Daily Intelligence: Forced to Save the Beautiful President at the Beginning

134: Chapter 134 ”Star Path” sweeps Southeast Asia and tops the chartsAt 4:00 AM in Singularity Technology’s office area, only the workstations of the Overseas Operations Team were still lit. The cold light of the computer screen reflected on Zhou Yurou’s face as her fingertips swiped across the server monitoring backend for the Southeast Asian version of ”star path: reboot.” The traffic curves for the Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore nodes were climbing at a visible speed.

Beside her, technical specialist Xiao Zhang stared at the screen, his voice raspy from staying up late: ”Manager Zhou, Garena’s homepage recommendation slot has gone live simultaneously. The pre-registration conversion in the first 10 minutes has exceeded 30,000!”

Zhang Fan walked over carrying two cups of hot coffee and handed one to Zhou Yurou: ”Thank you for your hard work. From localization translation to server debugging, you’ve stayed up for nearly a month. Finally, we’re about to see the results.”

He looked at the screen; the number of online players at the Indonesia node had already surpassed 50,000. The chat channels were full of messages from local players. Although they were in Thai and Indonesian, positive words like ”สวยงาม” (beautiful) and ”seru banget” (so much fun) could be seen.

”The influencer playtests arranged by the Song family have also started simultaneously.” Zhou Yurou took a sip of coffee and tapped on the TikTok interface on her phone. A top Southeast Asian gaming blogger, ”GameMaster,” was live-streaming the dungeon gameplay of ”star path: reboot.” The character on screen was wearing a local ”Sarong” skin, fighting monsters in a tropical rainforest setting. The livestream had over 100,000 viewers, and the comments section was flooded with ”download now.”

At 8:00 AM, the first wave of data summaries was delivered to Zhang Fan: 6 hours after launch, total downloads in Southeast Asia exceeded 150,000. Indonesia accounted for 45%, Malaysia 30%, Singapore 15%, and the remaining 10% were scattered across Thailand, the Philippines, and other countries.

”Better than expected!” Zhang Fan smiled as he handed the data report to Song Zhiwei, who had just arrived at the company. ”The Garena recommendation slot your father arranged has had a very obvious effect. Also, the localized ’Sarong skin’ and ’Nasi Lemak item’ have received great feedback from players.”

Song Zhiwei took the report, her finger pausing on the ”70,000 downloads in Indonesia” figure, a hint of surprise flashing in her eyes. ”My dad was asking about the progress this morning. He said if the data is good, his foreign trade company can help us connect with more Southeast Asian channels. Oh, and I just received news that Indonesia’s largest gaming media outlet, ’GameIndo,’ has released a review. They gave it a high score of 8.5, saying our plot ’breaks the narrative tropes of Western games and has the unique charm of Eastern Wuxia.’”

But just then, Xiao Zhang suddenly shouted, ”Oh no! The Indonesian node server is lagging a bit. Players are reporting that loading a dungeon takes 20 seconds!” A red ”latency warning” light suddenly flashed on the screen, and the online player curve dipped briefly.

”Activate the backup servers immediately!” Zhou Yurou made a prompt decision. ”Have the Technology Department divert some traffic from the Singapore node to the Indonesian backup servers. At the same time, optimize the dungeon loading algorithm to prioritize core scenes!”

The colleagues in the Technology Department acted immediately, the sound of keyboard clicks as dense as rain.

Zhang Fan stared at the screen, but he wasn’t panicking. Long before the launch, they had anticipated server pressure and deployed backup nodes in Singapore and Malaysia in advance to handle emergencies.

Half an hour later, Xiao Zhang breathed a sigh of relief. ”The lag is resolved! Loading times are down to under 5 seconds, and the online player count is rising again. The Indonesia node has now surpassed 80,000!”

At 12:00 PM, the second wave of data summaries arrived: 12 hours after launch, total downloads exceeded 250,000. It hit number two on the Google Play game download chart in Indonesia and number three in Malaysia.

Liu Ruyan ran over holding the operations report for ”star dream workshop,” saying excitedly, ”President Zhang! We can hold a crossover event! We can add a ’Southeast Asian Rainforest’ map template to ’star dream workshop.’ When players generate maps, they can unlock crossover characters from ’star path.’ This way, we can drive traffic to each other!”

”That’s a great idea!” Zhang Fan nodded immediately. ”Have the Planning Department come up with a proposal today. We’ll launch the crossover event next week to give ’star dream workshop’ another push while ’star path’ is hot.”

Over the next few days, the popularity of ”star path: reboot” continued to ferment in Southeast Asia. On the third day of launch, it hit number one on the Indonesian download chart, number two in Malaysia, and number three in Singapore. On the seventh day, total downloads officially surpassed 500,000, with cumulative revenue exceeding 1 million USD. The local media outlet, ”The Malay Mail,” published a special report with a striking headline: ”Chinese Game Company Singularity Technology: Opening the Southeast Asian Market with Quality Content, Becoming a New Benchmark for Domestic games going overseas.” The article mentioned that the plot of ”star path: reboot” blended Eastern Wuxia with Southeast Asian mythological elements, and its localized operations were close to player needs, breaking the stereotype that ”domestic games only go overseas by reskinning.”

On Friday afternoon, Song Zhiwei walked into Zhang Fan’s office with a thick letter of intent for cooperation. ”My dad’s foreign trade company has received letters of intent from 12 Southeast Asian companies. Some want to distribute our game in Vietnam and Cambodia, and others want to make derivative merchandise. Among them, VNG, Vietnam’s largest game operator, even wants to co-develop a new game specifically for the Southeast Asian market.”

Zhang Fan took the letter of intent and flipped through it quickly, the smile on his face growing wider. ”It seems our first step overseas is solid. Zhou Yurou, notify the heads of all departments for a meeting; there are important decisions to be made.”

In the meeting room, Zhang Fan projected the overseas data for ”star path: reboot” onto the screen. Seeing everyone’s excited expressions, he spoke: ”Now that ’star path’ has established a foothold in Southeast Asia, we must strike while the iron is hot. I’ve decided to establish an ’Overseas Business Department’ specifically responsible for game localization, overseas operations, and cooperation negotiations. Zhou Yurou will serve as the department director, and ten core members will be drawn from the Marketing and Operations Teams. The setup will be completed next week.”

”Furthermore,” he paused, his gaze sweeping across everyone present, his tone firm, ”our goal isn’t just Southeast Asia. Before the end of the year, we must complete market research for Europe and America. We’ll strive to push ’star path: reboot’ and ’star dream workshop’ to Europe and America in the first half of next year, truly achieving a global layout!”

As soon as he finished speaking, the meeting room erupted in thunderous applause. Gu Jingshen said with a smile, ”Not bad, Fan Zi! Now we’re a ’multinational corporation’ too! For the European and American markets, I’ll have the Gu Corporation’s overseas branches help coordinate resources. It’ll be no problem.”

”And the Legal Department,” Zhou Yurou added, ”must study the laws and regulations of the European and American markets in advance, especially regarding data security and copyright issues, to avoid any pitfalls.”

After the meeting adjourned, Zhang Fan stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the Jiangcheng CBD. His heart was full of emotion—from a small studio in a university incubator to a technology company with an overseas layout, from the constant controversy surrounding ”star path: reboot” to now becoming a ”benchmark for domestic games going overseas,” all the hardships along the way were rewarded at this moment.