Chapter 19 The Official Announcement

July 2nd, Monday.

Sometime after 8 AM, Pei Qian turned off his alarm clock, flipped over, and sat up in bed, ready to meet the new week's challenges with vigor.

Buying the house over the weekend could be considered a load off his mind. As for the renovations and whatnot, those could wait.

After clearing out the multi-threaded tasks in his brain, he could focus on the final sprint before the end-of-month settlement.

Pei Qian brushed his teeth while checking on his phone to see how the online marketing team was doing.

He had to admit, Hu Xiao's team was pretty efficient. Discussions about the VR glasses and the game could be seen on Weibo, game forums, and many other media outlets.

"Rumor has it that Tengda's new game is a VR game! It's definitely one of those epoch-making titles. Teacher Qiao played that game during his trial!"

"VR game? Isn't that kind of game still very immature?"

"It doesn't matter, President Pei is personally overseeing it. What's there to worry about? President Pei can handle any game genre!"

"VR isn't great right now. I've tried several foreign VR glasses, and the resolution isn't very good. Everything looks blurry."

"Rumor has it that Tengda has invested heavily in the research and development of VR glasses this time. When they come out, they should be able to crush the VR glasses on the market. It'll be a completely different experience!"

"Really? That's so exciting! But such a big thing, and there haven't been any rumors leaked at all? That doesn't make sense, right?"

"It feels like the rumors are getting more and more outrageous. When did Tengda start working on a VR project? It's impossible, right? The Tengda Games Department is still working on subsequent updates to *Mission and Choice*, and *Eternal Reincarnation* is still owed to us; as for Shang Yang Games, they are still constantly updating *Fitness Battle*, including all kinds of new clothes, new characters, and new gameplay. Where would they find the time to make an 'epoch-making VR masterpiece'?"

"Oto Technologies is also busy with the new phone and the smart fitness clothes drying rack. They wouldn't be able to spare the time to make a pair of VR glasses, right?"

"I think you guys are going crazy wanting to play Tengda games, and you've even imagined a VR game! I think, either you're sick, or you're taking unreliable rumors as truth!"

"That's right, do you really think there's a new Tengda game for you to play every month? President Pei is busy. Even a sow in a production team can't be that productive!"

Seeing these discussions, Pei Qian nodded in satisfaction.

Well, it was basically in line with his expectations.

Currently, there were mainly two voices online. The first was the marketing team's mindless hype, without mentioning Chixing Studio at all. Instead, they replaced the subject with "Tengda" and tried everything they could to promote the new glasses and the new game.

The second voice was some scattered doubts. The direction of the doubts was also varied, and the most persuasive doubt was: Tengda's two game development departments are currently busy with other things, and they simply cannot spare the time and manpower to develop such a large-scale VR game.

In fact, both of these voices were partially correct, but they were also partially incorrect.

And if he wanted the online opinion to lean to one side, he just had to emphasize the content that would help his reverse promotion.

Pei Qian figured that the time was almost right.

If this kind of hype continued, the attention would be too high, and the heat would be difficult to stop, which would be detrimental to subsequent developments.

The best effect would be to pour a bucket of cold water on it when there was a little bit of heat, and the scattered sparks had just been ignited!

Pei Qian immediately logged into Tengda's official Weibo account and posted a screenshot of the clarification announcement that he had prepared earlier.

Pei Qian had not communicated the specific details of this promotional plan with Lin Wan's Chixing Studio, but he had already told them not to be surprised, because these promotional plans had a special purpose.

Therefore, he was not afraid that Chixing Studio would sabotage him after this Weibo post was sent out.

Throughout the entire promotional period, Chixing Studio would remain silent and silently endure everything.

After the prompt was successfully posted, Pei Qian clicked on the picture of this Weibo post and looked at it again.

"Tengda Network Technology Co., Ltd."

"Clarification Announcement"

"Recently, some false rumors have appeared online. In order to clarify the truth and avoid unrealistic expectations from players, we hereby announce the following:"

"The VR glasses project and the game project mentioned online do exist, but they are not the work of any department of Tengda Group. Both the VR glasses project and the game project are independently developed by Chixing Studio."

"Tengda Group and Chixing Studio only have a simple investment relationship in terms of organizational structure, and there is no clear subordinate relationship."

"Tengda's new stage of game projects is still under consideration. It is expected to officially start development next month. Stay tuned!"

Below was the signature, time, and company seal.

This clarification announcement was written in a very formal tone and stamped with the seal of Tengda Group. It was also posted using the official account, so its credibility was self-evident.

Pei Qian waited patiently for a while, and soon, a large number of players' comments appeared below the Weibo post.

"What the heck does this mean?"

"Distancing themselves?"

"I was really looking forward to this game and the VR glasses. After all that, I was fooled!"

"Why is everyone so disappointed? Doesn't this confirm the existence of the glasses and the game project?"

"So what if it's confirmed? Look closely, it's not developed by Tengda at all! What's there to look forward to from a product made by a small company with no reputation?"

"I felt like something was going to happen when the internet hype went so overboard. A small company not thinking about making a good product, but thinking about buying online marketers to blow things out of proportion... In my opinion, the product will definitely not be good!"

"Didn't they say that Tengda has an investment relationship with it?"

"You don't know that Tengda invests in anyone, right? Round Dream Ventures is like 'we accept anyone', and there are so many companies they've invested in. This can't prove whether this company is reliable at all."

"I think Tengda's attitude is already very clear. Obviously, they don't want to see this small company taking advantage of their popularity, so they issued this statement. And you should think carefully about the wording, 'in order to avoid unrealistic expectations from players', which means that this company's products are not as good as the online hype, and everyone should not be fooled!"

"At the same time, they are also distancing themselves, meaning that what this company does has nothing to do with Tengda. Tengda just invested in it casually and ended up investing in this company."

"And the announcement also said that Tengda does have a new project, but it will only start development next month. That is, it has been confirmed that this VR game has nothing to do with Tengda."

"Then what was Teacher Qiao talking about when he said that he was trying out a Tengda game?"

"Most likely he was fooled by this Chixing Studio, right? They told Teacher Qiao that this was a game invested in by Tengda, and Teacher Qiao naively believed it."

"Indeed, a game invested by Tengda is completely different from a game developed by Tengda!"

Looking at the discussions among the netizens, Pei Qian couldn't help but feel delighted.

Look, look!

Immediate results!

As soon as this clarification announcement was sent out, it immediately cleared up the relationship between Tengda Group and Chixing Studio, and it also caused all of the previous promotional effects of hiring marketers to backfire.

Of course, the reason why it was so effective was also due to the activities of the marketing team.

However, those who led the rhythm were some high-end marketers, who were relatively unobtrusive.

Through this simple version of "suppress first, then praise", the image of Chixing Studio has been preliminarily established in the minds of the players: they love marketing, they like to take advantage of Tengda's popularity, and Tengda has cleared up its relationship with them.

The first step was a great success.

He had to strike while the iron was hot and take advantage of the victory.

Pei Qian immediately sent a message to Meng Chang: "How is your side preparing?"

Soon, Meng Chang replied: "Everything is going according to plan. Weibo post tomorrow, promotional video the day after!"

...

July 3rd, Tuesday.

Meng Chang was busy at the promotional video shooting location.

"Very good, that feeling was a bit right just now, but it has to be a bit more inexplicable. Yes, pose in a few more meaningless poses."

"What pose? Think for yourself, how would I know? You're an actor, your imagination should be richer."

"Yes, yes, yes, this is good, do another one."