"Completely free."
Those four words slammed down onto the oval conference table, yet instead of stirring up the anticipated thousand-layered waves, they were more like a vacuum bomb that had sucked all the air out of the room.
The cavernous Conference Room One sank into a full five seconds of absolute dead silence.
The faint "whoosh" from the central air-conditioning vent suddenly sounded jarringly grating.
A few seconds later, Bronie's static-laced voice burst abruptly from the speakers: "BOSS, are you serious? We're talking about a hugely expensive, full-fledged AAA release, not the Demo of some indie little game! Has your brain fried?"
Nuwa went so far as to stand straight up, both hands slapping down on the table, her face full of disbelief: "Su Yu! Free? Have you lost your mind?! Do servers not cost money? Do art assets not cost money?"
"If my sister found out you plan to take Sister Eden's money and go scattering cash everywhere doing charity, she would absolutely catch a red-eye flight over here and chop you into eight pieces!"
Kevin's brow furrowed tightly, and Fu Hua too wore a look of bafflement.
In this world's business logic, a high-quality game equaled high R&D costs, which equaled having to recoup those costs through a high sale price.
Free? Then where would the profit come from? By selling a few outfits inside the game?
Kiana sat beside Su Yu, the ahoge atop her head drooping limply.
She couldn't understand a word of what they were arguing about, but she could feel the despairing looks the people around her were giving—the kind reserved for a "spendthrift squandering the family fortune."
She quietly reached out and, beneath the table, gently tugged at the hem of Su Yu's clothes.
Could it be that Su Yu really was out of money? Then should I take on a few more vigilante missions, catch a few more wanted criminals to support him?
Su Yu sat at the head of the table, taking in every single one of their reactions.
He was in no hurry to refute them, nor in any hurry to explain.
Gazing at these pure souls who had yet to be poisoned by whale-bait gacha games, by first-recharge-doubled bonuses, by 648-yuan mega gift packs, Su Yu's lips curled upward uncontrollably.
He suddenly grasped that pleasure—radiating from the inside out—felt by those mentors standing atop the podiums of pyramid schemes as they looked down at the clueless, ignorant lambs awaiting slaughter in the audience.
"Do you really not know..." Su Yu's gaze grew deep and profound, "...that in this world, the things that are so-called free are often the most expensive of all?"
Everyone exchanged glances.
The line sounded quite philosophical, but applied to cold, hard cash business operations, it was utter nonsense.
Su Yu straightened up and walked over beside the holographic projection.
"Let's do the math—what does a buy-to-own game mean?"
Su Yu raised a single finger.
"It means cash in one hand, goods in the other. It does guarantee a stable per-unit revenue, but it also means an extremely high barrier to entry."
He looked toward Kevin: "Kevin, you've played those big titles that easily run a few hundred yuan apiece. Before you bought one, did you read reviews? Did you hesitate over whether the money was well spent?"
Kevin nodded: "Of course. The cost of trial and error is too high."
"Exactly." Su Yu snapped his fingers. "A high barrier, first and foremost, shuts out eighty percent of casual players and fringe players."
"But completely free utterly shatters that barrier. As long as they have a phone, as long as they have the slightest interest in the graphics, players will download it without any psychological burden whatsoever."
Su Mei stroked her chin thoughtfully.
As the marketing director of an MCN company, her nose for traffic was the sharpest of all.
"I see, President Su." Su Mei's eyes lit up. "This is a classic try-before-you-buy strategy."
"You want to use a free-to-play prologue, or the first few chapters, to rapidly accumulate a massive base of initial players."
"And once they're so immersed in the story and the gameplay that they can't pull themselves out, you roll out paid unlocks for the subsequent chapters, right? That really is a fine way to seize the market quickly."
Hearing this, the tension in Nuwa's body finally eased a little.
"You scared me to death—I really thought you were going to do pure free. If it's pay-per-chapter, then with the quality we've got, it's not like we couldn't earn the costs back..."
"No."
Su Yu mercilessly cut off Nuwa's fantasy.
"Your vision is still far too small."
He stood up, walked to the holographic projector, and swept his fingers a few times through the empty air.
"The main storyline—completely free. No matter how many chapters we update to, never a charge."
"Event storylines—completely free. Every limited-time stage, every mini-game—never a paywall."
"The core action-combat gameplay, the open-world exploration—all of it, completely free."
The conference room once again sank into that suffocating dead silence.
This time, even Su Mei was dumbfounded.
"Su Yu..."
Kevin's voice sounded as if it were being squeezed out through clenched teeth.
"You're giving away the game's finest story, its most expensive stage designs, its most core gameplay—all of it, for free."
"Then may I ask—where exactly is this game's point of monetization? Do you intend to sell ad space inside the game? Print the logo of [Arc City's No. 1 Fried Chicken Shop] on a Valkyrie's armor?"
"Pfft—"
Kiana couldn't hold it in—she pictured herself wearing the White Comet armor with a fried chicken ad printed on her chest, and nearly sprayed out the water she'd just drunk.
Su Yu didn't answer.
He walked to the holographic console and tapped a few rapid keystrokes on the virtual keyboard.
"Aiyi, cut to the Supply interface."
"Righto, Boss~"
The image on the holographic screen switched in an instant.
No longer complex code or combat demos, but an exquisitely crafted, intensely alluring interface.
Dead center of the screen sat a supply box radiating a mysterious glow.
And at the very bottom of the screen were two enormous buttons.
The left one read: [Single Supply (Costs 280 Crystals)]
The right one read: [Ten-Pull Supply (Costs 2,800 Crystals)]
"This system, I call—Supply."
Su Yu's voice was as soft and gentle as the serpent coaxing Eve into eating the apple.
"Nuwa, you love collecting out-of-print figures most of all, don't you? Come up, press that button—see whether your luck can bring Moonbeam home."
Nuwa walked up to the holographic console, gazing at that button radiating golden light.
Nuwa hesitated, extended a finger, and tentatively hovered it over the holographic [Ten-Pull Supply] button.
"Boss, this feels like..."
She pushed up her glasses, a trace of pure, limpid foolishness showing in the big eyes behind the lenses.
"A bit like those blind-box gachapon machines in the arcade? You want to add gachapon into the game, let players draw for characters? So these Crystals would be the game tokens?"
Sitting at the other end of the long table, Su Mei's gaze flickered in an instant.
As marketing director, her instinct for business logic far surpassed that of ordinary people.
Almost the very instant Nuwa uttered the words "blind box," her crossed legs unconsciously shifted position, and her body leaned slightly forward.
"Wait—Eldest Senior Brother, you can't possibly be planning to..." Su Mei's words came faster.
"Sister Mei, patience." Su Yu raised a hand and pressed it downward, the smile at the corner of his mouth growing ever more pronounced. "The real show has only just begun—Nuwa, press it."
Nuwa swallowed, and her fingertip pressed down hard.
"Bang!"
On the holographic screen, that high-tech supply box burst open with a violent crack.
Accompanied by a crisp sound effect, ten boxes slammed onto the screen one after another.
Blue light, blue light, blue light...
Nuwa's expression visibly collapsed.
Until the tenth box, when a streak of purple light tore across the screen.
The character art of [Valkyrie Ranger] sprang vividly into view, twin pistols crossed, dashing and valiant.
"Wow!" Nuwa's eyes lit up.
As a hardcore face-judge and anime fan, the dopamine surge in the moment of pulling a rare character acted directly upon her central nervous system.
"Keep going." Su Yu leaned back in his chair, his voice carrying a certain irresistible enchantment.
As if under a spell, Nuwa pressed the ten-pull again and again.
She gradually noticed a pattern: no matter how badly the earlier pulls went, every ten-pull would always flash a streak of purple light.
This mechanism, known as the "pity system," was like a carrot dangled in front of a donkey, ceaselessly stoking her desire to keep tapping.
Just as she pressed some unknown number of ten-pulls in, the lighting throughout the entire conference room suddenly dimmed.
The supply box erupted with a pure golden radiance, dazzling and blinding like the supernova death of a star!
Accompanied by a grand and sacred sound effect, the character art of [White Knight: Moonbeam] slowly emerged from within the golden light.
Enormous wings of light unfurled violently across the screen, particle effects bursting and dancing through the air like scattered fragments.
The visual impact of that instant instantly reduced every previous A-rank Valkyrie to dust.
Su Yu pressed the remote at just the right moment.
The screen split in two.
On the left was live gameplay footage of the A-rank Valkyrie Ranger: twin pistols firing in bursts, a black hole gathering enemies, the movements crisp and stylish—already leagues beyond every action game on the market.
But the S-rank Moonbeam on the right... was simply not a product of the same dimension.
The twin pistols poured out firepower like a cutting machine; leaping into the air, the instant her Light Wings Unfolded she unleashed a terrifying saturation barrage of light cannons upon the enemies below.
"This..." Nuwa stared at the screen, then glanced at the character she'd just pulled, and a powerful vanity and possessiveness surged up from the bottom of her heart.
She even wanted to reach straight into the screen and scoop this character called Moonbeam out into her arms.
She rubbed her hands together with great enthusiasm, ready to keep savoring this thrill that had fallen from the heavens.
"Ding—"
A cold, merciless red dialog box popped up on the screen: [Insufficient Crystals. Proceed to recharge?]
Nuwa's hand froze in midair. That sense of emptiness—of being doused with cold water right at the climax—left her clawing at her own heart in agony.
"Su Yu..." She turned her head, a trace of fervor she herself hadn't even noticed in her eyes. "These Crystals... can they really only be bought with money?"
Every gaze in the conference room instantly converged on Su Yu in perfect unison.
Su Yu unhurriedly unscrewed the bottle of mineral water by his hand and took a sip.
Looking at those increasingly eager gazes, he smiled and shook his head.
"No. Crystals can of course be obtained by recharging." His voice carried clearly to everyone's ears. "But they can also be obtained completely for free."
"Free?!" Lin Zhaoyu couldn't help blurting out. "Su Yu, you're giving away characters and effects of this caliber to players for nothing? Then how are we supposed to make money? Run on love alone?"
The group was stunned once more; the image of "Su Yu the black-hearted capitalist" they had only just constructed instantly crumbled again.
They were growing more and more unable to figure out just what game this man was playing.
"Eldest Senior Sister, I prefer to call it—" Su Yu walked up to the screen and tapped lightly with his finger, "—the bait on a fishing hook."
The holographic image shifted, cutting to the character-development interface.
"See these?"
Su Yu pointed at the [Fragments], [Weapons], and [Stigmata] icons on the screen.
"Every Valkyrie, to grow stronger, needs repeated pulls to obtain fragments for ascension."
"And the weapons in their hands, the Stigmata they bear, must likewise be pulled from the supply boxes."
He paused, his voice turning low and brimming with enchantment.
"Players, using the Crystals they freeloaded, taste the sweet rush of gacha and obtain the game characters they love."
"But they'll soon discover that free Crystals are limited."
"When they watch their character lose to a monster because she lacks her signature weapon, when they want to make their character more perfect... what are they to do?"
The answer was self-evident.
"But that still isn't enough."
Su Yu threw out his killer move.
"Humans are social animals, and the greatest driving force is, always, comparison and vanity."
Two brand-new module icons appeared on the screen, reading [Endless Abyss] and [Memory Battlefield] respectively.
"Periodically opening PVP time-attack events."
"We throw every player on the server into the same pool and let them compete, let them fight it out."
"The higher a player ranks, the more free Crystals and rare materials they receive. And most importantly..."
Su Yu rapped on the table.
"The top-ranked players will receive a server-unique exclusive badge and achievement, glittering with a special radiance."
"That is the medal of honor belonging to the strong. To keep that badge, to avoid being squeezed down by the players behind them..."
Su Yu paused, leaving the others ample room for imagination.
In the conference room, only the sound of heavy breathing remained.
There were no flashing blades, no bloody storms.
Yet everyone could smell a thick, pungent stench of blood from this seemingly fair system.
In the earpiece, Bronie's bubblegum popped with a "snap."
This veteran player who haunted the dark web and every major gaming forum, for the first time ever, carried a trace of terror in his voice.
"Boss... this isn't a game at all." Bronie's voice reverberated through the conference room. "This is a gacha pig-butchering scheme, tailor-made to exploit humanity's most primal gambler's psychology and competitive vanity!"
Su Mei slumped back hard against her chair and let out a long breath.
Now she understood completely.
What it meant that "the free is the most expensive of all."
Those free Crystals, so generously handed out in the early stages, were all bait floating on the surface of the water.
Once a player swallowed it, the character development, signature equipment, and Abyss competition lurking beneath the surface would transform into a merciless meat grinder, wringing their wallets dry.
This model was enough to tear the current lukewarm buy-to-own game market to shreds.
"But, BOSS."
From within the holographic projection, the ever-silent Theresa suddenly spoke up.
Her brow was tightly furrowed, her gaze as sharp as that of a true heir to a financial conglomerate.
"No matter how perfect your logic may be, don't forget—2,800 Crystals for a single ten-pull."
"Converted into cold, hard cash, that's no small sum. Such an expensive per-pull price—for players accustomed to buying out an entire game for a few hundred yuan, isn't that just raising the barrier in disguise, shutting them out all the same?"
Theresa's sensitivity to numbers was clearly no trifle.
She had keenly seized on the seemingly most contradictory point in this model: since it relied on "free" to attract the bottom-tier players, wouldn't the steep gacha price just push them away again?
It was the flawless, delighted smile a hunter shows only when he sees his prey finally step onto the trap's trigger.
"Well asked, Headmistress."
Su Yu's gaze swept across the holographic image, then settled on every corner of the conference room.
"That brings us to another mechanism—one that complements our gacha model perfectly, forming what can only be called a flawless closed loop—"
He pressed the remote.
The golden, glittering supply box on the screen vanished, replaced by an exquisitely designed virtual card.
"—The Monthly Card mechanism."
"Monthly Card?" Ma Feima scratched his smooth, bald head, his thuggish, fleshy face plastered with a giant question mark. "What kind of new term is this now?"
"A so-called Monthly Card means a player needs only to spend 30 yuan to purchase it, and then over the next thirty days, they log in daily to claim a fixed quantity of Crystals."
Su Yu's voice was level, yet it carried a strange enchanting power.
"Buy once, receive in installments. As long as you log in and tap once each day, the total Crystals accumulated over a month will far exceed what 30 yuan of direct recharge could buy."
Kiana sat beside Su Yu, the ahoge atop her head slightly knotted from over-thinking.
"But... Su Yu."
She tugged at Su Yu's sleeve and asked in a lowered voice.
"If, like you said, this card is such a good deal, then wouldn't everyone just buy this Monthly Card thing and be done with it? Who would still spend all that money to directly buy those super-expensive ten-pulls?"
This was the most plain and simple commoner's logic.
Since there's a cheap route, why be the sucker who overpays?
"Kiana." Su Yu's voice was very soft, yet loud enough for everyone present to hear clearly. "Have you never heard the saying?"
He paused, his gaze once again turning sharp as a blade.
"When everyone has it, it's the same as no one having it."
Kiana was stunned.
"Remember the PVP mechanism we just talked about. Endless Abyss, Memory Battlefield."
Su Yu stood up, planted both hands on the table, and looked down upon everyone.
"When everyone has bought the Monthly Card, when everyone has the same rate of resource accumulation, the barrier of competition is invisibly raised."
"Do you think that, for the sake of winning, for the sake of keeping that badge that represents honor... this crowd of players whose competitive drive has already been ignited would be content to recharge only a Monthly Card that provides a fixed amount of resources each month?"
The air in the conference room froze once more.
Lin Zhaoyu sucked in a sharp breath; it was as if she could already see those red-eyed players madly throwing money at the game for one more second of damage output.
"What's more, the 30-yuan price point is extremely clever—it sits right in the price range of two cups of milk tea or one fast-food meal."
"It gives players the illusion that buying it on a whim costs them nothing—that they've even scored a killing. A love of petty bargains is a universal trait of humankind."
"However—" Su Yu weighted his tone, "—this bargain requires players to log in every single day to claim it. The moment they miss a check-in, an intense sense of loss arises."
Su Yu turned around, looked straight at Theresa's holographic image, and word by word declared the truly terrifying aspect of this model.
"The Monthly Card's truly lethal function does not lie in getting the vast majority of players to accept this price unguarded and fork over that first 30 yuan."
"It lies in how, like an invisible chain, it forcibly cultivates the players' habits."
"It forces them, no matter how busy, to open the game and take a look every day. It greatly—even compulsorily—maintains our game's daily active users."
"So then, everyone."
Su Yu's voice was very soft, yet like a heavy hammer it struck the heart of every person present.
"In the internet era, do you know what an enormous daily active user count means?"
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