Chapter 1
Yang City.

Tianhuo Studio.

"Tengda Network Technology Co., Ltd.?"

"Coming to Yang City to visit and exchange ideas at our studio???"

Zhou Muyan felt a little baffled.

A game company visiting another game company to exchange ideas? He had never heard of such a thing!

Usually, university students doing social practice activities visit various companies. The school organizes these visits to large companies to prepare them for their careers after graduation.

He had never heard of a game company organizing its employees to visit another company!

At least, not in China.

Because most game companies in China aim to make a profit, and traveling a long distance for a visit is a big loss!

Even with a team of twenty or thirty people, the round-trip air tickets, hotels, other expenses, and the lost work hours for those days would add up to a considerable sum.

Moreover, such a large-scale trip would not create any benefits; it would be a pure loss of money.

Saying it's for exchange and learning... what the hell can you exchange?

What game company is so sick...

Zhou Muyan instinctively wanted to decline.

He was the producer of Tianhuo Studio and was quite well-known in the industry.

Of course, strictly speaking, his reputation was mixed. Many people cursed Tianhuo Studio, and he, as the producer, was naturally included in the abuse.

Zhou Muyan wasn't his real name but a nickname. Using nicknames was a popular trend in some southern companies, and Tianhuo Studio was no exception.

Recently, Tianhuo Studio had been developing an FPS online game for over a year and was about to start internal testing.

In this state of everyone working overtime, Zhou Muyan was too lazy to spend half a day receiving employees from a game company traveling all the way from Handong Province.

"President Zhou, this company has successful projects. *Gui Jiang* (Ghost General) was developed by them. I suggest you make time to see them. If you don't have time, you can let Brother Sun receive them. Anyway, it won't take much effort to show them around the company," the administrative assistant who had spoken with Xin Hailu on the phone reminded him.

"*Gui Jiang* was made by them?"

Zhou Muyan was stunned and then felt that what the administrative assistant said seemed reasonable.

As the saying goes, having more friends means having more paths.

Although competitors are enemies, it would be unkind to refuse them if they came from afar and wanted to sit in your company and exchange ideas.

Moreover, Zhou Muyan knew about *Gui Jiang*. It was a mobile game that had recently emerged, and its producer was probably not an ordinary person.

It wouldn't hurt to meet and get to know such a person.

Anyway, it would only take a day to meet them and show them around the studio; it wouldn't delay much work.

Thinking of this, Zhou Muyan nodded, "Okay, then agree. Set the schedule in advance, and I'll receive them personally then."

"Okay, President Zhou. Also, the list of new recruits to be eliminated based on performance is out. Please take a look."

Zhou Muyan took the list and glanced at it.

"Except for Lin Wan, dismiss them all. Follow the system."

"Okay." The administrative assistant didn't ask any further questions and left with the list.

The bottom-performance elimination system is very popular in many game companies, especially those that recruit a lot of fresh graduates.

Tianhuo Studio was the same. The recruited graduates would be evaluated during the first few months of their employment, and the bottom 15% would be eliminated.

These eliminated graduates would find themselves in a very awkward situation.

On the one hand, they were no longer fresh graduates and had completely missed campus recruitment. On the other hand, they only had a few months of work experience and had been eliminated by their previous company, giving them no advantage in social recruitment.

It could be said that Zhou Muyan's wave of the hand placed a huge stumbling block in the path of these eliminated graduates!

However, Zhou Muyan didn't think there was anything wrong with this. Although he knew that those eliminated would definitely curse him and his immediate family in private, he didn't care.

In Zhou Muyan's view, the game industry follows the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest!

In this cruel environment, there is no room for sentimentality.

Of course, there was an exception on this list: Lin Wan.

She was a girl who, like the others, had been recruited from a famous university in the capital, with a very high degree.

According to the bottom-performance elimination system's scoring mechanism, she was also in the category of the last 15% to be eliminated.

Lin Wan made the same mistake as many young people: she was slightly optimistic and naive.

For Zhou Muyan, games were a business.

But Lin Wan, like many young people, regarded it as art or a dream, which naturally clashed with the bottom-performance elimination system's scoring mechanism.

In other words, she was not the kind of talent that Tianhuo Studio needed.

But among all the people being eliminated, Zhou Muyan specifically picked Lin Wan out.

For no other reason than that her background was too frightening...

Her father was the president of Shenhua Group, the largest telecommunications provider and smart hardware developer in China, whom Zhou Muyan couldn't afford to offend.

Perhaps "couldn't afford to offend" wasn't quite accurate; it should be that Zhou Muyan couldn't kneel and lick fast enough!

Of course, Lin Wan didn't know that her identity had been exposed, because she had completely gone through the normal campus recruitment process to enter Tianhuo Studio.

But Lin Wan had obviously underestimated her father's attention to and concern for her...

The day after Lin Wan officially joined Tianhuo Studio, Zhou Muyan received a call from the president's office of Shenhua Group.

Two points of hope: first, he hoped that Zhou Muyan and Tianhuo Studio could help take care of Lin Wan and not let her overdraw her health; second, he hoped that Zhou Muyan could quickly destroy Lin Wan's good impression of the game industry and make her give up on this industry!

The call was very euphemistic, but Zhou Muyan was smart enough to understand immediately.

The old man didn't want Lin Wan to be in the game industry, but he didn't want to be too forceful and ruin the father-daughter relationship, so he took a roundabout approach!

Zhou Muyan was naturally overjoyed at this and immediately agreed.

That was the behemoth Shenhua Group! Getting on their good side would bring too many benefits to Tianhuo Studio in the future!

So, those with lower rankings on the list were all dismissed, but Lin Wan continued to stay.

Zhou Muyan had already considered how to quickly wear down Lin Wan's enthusiasm for games and make her leave this industry as soon as possible.

It wasn't difficult.

All he had to do was let Lin Wan see the truth about the game industry.

The game industry, at least the Chinese game industry, was a sweatshop.

Bottom-performance elimination, 996 work schedule (9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week), abandoning dreams and pursuits for money, turning art into a tool for making money...

These were not new things in the Chinese game industry.

Of course, these things were not absolute, and there were also talented designers and conscientious studios in China.

But, relatively speaking, there were very few.

Zhou Muyan believed that as long as Lin Wan saw the truth about the game industry, she would be very disappointed and then leave this industry. It was almost a certainty!