Chapter 270: Wails of Distributors

Thunderbolt Gaming Platform’s facelift gained plenty of attention from the players.

The matter gained plenty of attention since Chen Mo announced that he would use Thunderbolt Gaming Platform to promote the games of their designers.

But after a long argument among fans, a twenty four hour session against Chen Mo, and Chen Mo’s long Weibo post, the matter became an extremely hot topic.

Many players who didn’t play Chen Mo’s games downloaded Thunderbolt Gaming Platform just to check out what was happening.

Right now, hate towards Thunderbolt Gaming Platform had slowly died down as everybody got it out of their system. After Chen Mo announced his intentions in an incredibly classy way, there was not much else the trolls could do to attack him, and the tides were now in Chen Mo’s favour.

And Thunderbolt Gaming Platform’s complete overhaul got the other distributors sweating.

If Thunderbolt Gaming Platform wasn’t successful, such as the games don’t sell well after posting them there with little to no attention, it would most certainly be good news for them.

But if Thunderbolt Gaming Platform did well? It would most certainly be bad news for them.

When that time comes, if the distributors wanted to continue operating, they would have to reduce their cut similar to Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, meaning their revenue would be reduced dramatically.

—

The players also had their eyes on the performance of Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

“Thunderbolt Gaming Platform got an update today, you can download the games of other designers now!”

“Really? Let me check it out!”

“There are so few games. There’s only a hundred or so of them!”

“They just started after all, they are likely to add more in the future.”

“The few recommended games are decent indie games. Seems like Chen Mo has a good eye.”

“Coincidentally, there’s a game from a designer I quite fancy, I’ll buy it here as they take a smaller cut, meaning that the designer gets more money. It’s like a way I could support them.”

“The new update is pretty good. I feel like it’s different from Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform and Fantasy Gaming Platform, but is still quite rich in features.”

“Yeah, especially the promoted pages. There are so many different types of recommendations, even by category. They even recommend games based on what the players like. And there’s so many promotions too, providing free trials during weekends and special discounts!”

“Wishlist? Oh it’s like a shopping cart. I could wait till the games go on sale before buying. This feature is quite nice!”

“I really do feel an urge to shop all of a sudden.”

“And the various features are really well done too. Other than statistics for games, there is a strategy tab, ratings and reviews… Seems much more feature rich than other platforms.”

“Not bad! I’ve never really cared about Chinese indie games because the other platforms seem to always promote garbage games, so it’s really difficult for me to find a good indie game. Now I finally managed to find a few deceind games. I’ll buy them right now!”

“Yep, it appears that I have another game in my library!”

—

The players more or less managed to find a game that was to their liking on the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, purchasing them.

Twenty-four hours after Thunderbolt Gaming Platform was updated, Zhao Yunting summarised the statistics of the first day into a report and submitted it to Chen Mo.

The best selling game on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform sold thirty-nine thousand copies. This was because the game was relatively cheap at one RMB. The most profitable game was a high quality puzzle game titled “Fly Into the Future”. It sold twenty-two thousand copies, with two hundred and twenty-thousand RMB in revenue.

These two games were on better promotional spots, and were the reason they sold so well.

Moreover, because of how well reviewed the games were, they secured a 1:9 split, meaning that the profits the designers received were 24.5 thousand and 138 thousand RMB respectively.

The release of these statistics promptly caused an uproar among videogame designers!

The first day statistics proved that Thunderbolt Gaming Platform deserved its title as the third largest gaming platform in China, and its promotional powers were clear as day. The willingness of the players to purchase was very strong too.

At the same time, with Thunderbolt Gaming Platform’s help, there were a lot of player ratings and discussions. The designers could gain a lot of feedback from the players and make changes to their game accordingly.

The designer of Fly Into the Future was very emotional and posted a thank you letter on the discussion forums.

If he maintains his momentum, he would certainly receive around three million net revenue at the end of the month, something he wouldn’t even dare to dream of previously.

He had tried releasing it onto other distribution platforms, but because they took seventy to eighty percent of his profits, he’d only receive pennies. And after tax as well as the cost of developing the game, there would be barely anything in his pocket for a tough year of work, barely able to stay afloat.

And Fly Into the Future was a good game, but the support from the platform also played a huge part in its success. Chen Mo giving ninety percent of the profits back to the designers were basically increasing their profits by four to five times!

And the financially unstable designers were all quite excited as they rushed to post their games onto Thunderbolt Gaming Platform to get the best promotional spot they could.

And the designers who signed exclusive agreements were deeply regretting it as they blame themselves for taking their bait instead of observing the situation for a little while longer.

The distributors were all quite dejected. Who knows how many happy CEOs were flipping tables in their beautiful office buildings.

—

In a week’s time, most large distribution platforms started adjusting the cuts they take from designers, from their 2:8 or 1:9 cut (with distributors taking the majority), to 4:6 or 3:7 (with designers taking the majority).

Larger platforms like Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform or Fantasy Gaming Platform could afford to be a bit more stubborn, whereas the smaller ones couldn’t help but make 2:8 (designers taking the bigger cut) the norm for designers. And with that, there were fewer and fewer games being released on their platform.

The smaller distributors were wailing in unison. Who knows how many were resenting Chen Mo’s existence.

There was now a future where the split between distributors and developers approached a 3:7 split. The days of distributors using players to abuse developers will soon be over.

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