Chapter 59: Chapter 59: The Livestream That Can’t Be Turned Off
Han Tian had accepted an ad deal.
Ever since he started streaming, the game itself aside, his videos were of absolutely top-notch quality.
The scenes of players battling demon beasts were incredibly detailed, from the special effects to the costumes.
He had quite a lot of people tuning in regularly.
With that much traffic, advertisers were practically lining up to work with Han Tian.
Han Tian could make a fortune from ads alone.
He’d previously been a game reviewer. Thanks to his solid reputation, he could command high prices for sponsored content, but he never gave a dishonest review.
He would refuse to review certain terrible games, even if they offered him money.
But the traffic he was getting now was on a completely different level from before, and his advertising rates had skyrocketed accordingly.
Han Tian picked out a few ad deals from major brands and accepted them. He even sent cash bonuses to his teammates.
It was a way of thanking them for appearing in his videos.
Since it wasn’t their real faces on display, nobody felt particularly awkward about it.
This was especially true for Zhou Xiao and Chen Miaomiao. Because they’d designed their in-game avatars to be so attractive, they had even started to build their own fanbases.
Of course, just when things were going well, something unexpected was bound to happen.
For instance, Han Tian got called out.
Getting "called out" meant that someone on the very same streaming platform had posted a video calling him into question.
[An Exposé: How Jing Bao Tian Fabricated a Massive Hoax]
The video was posted by another vlogger on the same platform, who went by the name ’Steamed Fatty Chong’.
In his early days, he was a game reviewer, just like Han Tian.
But unlike Han Tian, who was protective of his reputation, he would praise even the most garbage game to the high heavens as long as he got paid.
Because of this, while his early videos still got a decent number of views, his audience had since dwindled. Now that people knew his reputation was rotten, they didn’t bother watching his game reviews anymore.
Netizens often commented that his reviews were as foul as his username suggested.
With no one watching, both his traffic and income plummeted.
Just as he was worrying about having to switch careers, Steamed Fatty Chong stumbled upon Han Tian’s recent rise to fame.
His eyes lit up. He immediately recognized it as an opportunity to generate traffic.
He had watched the stream, too. ’Could a game like this really exist?’
’With our country’s current level of technology—no, with the entire world’s technology—it’s impossible to create something like this.’
Steamed Fatty Chong scoffed and immediately posted the drama-inciting video.
"Hello everyone, I’m the creator, Steamed Fatty Chong. Today, we’re not doing a game review. Instead, we’re going to talk about a person. Han Tian, the creator formerly known as Jing Bao Tian, used to be just like me—a specialist in reviews. He was someone I looked up to, an idol of mine. But I truly never expected he’d suddenly resort to pulling a stunt like this. ’Marketing,’ ’scammer,’ ’hype’... I can hardly believe I’m using words like these in connection with him..."
The entire video was framed as a tribute to his ’idol,’ but in reality, it was just a hit piece meant to tear Han Tian down and humiliate him.
It accused him of using the "one million" bounty as a gimmick to generate hype for a nonexistent game, then piggybacking on the "game" to boost his own traffic.
Everything Han Tian was doing was purely for money.
Steamed Fatty Chong presented a comprehensive, reasoned argument, but the crucial point it all boiled down to was this: does the game even exist?
He was convinced it didn’t.
Even many of the people who were still watching Han Tian’s stream felt the game couldn’t possibly be real.
However, people from the special effects industry also came forward with their analysis. According to them, based on the cost of creating special effects, most of the scenes shown in Han Tian’s stream would cost hundreds of thousands to achieve that level of detail. Moreover, Han Tian was presenting it live, with no discernible signs of editing. He was also interacting with his audience in real time, and the visuals were far too smooth and natural. That level of technology alone didn’t seem like something any current special effects team could produce.
This left them baffled. The technical difficulty was just too high. ’If someone really had made such a major breakthrough, would they really just use it to generate hype for a streamer?’
It had to be one of two things: either the technology was faked, or Han Tian was so rich he had money to burn. Which was it?
’Hype? A scammer?’
Han Tian saw the bullet comments flooding his screen, informing him that Steamed Fatty Chong had posted a video dissing him and accusing him of faking hype and using deceptive marketing.
A contemptuous smile touched the corners of Han Tian’s lips. "That pathetic clown? I don’t even need to give him the time of day. My stance hasn’t changed: if anyone can find a real-world location that matches what you see behind me, my one-million prize is still on the table. And as for whether or not it’s real? This game has 70 players now. The others can vouch for me."
"Or are you going to claim the game company hired seventy shills?"
"Trust me, that’s impossible. The developer is cheap as hell; she wouldn’t spend a single penny on shills. If we hadn’t filled out the application on a whim out of sheer boredom, we wouldn’t have believed in a game advertised with such a gimmick either. But to our surprise, it turned out to be an incredible experience. Right now, I’m just so grateful for that moment of impulse that pushed me to join this game."
"After this new player event is over, I estimate the next batch of recruitment slots will be released soon. If you have the patience, you can wait for it. Once you play this game, I guarantee you’ll never regret it."
Han Tian didn’t feel the need to explain too much. His comment section was a toxic cesspool every day.
That’s just how it is when you get a big audience. Besides, the game was bound to release more slots sooner or later.
However, there was still a bit of trouble. Because of the drama stirred up by Steamed Fatty Chong’s video, people had started mass-reporting his stream.
But the next piece of news he got wasn’t about his channel being banned. Instead, it was someone from the streaming platform’s staff looking for him.
The controversy surrounding the stream had gotten so big that the platform staff, fearing some kind of incident, decided to temporarily take down Han Tian’s channel.
Then, something shocking happened.
The platform’s staff discovered that they couldn’t shut down Han Tian’s stream.
Han Tian, streaming from within the game, was completely unaffected and continued happily playing his game. Meanwhile, in the real world, the backend staff were sweating bullets after trying and failing multiple times to shut down the stream. They finally determined that unless Han Tian himself went offline and stopped the broadcast, they were completely unable to turn it off.
The staff immediately reported this anomaly to their superiors. They even had several programmers investigate the issue, but no one could figure out what was happening.
One of the junior managers knew Han Tian personally. Since they happened to live in the same city, he had no choice but to go find Han Tian in person.
A message informing him that someone was there to see him in person prompted Han Tian to log off. The moment he did, the stream naturally stopped.
Han Tian opened the door to find a manager from the website’s upper echelons standing outside, drenched in sweat. Han Tian was a little surprised. "Manager Cheng, what brings you here?"
This was the same Manager Cheng who had been his point of contact when he signed his partnership contract with the platform.
Manager Cheng walked in, struggling to catch his breath. "Han Tian, listen to me. Something’s not right with what you’re streaming. We need to inspect your equipment. Do you mind?"
Han Tian frowned. "Why?"
Manager Cheng said immediately, "You’ve been hit with a massive number of reports, but we’ve discovered that we can’t shut down your stream."
"We were even considering rebooting the entire site’s servers to force your stream offline, but the losses from doing that so suddenly would be too great. We needed a buffer period."
"So I was sent here first to see if the problem is on your end."
’Could he be using some kind of illegal software?’
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