Chapter 25: Acceptance Speech

Su Cheng and the top ten players took the stage.

Dressed in a burgundy JK uniform^[1], Shen Manman began presenting the awards one by one with the help of two close friends.

A graphics card box along with a 3,000-Yuan prize placard left Su Cheng without even a free hand to hold a microphone.

“How about this: I won’t accept my prize. We’ll pass it down the line according to our established rankings.”

This gesture prompted the audience at the venue and in the livestream to burst into cheers for Su Cheng.

“Holy crap, what class!”

“Talk about vision… Tsk-tsk, the folks next door better take notes!”

“Honestly, at first I thought Su Cheng just didn’t want to hand out such generous prizes, so he entered the competition himself to snatch first place.”

“I thought so too… Now it looks like he genuinely just wanted to win first place!”

“Hahahahaha, I’m dying of laughter!”

Immediately afterward.

Su Cheng began delivering his acceptance speech.

“First, thank you to my friends, who spent their time and energy helping run this tournament.”

“Second, thank you to my advisor, Mr. Zhang Shunping. Without him, this tournament would never have been brought to you.”

“Finally, let me talk about our games.”

Su Cheng breezed through the customary thank-you section in just a few words; what he truly wanted to talk about was the games.

“First, naturally, is the topic of game updates and version iterations for [King of Fighters].”

“We’ve received a huge amount of feedback from players, all stating that [King of Fighters] has a steep learning curve and exceptionally difficult controls.”

“Observant players may have noticed that before the tournament, we launched a ‘cheat and anti-cheat mechanism.'”

“Besides ensuring that no one used cheats to advance in this tournament, we also accommodated players by adding a ‘cheat’ function.”

Put in plain terms…

You think the game is too hard and you can’t beat it?

Fine.

I built a cheat tool for you. Go ahead and use it.

However, if you use the cheat function, you won’t earn any in-game achievements, nor will your scores be entered into the leaderboards.

Both the venue and the livestream exploded in an instant.

“Wait, did I hear that right? Don’t regular game developers usually lower the difficulty?”

“The official devs made a cheat tool for us, is that what he means?”

“That is indeed what he means. You didn’t misunderstand.”

“Wait a second, who are the devs looking down on?!”

“There is no way I’m using the official cheats!”

“Honestly, I’m already using it, and it really works great. It’s very friendly to mechanically challenged players like me who just want to see the story.”

“I seriously suspect this game was made just for himself to play. Look, he even built the cheats for us; he never intended for regular players to play it normally!”

“Damn it, he really managed to pull off that flex!”

The code for King of Fighters was actually very simple, and Su Cheng hadn’t used any form of encryption when releasing it.

Before the King of Fighters Championship began, developing an anti-cheat mechanism was a must to guarantee fair and just competition.

And if he had to study anti-cheat, he had to study cheating.

In fact, anyone with even basic computer knowledge could create a cheat program for King of Fighters.

So why shouldn’t I just provide players with a built-in “golden finger” cheat option myself?

Of course.

This feature was strictly for offline mode, meaning single-player use only.

He had simply added it while he was at it.

Little did he know, many players viewed Su Cheng’s action as a form of ‘mockery’ and ‘insult.’ Instead, the majority of players refused to use the cheat function, insisting on playing the game on their own.

This kind of reaction was genuinely beyond Su Cheng’s expectations.

Players began asking Su Cheng questions about the 《King of Fighters》 series.

Questions like when King of Fighters 3 would be released, and whether King of Fighters 2 would receive any further updates.

Some audience members also asked about 《Metal Slug》 on Qianhe Studio’s official website.

And there were quite a few questions regarding this game.

“Attentive players may have already noticed that pre-orders are open on our official website, along with a brief overview of the game.”

“Since someone asked, I’ll introduce it to everyone in a bit more detail.”

“This is a 2D side-scrolling, role-playing, stage-clearing war game…”

After Su Cheng officially announced 《Metal Slug》, players kept firing questions one after another, turning the venue into something resembling a major game launch event.

An audience member asked, “President Su, did you know all along that you were going to win the championship?”

Su Cheng smiled and answered, “I wasn’t entirely certain I’d win, but nine times out of ten, no one plays it better than me. After all, I developed the game…”

Someone else asked, “Does today count as the official reveal of 《Metal Slug》?”

Su Cheng replied, “No, no, no. I only answered because someone asked. I didn’t expect everyone to care this much. I just wanted to share a little; it’s really not a game launch event, haha. But now that I’ve said everything, I suppose you could treat it as one, actually…”

Down below the stage, Shi Xiaoqiang looked on with growing irritation.

He let out a sneer of utter disdain.

Heh.

So this is Su Cheng’s real motive, isn’t it?

Using the popularity of the [King of Fighters Championship] to drive traffic to his newly developed game.

If he released a game through normal channels, how could he ever get this much attention?

In Shi Xiaoqiang’s eyes,

this esports tournament was merely a stunt for Su Cheng to seek attention.

Still,

credit where credit was due.

The esports competition Su Cheng had put together truly offered plenty of lessons worth learning from.

On that score, though,

Shi Xiaoqiang was actually completely mistaken.

Su Cheng genuinely had no intention of holding a game launch event.

Because he had only just begun working on the programming.

As Du Xi had put it, holding a launch event when the game was still an empty folder was downright ridiculous.

Su Cheng hadn’t expected that putting up pre-orders would result in so many early buyers and so much attention from players.

He could only roll with it and give an overview, treating it as free marketing.

Free hype was free hype; why pass it up?

“Besides 《Metal Slug》 having different gameplay from 《King of Fighters》, we also poured a tremendous amount of effort into the art!”

“Allow me to introduce the young lady who presented my award just now. She’s one of our studio’s current art designers. Both she and our other art designer have poured immense time and energy into this, working their hearts out.”

The livestream director was pretty sharp.

The director managing the stream today was a student from Ye University’s photography department, roped in by Li Lei for a part-time gig at fifty Yuan a day.

The moment Su Cheng mentioned Shen Manman, the director gave her an extended close-up shot.

The combination of framing and lighting elevated Shen Manman’s looks to their absolute peak.

“And here I thought I was the only one who noticed how beautiful the girl in the JK uniform is.”

“I spotted her the moment she walked up on stage to hand out the awards.”

“I originally thought Qianhe hired a hostess or a model… Turns out she’s an artist at their studio!”

“Real talk, her side profile completely outshines a whole crowd of celebrities!”

“What’s her name? Honestly, she is totally my type!”

…