Right after Lucas's post went up on the official account—
It instantly triggered waves of complaints from players and got reposted across all the major gaming communities.
Under the comments on Lucas's post alone, players gathered in huge numbers.
These players are all basically saying the same thing:
"You think we're stupid enough to fall for that?"
Communication, understanding, patience?
Sounds reasonable on the surface, but it still feels like they're being tricked.
Some players believed Lucas's explanation, and some didn't.
But one thing didn't change: Overcooked, a game that looks super cute and heartwarming,
went viral across major streaming platforms, video sites, and gaming communities right after Valentine's Day.
For a while, everyone was talking about this special co-op game.
Even the sales numbers for Overcooked kept climbing.
A week after its release, it officially sold over 450,000 copies.
Compared to games like Undertale, To the Moon, or even Outlast—which the industry didn't really expect much from—
450,000 might not seem that impressive.
But here's what stands out: 340,000 of those copies came from the Nebula Games platform.
In other words, they gave away 340,000 copies.
And more importantly, compared to Outlast and To the Moon, Overcooked—just like they planned—
brought a lot of users to Nebula Games.
Even if, to be honest, those users don't seem all that loyal right now.
Still, users are users.
At the very least, they now have the Nebula Games platform installed on their computers, and they've signed up for a Nebula Games account.
That's something Outlast never managed to do.
And when it comes to playtime, Overcooked beats Outlast by a long shot.
After all, not many people are brave enough to play horror games.
Most players who buy something like Outlast just watch a few clips and call it a day.
But Overcooked is different.
Playing with close friends makes it way more fun.
With Overcooked's success, Nebula Games and Lucas started getting noticed by more people.
Before this, even though Undertale had sparked a wave of meta-game hype in the indie scene, and Lucas had won first place in the sci-fi game contest with To the Moon—
these things, while impressive, didn't really matter that much to most companies in the industry.
But back-to-back releases like Outlast and Overcooked, both catching fire?
That's a whole different story.
.........
Nebula Games office.
Lucas leaned back on the couch, grinning at his point balance.
No doubt about it—Overcooked really delivered.
His points were going up so fast, it wasn't even slower than Outlast, and that one had used power-ups.
In just one week, he had enough for a 20-roll.
Staring at the points on the UI, he thought for a moment and decided not to roll yet.
Those dozens of failed rolls before had scared him off.
Nothing but blue skies and white clouds.
Better to save up—if he rolls enough, something good will show up eventually.
As for his next game, he hadn't really decided what to make yet.
His current abilities were good enough for now. When the time comes, he can roll again—no rush. It's not like the points are going to fly away.
Besides, new year, new plans.
The company already expanded once during National Day last year.
Staffing is still a bit tight.
Next, they need to bring in some people for game operations. Unlike Undertale, To the Moon, or Outlast, Overcooked is more of an online multiplayer game. Plus, there will be things like the creative workshop feature and future version updates.
So they need someone to handle the game's operations. The platform also needs operators.
In the future, he definitely plans to develop real multiplayer games, which makes the operations team even more important.
After all, he wants to build an operations team that shares Nebula Games' vision.
For a game, operations are absolutely critical—especially for multiplayer games. Sometimes, the way a game is run matters even more than its quality.
Next is the development team—they also need to grow a bit.
Music, animation, art… the office already told him earlier that they were struggling to keep up. So now they need to bring in more people.
They're planning to hire around 15 more staff.
As for office space, that needs to expand too. It's getting a bit cramped.
Conveniently, the whole floor above their current office seems to be empty. They'll reach out to try and lease it.
Once the plan was set, Lucas called the office team over and had them start the recruitment process.
It's not realistic to expect to fill all the positions right away, but Lucas isn't in a rush.
Two or three months should be enough.
But during this time, aside from recruitment, Lucas got a surprising call—from Marcus at NetDragon, someone he had only briefly met before.
It was clear the call wasn't just a friendly check-in.
He was calling on behalf of NetDragon to say they were interested in acquiring Nebula Games.
After all, the company had seen several back-to-back hits. None of them were massive productions, but all of them were clear successes.
Especially the recent success of Outlast and Overcooked, which stirred up a lot of attention.
As one of the major players in the industry, NetDragon had definitely taken notice of Nebula Games.
And the day after NetDragon expressed interest in buying the company, another giant, SkyNova, somehow got Lucas' contact info and also said they wanted to talk.
Right now in the gaming world, these two companies are direct competitors.
To put it simply—whatever SkyNova wants to do, NetDragon wants a piece of it.
And vice versa.
As for Lucas, the one both companies are chasing after, he didn't overthink it.
He definitely wasn't going to sell.
But it was a good chance to see what both companies really thought of Nebula Games.
"Still, no matter what, we've got to pick up the pace with development."
Lucas hung up the phone, resting his chin in his hand, deep in thought.
To be honest, Nebula Games doesn't have that much big money right now.
But if they just keep moving forward at this steady pace, they're not lacking anything either.
So far, games like Mirror, Undertale, To the Moon, Outlast, and Overcooked have reached a combined total of over ten million units sold.
And those numbers are still going up.
Among these games, some had higher development costs, others were cheaper.
But in the end, all of them made a profit.
Even after covering staff salaries, bonuses, rent, and other expenses—
Nebula Games still has close to 25 million dollar in liquid assets in their company account.
On the VR platform, making a large-scale game typically costs between 50 million dollar and 150 million dollar.
That's just the average. Top-tier titles can go even higher.
On PC, big titles usually cost between 10 million dollar and 40 million dollar.
So yeah, they could afford to make one, but for Lucas, that's still a bit of a risk.
After all, it's all development costs.
Marketing isn't included in that.
You can't seriously expect to make a big game and then not even promote it, right?
Besides, they're already short on staff, so expanding the team is a must.
And if they're planning to make a AAA-level game next, even if it's just for PC,
then of course they'll need to use it to bring attention to their own platform.
So how can the Nebula Games platform get noticed by most players and attract new users as fast as possible?
The best way is exclusive games.
It's a common strategy, but it works.
But going the exclusive route will definitely hurt sales.
Lucas originally planned to focus on small- to mid-sized games, playing it safe.
Slowly grow the Nebula Games platform and build up its game library.
But now, he has to start thinking a bit more seriously about the next steps.
(End of The Chapter)
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