Chapter 749 - 412: Small Troubles of Five-Person Cohabitation

The journey always has an endpoint, but life must go on.

On April 12th, at midnight, everyone flew back to the Capital, returning to their homes.

This journey came to a close, and everyone had different gains, but the one who gained the most was Li Peifeng.

He not only officially made Old Zhao his fiancée, but the five-in-one relationship also became more stable.

When Li Peifeng initially proposed to Zhao Qingge, Wu, Xu, and Huang were indeed very angry, but by the time they returned home, most of that anger had subsided.

After all, it was just a proposal, not worth getting too worked up over. They’ll have to get married eventually; if they really got angry now, wouldn’t they be even angrier when they see them taking wedding vows?

So they decided to ignore it.

Once they realized that the saying "the best is yet to come" is just a lie, and that life only brings a series of unsolvable problems, their hearts fell into an incredibly calm sea.

The next day, Wednesday, everyone returned to their busy routines, with those who needed to work going to work, and those who needed to go to school going to school.

Li Peifeng still planned to stay home and write, but it wasn’t long before he received a call from He Yimeng.

"I’ve been in touch with those mobile game companies you mentioned. The prices they offered were too high. After comprehensive consideration, I think it’s better to either start our own or acquire a strong game development studio and use it as a framework to gradually build..."

After resigning from the Trinity, He Yimeng devoted all her energy to this.

While Li Peifeng was traveling, she hadn’t been idle. The first five days were spent catching up on the mobile gaming industry, and the following days were spent contacting and negotiating with acquisition targets.

The final answer she gave Li Peifeng was well thought out, with specific plans and acquisition targets for studios ready. After listening, Li Peifeng found it reasonable and decided to adopt it.

"Alright, let’s do it your way. Contact me if you need me to step in for the acquisition or recruitment."

"Of course, I need you to step in. Are you home?"

"Mm... should I come to see you now?"

"Come over. I plan to visit that studio this afternoon, and you should come with me."

"No problem."

Upon returning to Jade District again, Li Peifeng no longer hid and directly parked his car below He Yimeng’s building, walking openly into her home.

"I saw your garage wasn’t open, did you close the counseling room too?"

"I don’t have time to take on cases now. The other counselor is on leave today, so it’s closed."

He Yimeng, dressed in pajamas, opened the door and went straight to the bedroom: "Come with me, I’ll show you the studio’s information."

About eight or nine years ago, developing mobile games was fertile ground for game designers of any level. Back then, as long as you had a smartphone, knew how to use Xcode integrated development tool, and had enough ideas and creativity, you could join this exciting and promising field.

From a game design blueprint to market launch, even an individual or a small team could finish a mobile game within weeks to months, which is why there were countless mobile game development studios domestically.

Frankly, at that time, the mobile game industry was such a hot opportunity that even a pig could fly if it stood in the right spot.

However, with the advancement of the smartphone era, continuous updates and upgrades to mobile hardware, coupled with increasing interest from capital, more PC game production companies began entering the mobile game field. These factors led to a geometric increase in the development costs of 3D mobile games, players’ tastes grew more demanding, and the difficulty of operation increased.

Even though some creative games, with the help of extraordinary luck, managed to become trends under low-budget operations and create cultural phenomena, the chances of that happening were as slim as winning a lottery jackpot. The opportunities for success for small mobile game development teams and developers were disappearing, only those mobile gaming companies with more substantial capital willing to spend big on production and marketing could secure a foothold in this increasingly competitive market.

As a result, many mobile game development studios faced closure. The older games they developed were no longer welcomed by the market, their monthly revenue decreasing day by day, making operations unsustainable, and they were unable to develop new games that matched contemporary players’ tastes, or they found themselves trapped in financial difficulties due to rising development costs, causing projects to be shelved.

Most founders didn’t want their labors to vanish completely. They wanted to find a new owner for it before losses appeared, allowing themselves to cash out and move on.

The Menglong Studio that He Yimeng showed to Li Peifeng was such a case. It was a studio with over thirty employees, which had developed an RPG-type 3D mobile game three years ago and, at its peak, achieved monthly revenue of millions but could only sustain that for less than half a year. Due to operational issues and changing player tastes, its revenue rapidly declined.

The founder of Menglong was a game developer with dreams. After earning some profits from the first game, he immediately started a new project, increasing the budget and hiring more people, planning to make a big splash.

However, after a year of diligent development, the new game was met with a lukewarm market response upon release.

The production costs skyrocketed by tenfold, and the results were less than half of those from the first game. After two challenging years, the founder of Menglong, disheartened, has accepted that he wants to transfer the business.