplay, and making them work for the game to create entirely new mods for free, just doesn't seem very reliable. Why would players be willing to create mods for you?

How many people would wholeheartedly engage in such an activity that offers no personal gain?

Although Zhu Youxing is already a top figure in the game industry, they still have some doubts about his decision this time.

From a market perspective, this creative workshop is meaningless.

In reality, the launch of the Workshop did not seem to attract much attention from players at first.

Most players on the Battle.net platform are esports players, whose main focus is online battles of StarCraft and Counter-Strike.

Of the Battle.net user base, only about 20 percent of players play other games.

However, the biohazard mode, a modified version of Counter-Strike, has piqued the interest of some players.

This mode has little competitive aspect and is highly random. A game usually only takes three to five minutes, which makes it a good way to relax after playing intense competitive games for a while.

Not many people noticed that this mode was modified from a Workshop module.

But when the player base reaches a certain level, it's inevitable that someone will notice the Workshop.

He Mei is one of them.

After meeting with her best friend to discuss the direction of the new game development, Kazumi couldn't resist the urge to enter the creative development interface of Counter-Strike.

To allow players to freely use Workshop content, Counter-Strike has been deeply integrated with the Workshop feature.

Players can directly add and modify various rules in the Workshop, and then load the modified content into Counter-Strike.

With an extremely simplified module creation process, even someone like He Mei, who isn't good at programming, can create their own unique gameplay.

"Hmph, let me prove to you that I'm on the right track!"

With that thought in mind, Kazumi began modifying Counter-Strike in the backend of the Creative Workshop.

First, she adjusted the Counter-Strike perspective, fixing the game's view to a top-down angle.

Then she directly extracted some models from the biohazard module and added some adversarial elements.

Having some prior development experience, HeMei easily created a very simple new mod gameplay.

This is actually very similar to the farm defense game developed by the Iron Triangle team before, but this time the opponent is not monsters, but endless zombies.

Yin-chan absolutely refused to allow the addition of farming content to the game development she was in charge of, so Kazumi decided to create a completely new gameplay mode on her own.

However, she is not an all-rounder, so she can only rely on this very simple game module format to create her own new gameplay.

After about two or three days, He Mei had almost finished making the module look quite decent.

Without the work of art and sound effects, and even the programming content was greatly simplified, everything was developed very smoothly, and He Mei immediately fell in love with this module development mode.

Next, she uploaded her newly adjusted module to the Workshop.

"I must be the first person to upload to the Steam Workshop, right?" Kazumi thought to herself with a touch of pride.

She actually felt that not many people would be interested in the Workshop, and that it was probably just a trial run by the Battle.net platform, without considering how much of a reaction it would cause.

Kazumi also felt that there weren't many people who shared her thoughts.

However, after she uploaded her mod, she found that the Steam Workshop had been refreshed and now had two or three more unofficial mods.

"Huh? So fast?"

He Mei was somewhat surprised that there were actually two or three people who shared the same idea as her.

No, it's not just two or three; these are just the modules that have appeared in the last few days. There will probably be more later.

Out of curiosity, Kazumi randomly clicked on a module.

This is a mod for heavily modified guns. It adjusts the models and stats of some guns in Counter-Strike, making the originally serious gun models look very funny and ridiculous. For example, an MP5 submachine gun has been modified into a model gun that only fires BBs, and it is only the size of a palm.

He Mei chuckled.

Is this even a module? How ridiculous!

However, this module is quite interesting. Driven by curiosity, Kazumi entered the module's main interface.

The person who developed this mod seems to be a very passionate Counter-Strike player, as his page contains many Counter-Strike-related achievements. In the mod creator's message, he reminded those who download the mod to join a designated online multiplayer room, where they can freely use all sorts of fun and funny guns to fight without any restrictions.

He Mei downloaded and loaded the mod, then entered the Counter-Strike game. She entered the room number she had left in the message and quickly entered the battle room. This room was a huge room modified by the mod, and it was also a combination of multiple Counter-Strike battle maps, which made the room map huge and increased the maximum number of players from the original 32 to 256.

This resulted in the room becoming a complete mess.

As soon as they entered, Kazumi heard a lot of shouting.

That's someone shouting loudly into a public microphone.

"Don't you dare run away! I'm going to punish you!"

"Hey, this chicken's gun is so trash, all it does is lay eggs... Wait a minute, so these eggs can explode? Hahaha, who came up with this weird gun? I'm dying of laughter. Is this still the Counter-Strike game I'm playing?"

"Hey you over there, let's hide to the side and quietly test the new gun model I just developed, and see how effective it is."

He Mei, who had just entered, stared at the screen in disbelief.

She could see the players in the room running around like demons, wielding all sorts of strange and unusual weapons and exchanging blows.

Moreover, in this room, people not only carry strange and unusual weapons, but the players themselves also have diverse appearances.

Some people are zombies, some are chickens, and some are robots. In short, all the players in this room look different.

This... is practically like a crazy party.

But you know what, it's actually pretty cool.

Chapter 607: How attractive is it to be free?

607

Some strange-looking games have appeared on Facebook video websites.

These games may seem familiar at first glance, as if you've seen them somewhere before, but upon closer inspection, the game models and maps are completely new to you.

People were curious about what this new game was and why they hadn't seen it before.

Such an innovative game should theoretically be properly promoted.

But there has been no news about this game.

Driven by this curiosity, people clicked into the video pages of these strange games.

Then, they learned from the introduction that these games were mods based on Counter-Strike.

But what exactly is this module?

In the video, the person who made the video provides narration.

"Hello everyone, welcome to my channel. I'm ***. If you're interested, just click the heart and follow option. That would make my video worthwhile."

The introduction was very brief, followed by a formal introduction of the mod he was playing.

"Attention everyone, you should have seen the general outline of this game. This is a brand new mode that just launched on the Battle.net platform, called the Workshop. Here, you can freely download interesting mods created by other players and then modify the original game. Ultimately, you can even modify it into something completely unrelated to the original game. First, let's take a look at a mod that is currently quite popular in the Workshop: Farm Defense Zombie Edition."

"This mod was made by an independent game development team. Their original game was called Farm Defense, which I think is also a very interesting game. In this zombie version of Farm Defense, the original gameplay of Farm Defense is retained, and the tension of the game is also increased. This is truly a rare mod."

"Besides the Farm Defense Zombie Edition, there are also official Counter-Strike Biohazard mods, Hide and Seek mods, and more, which are really interesting."

Watching this video already makes you eager to know what the gameplay will be like next.

"That's interesting."

According to the video, the new features of this mod seem to be completely free. This means that as long as you have purchased open-source games such as Counter-Strike, you can freely access any gameplay in the Workshop, and all of these are completely free.

This is equivalent to paying the price of one game to play several games.

Moreover, it seems that one can freely create their own way of playing.

Soon people opened the Battle.net platform.

The Workshop is now prominently featured, with a well-developed recommendation system. Mods with high ratings and popularity will be given a more prominent spot for players to experience.

To promote the new Workshop feature, Battle.net launched a seven-day free trial of several open-source games.

In other words, if a player is willing to put in a little more effort, they can easily play through most of the main game content in these demos within a week.

Stardew Valley, Counter-Strike, StarCraft...

Many open-source games saw a rapid influx of players within just one day.

According to normal estimates, the number of PC players should be hovering around ten million.

This is nothing compared to the hundreds of millions of players on home consoles.

With Battle.net dominating 70-80% of the current PC market, naturally even fewer people are willing to compete for this small market share.

This has led to a situation where more and more PC gamers have only one option: to download a Battle.net platform and try out the games on it.

Three days later, the number of online players for these open-source, limited-time free games all broke the previous record for the highest number of online players during the game's initial sale.

The number of concurrent online players for Counter-Strike reached a new high of 730,000.

This is the number of concurrent online users, and this number is still rising rapidly. Other games like StarCraft and Stardew Valley are experiencing the same trend, with the number of concurrent online users increasing rapidly, reaching 3.3 million.

In order to attract more traffic, the Battle.net platform initially made a lot of data public, which is slightly different from the rules of the main company, Yusei Electronics. However, it may also be because Yusei Electronics has no competitors in the PC market, and making the data public can bring them greater benefits.

The more players you announce, the more likely developers interested in creating indie games will be to launch their games on Battle.net rather than considering other platforms.

After all, the player base is what it is.

A small platform with only 10,000 to 20,000 players can only sell 10,000 to 20,000 units at most.

However, a game platform with a confirmed player base of millions, even if its production quality is slightly inferior, will definitely have a higher exposure rate than a smaller platform.

Three million three hundred thousand—and that's just the number of players online at the same time. This has surprised many game developers.

Wow, there are so many PC gamers!

I hadn't paid any attention to the PC platform before.

Generally, the number of players online at the same time is more than ten times the number of registered players. However, this time is a special case because several popular games are free for a limited time. Driven by the desire to play for free, players are willing to play the games more actively during this period.

This data also surprised the senior management of Surui Electronics.

Hayakawa Ueto suddenly realized that he might have underestimated PC gamers.

They also have a great passion for games.