TENGDA CORP: PLEASE LET ME GO BANKRUPT!

CHAPTER 2: The Money-Dumping Project and the Failed Flop

The next morning, Julian woke up not with a headache from being kicked out, but with a new target: spending the capital money. The notification on his phone showed that a new bank account under the name of Tengda Corp had been credited with a balance of $50,000 from the System.

According to the rules, he could not use that money to buy expensive clothes or eat delicious food, but it was perfectly legal to use it for business operations, including office rent.

Julian went to the outskirts of Riverdale City and rented a basement space, a former warehouse that was somewhat stuffy and cheap. The rent was only $500 a month. He deliberately did not renovate it at all. The peeling wall paint and flickering fluorescent lights were exactly the right conditions for a company he was aiming to bankrupt.

After handling his business permits, Julian sat on a cheap plastic chair in the middle of the empty room, opened his laptop, and began designing his first game.

"The System wants me to lose money, right? Easy," Julian muttered while rapidly typing lines of code. "Let's make a game that shatters all current industry standards."

The name of his first project was "The Unfair Quest." Julian carefully designed the concept so that this game would be hated by all players:

Graphics: He refused to use good 3D visuals. He deliberately drew the game assets himself using boxy 2D pixels that looked lazy and cheap.

Gameplay: This was just an ordinary side-scrolling adventure game. However, the difficulty level was set to an absurd degree. The player's character could instantly die just by touching grass or standing still for three seconds.

Death Penalty: This was the ultimate weapon. If the player's character died, all save data and game progress would be permanently deleted automatically. The player would have to restart completely from the beginning.

Assistance: There was no tutorial menu, no directions, and no difficulty options.

"Great," Julian said with a satisfied smile looking at his laptop screen. "There won't be any microtransactions or ads in this game. Completely free. With a release license f*e on the app store of $200, plus the office rent, my system capital has already decreased. If this game gets a one-star rating and nobody downloads it, at the end of the month I'll get thousands of dollars in personal money conversion."

For two consecutive weeks, Julian worked alone in that basement warehouse. He even deliberately ignored the audio quality and only used standard beep sound effects that were shrill and made the ears hurt. Once finished, Julian immediately uploaded the game to the local T-Store platform using Tengda Corp's developer account.

First day of release: 0 downloads.

Second day: 1 d******d (and even that was from Julian's own phone to make sure the game could run).

Third day: 2 downloads.

Julian looked at those statistics while leaning back casually in his chair. "Perfect. The plan is going smoothly. Just have to wait fifteen more days until the system settlement time, and I will be officially rich."

However, in another part of the city, a heavy-set man named Tyler "The Rage" Brooks was sitting in front of his live streaming camera. Tyler was a famous gaming influencer on Twitch with two million followers. He was popular for playing the hardest games in the world while raging spectacularly in front of the camera.

That night, Tyler was bored because he felt all the new games on the market were too easy for him.

"You guys know," Tyler said toward the camera while reading the comment column in the live chat. "The game industry nowadays has gone soft. All developers pamper players like babies. Give me a game that's actually hard, or I'm ending the live stream tonight."

Suddenly, one of the viewers sent a link in the comment section.

User99: Try playing this new trash game, Tyler. The name is The Unfair Quest. Made by some obscure studio named Tengda. I guarantee you'll cry within... five minutes.

Tyler snorted dismissively. "Tengda? Never heard of it. Unfair Quest? Probably just a cheap casual game. Okay, let's see how fast I can beat this game."

Tyler immediately downloaded the game that very night. And that was when the disaster for Julian's plan began.

A few days later, Julian was enjoying his cheap instant noodles in the basement when his phone suddenly vibrated without stopping. Inbound email notifications came in rapid succession. When he opened the Tengda Corp developer dashboard, the d******d metric numbers that used to be countable on one's fingers had now changed to 45,000, and the number kept skyrocketing rapidly.

"What on earth is this? Is the server glitched?" Julian choked on his instant noodles.

He quickly opened a global video platform and found the name The Unfair Quest sitting at number one in the trending column. Tyler "The Rage" Brooks' live stream video from last night had apparently gone viral and had been watched by five million people.

In that video, Tyler screamed hysterically until his face turned flushed red because his character died from brushing against grass in the fifth second. He slammed his table until his keyboard broke, then shouted at the camera: "This isn't a trash game! This is a psychological masterpiece! The developer of this game knows exactly how to trigger our adrenaline. This is the most honest game of this century!"

The comment section was filled with gamers who were curious and challenged.

“Finally, there's a developer who doesn't think their players are stupid!”

“The pixel graphics are minimalist but the feel is totally there, the shrill music makes it even more stressful and challenging. This is genius!”

Because Julian did not place any ads or microtransactions, he initially thought he was safe from profit. However, he forgot one thing: the distribution platform where he released the game had a "Creator Appreciation" feature, alias voluntary donations. Gamers who were amazed by Tengda Corp's idealism swarmed to send donations ranging from $1 to $50 as a form of support.

Ting!

The System's bright blue holographic screen suddenly appeared in front of Julian's face, which instantly went pale.

[First Period Settlement Completed.]

[Total Operational Expenses: $700]

[Total Revenue (Community Donations): $120,000]

[Business Status: HUGE PROFIT.]

[Personal Funds Conversion (Ratio 1,000:1): $119]

[System Funds Updated for the Second Period: $500,000]

"W… what on earth is this?!"