Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games
Chapter 439: The Launch Event Begins
Friday, March 4th.
Pei Qian arrived at the company early and opened the backend dashboard.
The purchase data for BE QUIET was still zero!
Clearly, in just one day, players hadn't made any breakthrough progress.
Of course, this was all part of his plan!
This string of code was hidden in Lonely Desert Road. It could be found after driving for three hours, and once one person discovered it, everyone could participate in solving the puzzle.
If the goal were simply to discourage players, requiring everyone to complete an eight- or even sixteen-hour journey in Lonely Desert Road would've been more effective—but the system obviously wouldn't allow that.
So when designing these challenges, Pei Qian had to carefully balance the difficulty.
If it was too hard or unreasonable—so much so that players couldn't obtain the purchase condition—the system wouldn't allow it.
If it was too easy and failed to create a barrier, players would quickly gain access to buy the game, and all of Pei Qian's efforts would be wasted.
The main objective of this filtering mechanism was to minimize the number of players who could obtain purchase access before the current settlement cycle ended—that is, within less than a month—thereby reducing game sales.
As for what to do next cycle… that could be dealt with later.
In Pei Qian's ideal scenario, this puzzle would stall players for an entire month, ensuring zero sales during this period.
Since the game had already been released, the reason players couldn't buy it was because they hadn't solved the puzzle—not because the game was unfinished—so it wouldn't count as a delayed project or affect the settlement schedule.
Even if it couldn't stall players for a full month, delaying them for two or three weeks was still far better than letting them buy the game right away!
On forums, players had already come up with numerous ways to decode the string, and many "experts" had emerged.
These methods included grouping, converting letters to numbers, mapping numbers to keypad layouts, reversing sequences, cross-referencing, sequencing, ASCII, hexadecimal, and more—so many that it was dizzying.
In reality, Pei Qian was just an ordinary person. He hadn't studied any particularly complex encryption methods. The solution he used was based entirely on simple, everyday puzzle logic.
It just involved a few extra steps.
Among the players' attempts, some had indeed stumbled upon the correct approach. However, because the final decryption step was relatively obscure and unusual, some players mistakenly thought they had reached a dead end and stopped pursuing it further.
As a result, this correct solution path didn't receive much attention.
GAICCCCCCACBIADBHCEA
By observing it, one could notice that the letters A, B, and C appeared frequently, while the highest letter present was I. Using the mapping A=1, B=2, and so on, I corresponds to 9—indicating that this string was originally converted from numbers.
71933333313291428351
Looking further at this number string, a pattern emerges when grouping every two digits:
71 / 93 / 33 / 33 / 31 / 32 / 91 / 42 / 83 / 51
The second digit in each pair never exceeds 4, which matches the classic mobile phone keypad system.
For example, "71" corresponds to the first letter on the "7" key, which is P. Following the same logic, all subsequent pairs can be mapped to letters on a phone keypad.
This yields:
PYFFDEWHVJ
But at this point, the pattern seems to break, leaving no obvious next step. So players who reached this stage often couldn't proceed further. Judging from forum discussions and comments, many hadn't even realized this was the correct path.
In truth, this final step wasn't a complicated cipher. Its general category is quite common in real life, but this particular variation is extremely rare—so very few people are familiar with it.
Pei Qian had only learned about it casually out of personal interest and decided on a whim to use it here. He hadn't expected it to work so effectively.
Moreover, even after solving this part, the puzzle was only about one-third complete.
"Come on, everyone—keep trying. If you can't solve it, I'm going to take a loss this settlement cycle!" Pei Qian couldn't help but feel a bit smug.
The OTTO phone launch event was scheduled for this weekend, so Pei Qian planned to attend and keep an eye on things to ensure nothing went wrong.
But before that, he sent a message to the programmer in charge of the puzzle:
"The clue in Lonely Desert Road has already been found. You can reduce the time required to discover it from three hours to 15 minutes."
…
…
Sunday, March 6th.
Oasis Four Seasons Hotel, the largest five-star hotel in Jingzhou City.
Many of Tengda Group's past events—high-level business receptions, recruitment exams, annual meetings—had all been held here.
This launch event was also taking place in the hotel's banquet hall. Numerous tech media outlets had been invited in advance, with rooms booked for them, along with covered meals, lodging, and travel expenses.
As for other attendees, tickets had been distributed through customers of businesses like Moyu Internet Café and Against the Wind Logistics.
In any case, filling the entire venue wouldn't be a problem.
The event was scheduled to officially begin at 3 PM. Around a little after 2, Pei Qian quietly strolled into the venue and found a seat in a corner.
If he wanted, he could have sat in the front row. But since the event would be livestreamed with cameras throughout, sitting there would definitely put him on screen—exposing him.
So, although he told Chang You he would attend, he didn't reveal where he would be sitting.
With so many people present, finding President Pei would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
This way, he could both remain hidden and oversee things from behind the scenes—a win-win.
Soft, soothing music played in the background as the venue filled with people.
Since he had arrived a bit early, the big screen was still dark.
At other phone launch events, the screen would usually be playing warm-up videos or promotional clips featuring brand ambassadors.
But Pei Qian thought about it—OTTO didn't seem to have those?
Chang You had asked him earlier about getting a spokesperson, but at the time Pei Qian hadn't made a decision, so nothing was finalized.
Presumably, Chang You had forgotten about it too.
If there wasn't even a spokesperson, then there probably wouldn't be any warm-up promotional videos either.
That was fine. They could just get straight to the point—dryly talk about the phone's shortcomings for an hour, then wrap up quickly. Perfectly aligned with his expectations.
As Pei Qian was happily imagining this, the lights in the venue suddenly dimmed.
The big screen lit up!
A sleek, futuristic logo slowly appeared on the screen—like a rising sun dispersing darkness—instantly capturing everyone's attention.
The camera gradually zoomed out, the logo shrinking, and a silhouette appeared in the foreground, perfectly blocking the bright light and outlining a handsome figure.
Then, he raised his right hand and grasped the glowing light.
A burst of light erupted from his hand. The logo shrank and was engraved onto the back of a phone, emitting a soft, pulsing glow!
The figure turned around.
It was Lu Zhiyao—looking impossibly handsome—staring out from the screen at the audience, holding a sleek and elegant smartphone with the glowing logo on its back, radiating a strong sense of futuristic tech.
And that wasn't all. Two more ads followed, including one featuring "drone delivery."
Finally, the screen froze on a promotional image: Lu Zhiyao holding the OTTO phone, a faint smile on his lips.
Pei Qian sat frozen in his seat, the bottle of water he had just opened forgotten in his hand.
"What the hell…"
"Isn't this the ad from A Better Tomorrow???"
He couldn't help but recall the scene when he watched A Better Tomorrow in the cinema.
At this very moment, it felt exactly like that moment before.
The same lack of preparation. The same confusion!
Back when Pei Qian watched the movie, he had indeed seen this phone advertisement and logo. But it didn't quite match the OTTO Technology logo in his memory, so he hadn't paid much attention to it.
And now… OTTO was straight-up copying content from the movie?
Riding on its popularity?
Shameless!
And when did Lu Zhiyao become their spokesperson?
Right now, Lu Zhiyao was at the peak of his popularity. After A Better Tomorrow was released, his reputation as "box office poison" was completely overturned. With his breakthrough acting performance and his already solid fame, he had once again firmly entered the ranks of top-tier young actors in the country.
If he were to win an award on top of that, it would be even more incredible.
Considering what A Better Tomorrow had done for his career, it seemed only natural for him to return the favor by endorsing the OTTO phone…
For Pei Qian, this should have been a pleasant surprise.
But right now, he felt no surprise at all—only shock!
This opening was far more effective than a typical warm-up video. After all, A Better Tomorrow was still in theaters and quite popular—many people in the audience had already seen it.
These ads had all appeared in the movie. They were carefully produced, stylistically distinct, and noticeably different from most smartphone commercials. As the audience watched them, they naturally connected them to the futuristic phone brand featured in the film.
Since Chang You hadn't revealed any of this in the promotional materials beforehand, the audience was clearly caught off guard—in a good way!
The previously dull atmosphere in the venue instantly became lively.
The tech journalists seated in the front row were already whispering among themselves. Clearly, just this ad segment plus Lu Zhiyao's endorsement was enough to create a strong buzz.
Meanwhile, Pei Qian felt like he was sitting on pins and needles, panicking internally.
This opening was completely different from what he had imagined—and that didn't seem like a good sign…
He twisted open his water bottle and took a sip to calm himself.
"Stay calm… stay calm."
"It's probably not as bad as I think."
"A strong opening doesn't necessarily mean success. It might even create a 'build-up before a fall' effect."
"As long as Chang You followed my instructions for the PPT—going completely against the usual approach of other phone brands—then the criticism should only grow louder as the event goes on."
"When that happens, this flashy opening might actually become a point of criticism."
"So there's no need to worry right now. Everything will be fine!"
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