A week later
5:00 AM
David could be seen sitting in front of his computer, but unlike the past few days, he wasn't sitting and playing the addictive game Nous had made. Instead, he was looking at a holographic screen projected in front of him.
On the screen was a website, a remarkably familiar website. It was an Admin dashboard that displayed all the statistics that he needed to know.
The game went online about 30 minutes ago and since then there has been no sale. It was weird considering the amount of hype that Renovatio alone had garnered.
His heart beat even faster with each refresh, if everything went well then today would be his last time his account would ever read red.
[Sir please calm yourself, no matter what happens, you will make even more money than any other game maker on their first day]
"I know but somehow i'm still worried," David confessed.
"Refresh it again" David said as he finally sat down
However just like before there were still zero sales but then just a few seconds later, the fat zero shown jumped to 100 then 3000.
The number was increasing so rapidly that all David could do was stare at it. He had expected it but looking at the number of downloads, he couldn't believe his eyes.
"We're rich?" David asked himself as he continued staring at the screen
"We're rich!!" He shouted in joy as he jumped out of the chair
When he had calmed down a bit, he turned back to the admins dashboard and as expected, the number was still increasing as rapidly as possible.
"Wait with this many people would the payment processors be able to handle it" David asked reslising a critical problem.
The number had long since exceeded a million and was climbing higher, within just an hour, he had over 10 million buyers. He didn't need to think too much to know that this was an absurd amount of money.
"Nous, when you said we would make money from this, i don't think it would be this much" David said looking at a separate window.
On the window was what could only be described as a bank page, to prevent issues with banks and government agencies, Nous had encouraged him to create multiple corporate accounts.
The money being paid in were all channeled into these accounts but the dashboard before him displayed the amount in total and as of now he could see a total of $580million.
Just an hour of sales had generated such a huge amount of money, turning back to the admins dashboard, he could see about 37 million buyers.
Converted to Naira, that was about 219 billion naira he had gone from managing man to local billionaire in just one morning.
[Sir congratulations on your first launch, you have successfully surpassed most games in first hour sales] Nous suddenly said but Dvid wasn't paying attention at all.
He just kept on staring at the bank page with tears rolling down his eyes but his lips coiled up to form a smile, it was obvious that those were tears of joy.
However to David they were also those of pain, the amount was disturbing. He was only 22 years old so he couldn't be compared to most but he had still spent over 5 years of his life doing all he could to make more money
That was how he had found his talent for writing but yet in just one morning, in one hour, he had made more money than his ancestors had ever seen.
He had become a local billionaire or a global millionaire in the same time it would take a person to do their laundry or go for a stroll.
It was both vexing but also brought a smile to his face.
[Sir, now that you have the money, what will you use it for?] Nous suddenly asked as he stared at the amount of money entering his account.
"Honestly, I don't know," David replied.
Initially he had done this as a means to prepare for whatever the event was but deep down he knew that it was just to satisfy his greed
He truly didn't feel any sense of urgency about the event or whatever it was so now that he had the money he had been looking for, he didn't know what to do with it.
Well beyond the most sensible reinvestment into the business he had just created. Beside the truth he had heard from Nous about the world and had changed his perspective on the event.
To the current him, the 'Event' seemed like something that only an editor could solve, it wasn't something that had to do with power as the administrator had misled him to believe.
If it was about power then the cultivators or whatever they called themselves would have long since solved it but the problem still existed which meant that this was a problem that he could solve with an edit.
"Do you have any suggestions?" David asked after a while.
Turning back to the screens before him, the number was still increasing so money was now the very last of his worries.
[I do not have many beyond the logical but in regards to your thoughts about the event, i would advise that you do not ignore the effect of personal power even if the event may or may not be something that could be solved with a single edit]
"I understand, so what do you suggest?"
[As of now, apart from personal power, the only thing you lack is influence so how about you build that up for now, the company is a good way to do so] Nous recommended
"That makes sense but did you just call me weak?"
[I said no such thing sir]
"I definitely heard you, you think you can hide behind those fancy words" David said with a smile.
For the next few minutes, both man and AI joked around even as more wealth came their way. David laughed with a certain level of carefreeness that he had never expected before
After a while, David finally decided to go to bed as he had been awake all night solely due to his nervousness. As for what to do with the money, he could decide on that later.
====
While he slept, the world was going insane. Everyone already knew what to expect from Renovatio after hearing all about it but even then the game still somehow managed to surpass the expectation of all.
Social media and several live streaming platforms lit up with analysis and play throughs of the game. Companies bought the game in secret to see what the hype was about.
Nous Studios had gone from an indie developer that no one knew about to one of the most talked about companies in the world. Social media companies created specified hashtags to refer to them.
The payment processors that were employed began to find it difficult to handle the load but found themselves able to despite the volume of payment.
However to a particular set of people, Renovatio broke a whole new record, it wasn't the game itself, it was the impressive technology behind it.
They could tell as soon as they installed the game. Open ended games usually took a lot of storage and a high processing power to be played properly.
Renovatio turned that upside down, they couldn't tell how big the actual map of Renovatio was since they had yet to complete the first introductory mission.
However several sources online had described the game to have a map that was as large as the Earth itself. If this was so, the implications were massive.
It meant that this game had an active map that was a scale replica of Earth and considering the level of detail and the fact that no loading screen has appeared beyond the mission screens
It meant that the game had somehow managed to compress all that data into just 43 gigabytes of data. That was a compression model that had never been seen before.
The maximum in use without drastic loss of quality was a 10:1 ratio or 100:1 ratio but this was a staggering 2000:1 ratio, all while maintaining the absurd level of detail and visuals they could see.
To every technician or programmer or at least anyone knowledgeable enough, it was very clear that Nous Studios was either using black magic or they had invented some new method that if applied globally would completely rewrite the way the internet was.
Beyond that one thing was a fact, Nous Studios had officially become the biggest gaming company in the entire world and from the looks of things would remain so for a few more years to come.
====
August 11th
David could be seen sitting on the small couch in his sitting room staring out into space as though he was in a trance.
However the young man simply had his eyes glued to a window that appeared before him. A day had passed since the launch of the game and in that time, the amount of people who had bought the game had increased exponentially
It was the middle of the second day so the current number that was sitting there was 120 million people. This meant that even as he sat here, there were roughly 120 million people who were playing his game.
This also meant that the amount of money sitting in his account as of the moment was over a billion dollars. Nous had spawned a billion dollar company just from a random idea that would have been impossible save for a full blown virtual reality.