11 - EA is so conscientious!

The speed at which Residual Devil was being downloaded was going up really fast. Streamers were attracting new players, new players were attracting other streamers, and other streamers were attracting even more new players. The cycle this was creating was making Residual Devil one of the most well-known Rank F games in town.

Unfortunately, because of the monsters that had been rampaging across the world, each town had become a small fortress, with the internet being closed off for indoor use only. So if Gabe wanted his game to go out and spread across the entire world, he had only two options to do that.

One of these options was to personally go by public transport to other cities and upload his game to their local internet in person, which if he did it in neighboring cities would be a bit of work, but it could still greatly increase his player base in these other places.

However, this option was very inefficient. Despite the city having tens of thousands of Rank F players, having to travel to all cities around the world for his game to spread would be more work than focusing on the local audience, which would put a huge limitation on him.

The other way Gabe could get his game to spread around the world would be to enlist the help of the University. As he studied at Harrington University in Sandstone Bay, unlike civil use which was restricted between cities, Harrington University had channels to access the internet from other cities.

Of course, using the internet this way was very expensive and unlikely to be made available for civilian use, but for Gabe, who was proving to be a talented Developer, it could be possible to get concessions after the contest was over.

'I hope my game attracts attention from the University…' Gabe thought as he ate a bowl of cereal and milk.

Fortunately, even though the city's internet was closed to internal use only, the newspapers still had correspondents in other cities who were able to bring information from elsewhere and make it available to everyone, so he didn't feel so bored that he didn't have much entertainment.

Currently that was Gabe's biggest handicap in this world. When he wasn't developing the game, he didn't have much to do. The programs that were shown on television were very boring and clichéd, and there weren't even webnovels on the local internet for him to read and pass the time. The games being made were just focused on training skills, ignoring the part that players should have fun playing.

The only thing Gabe found even remotely interesting were books, and he only found that out due to the comments on the livestream he saw where viewers compared the Residual Devil story to the books they read. But even so, the quality of books in this city was just average.

'At least this world's cultural gap can give me the edge to make my games stand out even more…' Gabe perked up as he closed a book he was reading and washed the bowl he used to eat his cereal.

Looking at the Residual Devil stats, a smile appeared on his face.

[Residual Devil: Village]

[Downloads: 4.761]

[Average playing time: 2.3 hours.]

[Accumulated Mana: 10,950]

Mana Available: 9,314

Even with just over 1,600 Mana Units he spent, the Mana that Residual Devil was harvesting from players was far greater than the amount of Mana he was spending.

With those 9 thousand Mana Units he had available it would be enough for him to almost double the total amount of Mana he had, or if he used it to invest in the game's story, he could use it to make chapter 2 and the chapter 3. Even if he greatly increased the scale of the game, using more Mana to create even more Zombie variations, detailing the scenarios even more, there would probably still be a few hundred Mana Units left. And that's considering that Chapter 01 hadn't been released yet. When players experienced it, Gabe was sure the Mana he would receive would increase even more.

As there weren't as many means of proper entertainment, Gabe used some of his free time to try out the other games in the contest and found that he wasn't the only one putting some form of monetization into their games. Although, while Gabe was just putting in cosmetic items for players to buy for a low price, some other Developers were practically halving their games and charging for the other half of the game!

The biggest example of this was the Spear Throwing Training game, which was free to play, but the fastest and most powerful monsters could only be accessed if Players paid $10!

"I think he deserves the EA title more than I do…" Gabe chuckled as soon as he realized that.

Considering that this game had just over 3,000 Downloads and apparently most of the players paid for it, it was likely that the developer "Nexus Gaming", who developed this game, received at least $10,000, since the website they published the games on received a commission of 30% of revenue.

"While I'm just selling cosmetic items at such a low price, even though the amount of people paying for this cosmetic package is small, as long as I receive $2,000, that's more than enough for me to improve my diet and have a little bit of comfort." Gabe sighed at the thought of the cheap cereal he was eating just now.

Looking at the game's sales page and seeing that there were only a few minutes left before Chapter 01 would be available to players, Gabe accessed his Seed one more time to make sure everything was right and decided to watch a livestream of someone who was going to play the game to see how Players would react to this new update.

To Gabe's surprise, today there were even more Streamers online with the title saying they were waiting for Residual Devil Chapter 01!

Adding up the total number of Viewers, Gabi was surprised to realize that there were at least 9,000 people in total watching his game! Of course, among those people, not all of them were Players, as not all of them had awakened Mana to be able to access the games and get the abilities it gave, but for the game to attract so much attention was good news for Gabe.

Seeing that Amoura was Online, Gabe decided to log on and watch her livestream, as not only was she the streamer he was most familiar with, but she was also very beautiful, which made her stream more enjoyable to watch.

Amoura was again on voice call with the other Streamers as she commented on Chapter 01 that would be unlocked today, in addition to the things they had collectively discovered with the game's trailer yesterday.

"Hehe, my increase yesterday was 40 points in my marksmanship test. I already have 740 points, so there is very little left for me to reach 800 points and be able to participate in Rank E missions," Amoura said proudly.

"Woah, you got another 40 point raise?! How many hours did you play?" Pixie, one of the girls on the voice call said in a surprised voice, "I only managed a 29-point improvement yesterday."

Amoura smiled and replied, "I played for 3 hours! After I played for 1 hour, I decided to take a break to meditate, so I could recover enough mana to play for another hour, then I took another break for a few hours and managed to play for another hour before bed, even with the livestream's Mana expenditure."

Upon hearing Amoura's method, the other streamers were shocked.

"Damn, yesterday I played for 2 hours and my Mana got exhausted. Today I'll try to follow your method too!" Pixie said excitedly.

[30 seconds to go!]

[30 seconds!]

[Open the game page!]

Suddenly, when there were only 30 seconds left for the timer on the game page to unlock Chapter 01, and the viewers in the chat of all the livestreams warned the Streamers to open the page and see what would change. Amoura was also no different and quickly switched her screen from the livestream to the game window, showing the timer slowly descending.

When it finally reached zero, Amoura saw that the "Play" button had been updated to "Refresh", which left her a little confused.

"Hey, is chapter 01 going to be free?!" she asked in surprise.

"Hey, for you the update is also not charging anything?" Pixie said in surprise.

"Yes, I managed to download Chapter 01 without paying anything!" another boy said, also surprised.

[Hey refresh the page, there is a payment option below.]

[Amoura, refresh the page!]

Seeing the comments, Amoura refreshed the page, thinking it was a bug where she could download the update for free, but she was surprised to find that it was still free.

Scrolling down the page to look at what the people in the comments were talking about, she saw that there was an option for her to buy a pack for $3.

"Could it be that the Developer misplaced this and released Chapter 01 for free by accident?" Amoura wondered in confusion, as she clicked on this package called Collector's Edition.

But when she saw that the things she could buy for $3 were just aesthetics in this package, she was even more confused.

"Wow, is that right? EA is selling this pack with only cosmetic items for $3? Look at that beautiful glove!" Amoura was about to complain that she didn't see much use in this collector's edition until she saw that there was a pink and white jacket and gloves set, which made the hands of the character she used in the game much cuter!

But something shocked her even more. Not only was there Ethan's large male hand wearing the glove, there was also a smaller, more delicate version of hand, apparently being a female version.

"Could it be that if I buy this pack I can play with a female character?" Amoura was even more surprised.

Reading the description of it, she realized that no, this pack just added a new backpack design to the inventory, new clothes, gloves, pendants for the weapon and different colors to use on the weapons, but nothing that changed the story or gameplay of the game. Nowhere did it imply that it was possible to change the main character's gender.

Even though it wasn't possible to play as a girl, Amoura still thought these gloves were very nice and the price was very low, so she paid the $3 without thinking too much about it and decided to join the game.

As she put on the virtual reality headset, viewers in the comments were chatting a lot.

[Hey, I managed to update the game for free!]

[Me too!]

[Hey guys, Electronic Arts updated the game description! It is written that all chapters will be free! As long as the player likes the game and wants to support the development, the way we can do that is to buy the collector's edition pack for $3 and receive the skins to use in-game!]

[Woah, I figured I'd have to spend at least $10 to play each chapter, but EA slapped me in the face by showing I can play everything for free! I've never been so happy with a slap like this!]

[I think EA is the most conscientious Game Developer in the world!]

[Now I even feel bad about playing the game for free, I'm going to buy the collector's pack to support the game, so I can be sure EA will keep updating it!]

[Me too!]

[You can count on me!]

Seeing those excited player comments saying that EA was the most conscientious Game Developer in the world almost made Gabe spit up the water he was drinking.

"If someone from my previous world saw something like that, they would probably swear at that person," Gabe laughed as he looked at the Residual Devil sales page and was shocked!

//NunuNote//

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