Chapter 730 - 730: Phasmophobia Launches

On the way to the company, Utaha, who was sitting in the passenger seat, smiled and asked,

"Yukino has to go back to university again. With one less person keeping you company at the office, are you going to feel lonely, Ichin?"

Driving the car, Ichin smiled and shook his head.

"Not really. Besides, I'll still have you with me, won't I? Actually, I've been thinking about something. You all spend time at the office with me, but whenever I get focused on work, I end up completely ignoring you. Isn't that a little unfair to you?"

Utaha narrowed her eyes happily.

"It's fine. We all know exactly what you're like when you're working. Besides..."

She smiled warmly.

"A serious, hardworking Ichin is even more attractive."

"We've practically been an old married couple for ages. Saying cheesy things like that isn't going to make me blush anymore."

"Really?"

Utaha glanced at the red traffic light ahead.

As the car came to a stop, she leaned closer toward him.

"Not blushing is fine. But aren't you going to give me some kind of reaction?"

Ichin laughed helplessly before leaning over and giving her a kiss.

Only then did Utaha smile in satisfaction.

After arriving at the company, most of the work on the Phasmophobia development team had already been completed.

Only a handful of minor fixes remained, which would take another two or three days at most.

Since the bulk of the development was finished, Ichin had given the team three days off.

As a result, there were noticeably more empty desks than usual.

Walking over to check on Nene and Umiko's progress, Ichin said,

"Keep it up. Once you've fixed those last few bugs over the next couple of days, you can go on vacation too."

Nene nodded excitedly.

"Hehe, Umiko and I already booked a hotel! As soon as we're done, we're going to Osaka for a few days!"

"Oh, Osaka."

Narumi smiled from the side.

"As for me, I'll probably go back to my hometown with Momiji. It's been over half a year since I've been home."

Although three days wasn't a particularly long vacation, they could simply use another two days of paid leave afterward and spend nearly a week with their families.

Ichin looked toward Narumi.

"But when you go home... won't your family pressure you to get married? You're at that age already."

The cheerful expression on Narumi's face immediately disappeared.

"Ichin-kun, you're getting worse and worse at saying the right thing. Why did you have to remind me of that?"

"Oh?"

Ichin suddenly became interested.

"So your family really is pressuring you to get married?"

The people nearby also gathered around curiously.

Seeing everyone staring at her, Narumi could only explain.

"It can't be helped. Honestly, my family started bringing it up right after I graduated. I've always used work as an excuse to turn down blind dates."

She sighed deeply.

"But this time I completely forgot. I already booked my flight home, and I just know that by the time I land, my mom will already have arranged for me to meet someone."

After saying that, she collapsed onto her desk with a miserable expression.

Looking over at Momiji Mochizuki, who had just walked in, Ichin asked,

"Momiji, what about you? Has your family been urging you to get married too?"

Momiji shook her head.

"No. My parents told me to just let things happen naturally. If I meet the right person, that's great. If I don't, there's no need to force it."

She paused before adding earnestly,

"They also told me not to get tricked by bad people."

Well...

She really was the type who could be easily fooled.

She was such a foodie that the moment delicious food appeared, half of her common sense seemed to disappear.

Her parents' concern wasn't exactly unfounded.

After chatting for a while, Ichin returned to the Bloodborne development team and resumed his work.

He stayed busy all morning.

That afternoon, Akane Kousaka arrived as scheduled.

Ichin invited Hazuki along before bringing Akane into his office.

After sitting down, Akane looked around curiously.

"When I came upstairs just now, I noticed there seem to be fewer people around than usual."

Ichin nodded.

"That's right. Development on Phasmophobia is finished, so I gave the team a few days off to let them get some proper rest."

"So it's finished."

Akane immediately understood.

"No wonder you called me over now."

She smiled.

"So, are we discussing the outsourcing projects?"

"Exactly."

Ichin picked up two folders and handed them to her.

"Before development officially begins, I want to explain both projects in detail."

The two proposal documents were for GARO 2 and Persona 2.

"Oh?"

Akane looked at the files in surprise.

"Even Persona has work that needs to be outsourced?"

"It's different from the first game."

Ichin explained,

"The Persona designs themselves can be reused from the original, but nearly everything else, including maps and NPC models, has to be built from scratch. We'll also be making adjustments to the combat system."

"The portions we'd like your company to handle are primarily environment creation and part of the NPC modeling."

Akane nodded.

Rather than opening the Persona 2 proposal first, she picked up the proposal for GARO 2.

"I assume GARO won't be the same?"

"Right."

Ichin nodded.

"For GARO, we'll reuse some of the existing maps. There will still be newly created areas, but the overall workload is much smaller than Persona. It's an action-focused game, so the real emphasis is on refining the combat system and faithfully adapting and expanding upon the original story."

Over the next two hours, Ichin carefully explained every aspect of both outsourcing projects while Hazuki occasionally added supplementary details.

More than two hours later, Akane finally left, carrying both proposal documents and a portable hard drive.

Some of her employees had just finished their previous projects and could immediately begin work on the new assignments.

And considering the reputation of Ichin's company, everyone would undoubtedly be excited about these outsourcing opportunities.

September 12th finally arrived.

After weeks of anticipation from horror game fans, Phasmophobia officially launched on PC.

Originally, Ichin had planned to release it exclusively on Steam.

However, after seeing Epic Games continue improving its client, he eventually agreed to launch the game on the Epic Games Store as well.

Now that developers could easily support cross-play between Epic and Steam versions, combined with the steadily improving community features and achievement system, releasing on Epic no longer posed any significant issues.

The first half of the year had been relatively quiet for new releases.

Now, players finally had a major new game to enjoy.

Besides those who had already pre-ordered, many players who watched livestreams from various content creators immediately purchased the game and invited several friends to play together.

Although it was fundamentally a horror game about locating and capturing ghosts, the built-in voice recognition system often created hilariously unexpected situations.

As a result, Phasmophobia developed a surprisingly comedic atmosphere during multiplayer sessions, attracting many players who normally avoided horror games altogether.

Within just one week of release, the online co-op title had sold more than 200,000 copies.

Its peak concurrent player count on Steam surpassed 20,000 players, making the launch an overwhelming success.

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