At nine o'clock at night, after a busy day, Cao Ge dragged his tired body back to Shanshui Community.
After parking the car in the garage, Cao Ge carried the documents in his hand, opened the door, walked in, and casually pressed the light switch by the door.
As soon as the switch was pressed, the dark house instantly became bright.
He then walked to the living room, threw his bag on the table, and sat down on the sofa.
Cao Ge lay on the sofa, his head leaning back against it as he looked at the ceiling to rest.
For the past half a month, Cao Ge had returned to a normal routine, and the intense pace of his previous life had caught up with him again.
Although he was no longer a programmer and didn't have to work overtime into the late night, being the owner of a start-up company was no less challenging, and the pressure was no smaller than before.
Before, he worked for others, and although tired, he would slack off whenever he could, but now working for himself, he was constantly thinking about how to manage the project, how to maximize the profits—a moment's laziness was not an option. Although he had hired an experienced general manager to help him, the company was, after all, in the start-up phase, and it was impossible for him to be so carefree as if he was an absentee owner.
An absentee owner, that was something only the boss of a well-established and profit-generating company could afford to be.
His company's first project had just launched—a major PC game named "QQ Speed," which had consumed twenty million RMB in development funds. If he didn't keep an eye on it, a flop could happen just like that, leaving him no place to even cry.
Although twenty million RMB was not a huge sum for Cao Ge, who had one hundred million US Dollars, it was still the company's first project, crucial to the company's morale, so it couldn't fail.
Based on his experience from the future, he monitored the development process in real-time and even personally wrote code, leading his team to make changes whenever he spotted anything unreasonable.
His Galaxy Science and Technology, including him, had a total of one hundred people—this was the result of his frenzied recruitment. Without these hundred people, he would not have been able to launch the game, which had taken the original company, Tencent, fourteen months to develop, in just twenty days.
For those twenty or so days, over a hundred people worked day and night, finally managing to launch it yesterday.
Of course, the rapid progress was inseparable from Cao Ge's role. He had been a seasoned player of QQ Speed in his previous life, and this time, he took on the entire game planning himself—every gameplay, technique, drift, and the rough maps, he had prepared it all. Aside from the coding, he left only the minor details of the planning to the planners in the company.
It was precisely because of the large team and the upfront planning that was entirely on Cao Ge that the game was able to be released so quickly.
Cao Ge was so eager to hire a hundred people right off the bat because he took into consideration the original game's launch timeline.
If he remembered correctly, this game's open beta in the original timeline was in January 2008, with the closed beta even earlier in December 2007. It was already early August now. If he didn't act quickly, things could get messy.
Tencent might not yet be the colossus with a market value of three trillion of the future, but its total market value was already close to ten billion US Dollars. Tencent's legal department might not yet have the notorious reputation of Nanshan Pizza Hut, but in this world where money talks, a company willing to spend could always hire top lawyers.
He might have one hundred million, but Tencent had ten billion, and as a company, the social power behind its shareholders, if put into action, could easily destroy his fledgling company.
Yet, he didn't want to give up on the QQ Speed project, because once it launched in the original timeline, it took off wildly, reaching a peak with over three million concurrent users online.
This was a gold mine. Back in the day, he adored this game so much that he even looked up the money-making potential of QQ Speed, which, according to Penguin's data, seemed to be over six billion a year. However, he couldn't recall which year that was.
In other words, as long as it was managed well, this project was definitely worth hundreds of billions.
In the face of such massive profits, Cao Ge felt that, though Penguin might be powerful, he had to take his chances.
He had his ideas. Since he had chosen to launch this project, the sooner the better, especially considering the original timeline of QQ Speed's beta testing, Penguin should still be in the development phase. If Penguin didn't sue them, that would be the end of it. But if they did, Cao Ge could argue that his early launch was proof that they were the ones copying, and he could then hire a bunch of lawyers. Who knows, maybe he could even hustle some money from Penguin.
And the game didn't let him down. Backed by tens of millions in promotional funds, the game's downloads broke through 100,000 on its launch day, and the numbers were still climbing.
The game was undoubtedly a huge hit.
The reason he came home so late tonight was largely due to server issues. Although Cao Ge had anticipated the game would be a hit, he didn't expect it to happen so quickly, resulting in the servers nearly crashing.
Buoyed by the successful launch, Cao Ge urgently called for a high-level meeting to discuss potential problems that might arise and to talk about the game's operations. This discussion lasted over five hours.
During the meeting, Cao Ge also mentioned that the company had to immediately establish a professional legal team to handle the company's legal affairs.
He said this because he felt that if they were now on fire, it was likely that Penguin would take action against them.
Dealing with a large corporation like Penguin without a dedicated legal team, relying solely on external help, would certainly put them at a disadvantage.
Therefore, the construction of the company's legal team was urgent, as he had already forced their hand. It was only a matter of time before "Yu Ji's" old father would come knocking at their door.
Given Penguin's nature of plucking feathers from every passing goose, Cao Ge didn't think they would suffer in silence.
While Cao Ge was pondering how to deal with Penguin, a sudden chill wrapped around his neck.
Cao Ge's eyes snapped open, but instead of the ceiling, he saw a woman's face.
As the chill slid horizontally across his neck, Cao Ge realized what it was—a dagger.
Cao Ge, panicked, looked at the woman's face, only thirty centimeters away, and trembled as he spoke, "Dr. Shen, what do you mean by this?"
Indeed, the woman holding the dagger was Shen Yufei, who was already showing signs of mental instability.
Shen Yufei didn't answer Cao Ge's question. Instead, she measured his face with her cold and inhuman gaze as if she was about to stab him at any moment, leaving Cao Ge too terrified to move.
Because it felt like a sane person had walked into an out-of-control mental asylum, where a patient was holding a machine gun, smiling benevolently at him, while he himself was unarmed.