Chapter 98: The Perilous Gacha Backlash

In the following days, Zhou Ruoyu settled into work at Long Yu. Every day, she played the role of a planner drone, gradually getting into the rhythm of work. Slowly, she became acquainted with a few colleagues.

Though their relationships weren’t as close as before with Ling Bo, this superficial colleague rapport actually put her somewhat at ease… At the very least, even if she were to be stabbed in the back again, she wouldn’t hurt as much as before.

Hmm… As for how to handle emotional value—well, wasn’t there still that perverted CEO?

Over this period, Zhou Ruoyu and Gu Jiachen’s WeChat chats became increasingly frequent. But basically, it was that old nemesis cheering her up… As for Zhou Ruoyu, she completely treated him as a tree hole. When bored or annoyed, she’d chat with Gu Jiachen—or rather, seek comfort?

After a while, the girl suddenly took a deep breath. Then it hit her—something was wrong.

‘Hiss—I’m done for. Have I fallen into that perverted CEO’s trap? Is he using these fake acts of tenderness to make me succumb?’

Zhou Ruoyu slapped her thigh abruptly. Then she came to her senses: No, she couldn’t keep sinking like this. She had to find a way to divert her attention!

Thinking this, the black-haired loli suddenly stood up, found her supervisor, and said:

“Boss, please give me more work!”

“Huh… what?” The supervisor looked at the little loli raising her right hand, utterly baffled… Wait, is this kid so motivated?

“Uh… well, okay then. Coincidentally, the operations department is planning a ‘Meet the Developers’ event on our official game forum. You can handle the liaison. Just answer some players’ questions and talk about future plans. I’ll give you a template script. Pick a few questions to reply to. It shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“Hmm… so just selective answers? That’s easy~” Zhou Ruoyu nodded. She was quite satisfied with this task. After all, it wasn’t tiring, she could show her face and gain presence among players, and she didn’t have to worry about losing control—since she could choose which questions to answer, there would definitely be some she could handle~

And so, ready to act, after receiving the script, Zhou Ruoyu coordinated with operations colleagues. Then she eagerly registered an account on Long Yu’s official forum, waiting for players to happily post questions so she could grace a few answers and reap praise.

[Hello everyone, I’m the game designer Xiao Yu. Feel free to ask questions or give suggestions~]

Done~

After posting, Zhou Ruoyu’s thread got stickied and featured. Then she started furiously hitting F5 to refresh the page. The online players arrived quickly. Soon, the number of comments exceeded two pages and kept growing.

But… a small problem seemed to arise.

The black-haired loli scrolled down with the mouse wheel. Reading from top to bottom, she discovered that these replies…

Not a single one was reply-able!

‘Wha—what is all this? Why are they all intensely cursing the developers? And so many emoji? Why is it so abstract?’

[New outfits are so expensive, are you crazy for money?]

[Does the developer like gacha so much because your family is starving?]

[The drop rate is so low, can’t get anything in 100 draws, must force the pity system, right?]

[Don’t kid me, bro. Even pity gives you what you like? I pulled over 500 times and got a set of purple equipment. I wanted the bunny girl outfit, argh!]

[I strongly suspect false probabilities. Bros, go to Long Yu customer service and request invoices, blast them on Weibo!]

[Dammit, developer get out here, get out!]

‘Hiss—’ Seeing these furious comments, the black-haired loli couldn’t help trembling. The barrage of criticism had already reached twenty pages, yet Zhou Ruoyu hadn’t found a single comment she dared to reply to…

‘This is bad—the template doesn’t match either. Wuwu… the Word doc didn’t include how to respond when they curse my ancestors…’

Zhou Ruoyu panicked, not even understanding why players suddenly erupted like this. Until after a while, an operations colleague burst into the planning department and yelled:

“Report—no, bad news! The new gacha event you guys came up with has been backlash! Players are flooding the forum and Weibo. Many are even live-streaming account destruction and melting gear. What do we do, what do we do? This time it’s blown out of proportion!”

“Hiss—this…” Faced with this scene, the planning department colleagues all lowered their heads. Ah… Actually, this incident had been brewing since this morning’s update. But no one expected the situation to develop so quickly. After all, previous gacha events also got criticized, but never to this extent.

However, due to the huge revenue pressure on this old game recently, everyone feared missing their KPIs, so they decided to slightly lower the outfit drop rate. They thought the quality of the bunny girl outfit was good enough, following the principle of ‘you get what you pay for,’ to weather the criticism. But they never expected the bunny girl uniform to be so popular that everyone wanted it, throwing themselves into the gacha pit. And then… it exploded.

The supervisor furrowed his brow. Normally, this would require emergency PR—contact the public relations department. But even if the situation calmed down, the planning department would ultimately take the blame. Worse, this supervisor might have to resign in disgrace…

No, he had to find an opportunity to redeem himself… After a while, the supervisor’s gaze slowly landed on Zhou Ruoyu, who was still there trying to figure out how to select comments. He walked over, gently patted her shoulder, and said:

“Zhou Ruoyu… How do you think we should handle this? I’d like to hear your opinion. After all, the outfits for this event were designed by you…”

“Eh? Eh? Eh?” Hearing the supervisor’s vague attempt to shift blame, Zhou Ruoyu quickly shook her head to distance herself:

“No, although I designed the outfits, the gacha event wasn’t my idea! I’ve always hated raffles and such. Wuwu… That’s right, I hate them the most! Anyway… I don’t know what to do either, supervisor. Look at this thread already…”

“Forget the thread, it’s useless now… Can’t stop it. Sigh… What to do? Think of a… solution…”

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