“Holy sh**—that was insane!”
“What the f*** is this game? Ethics? Morals? Where’s the beta? Where’s the official release?”
“Dmn... this one’s gonna live forever!”
“What the hell is a drainpipe turn?”
“Slap on the enemy’s uniform and bury it—problem solved.”
“Watch yourself in your next life, my 40-meter broadsword isn’t easy to sheathe!”
“This game’s just an unhinged slaughterfest, isn’t it?”
“Things just got real—after this trailer, scalpers’ ancestors are probably dancing in the afterlife.”
“At first, I thought that Korean game looked decent... but now? Pfft.”
“LOL I just checked foreign forums—Nihon netizens are already celebrating Sunfire Legacy’s epic flop.”
“Those little shs are something else—knowing Baseball Hero has no chance, so they’re trying to tank Korea’s chances out of spite.”
“I’m fing dying over here!”
“No suspense left—if PUBG doesn’t win the Crown, they might as well cancel the Asia DevCon.”
“Ahhhh... it’s gonna be a whole week before I can play PUBG... I feel like ants are crawling all over me!”
“...”
BOOM!
That trailer dropped like a nuclear bomb.
Streamers exploded.
Players exploded.
The media exploded.
And so did Shen Miaomiao.
“What the f*** is going on?!”
The next morning.
Shen Miaomiao had barely woken up, opened her phone... and WHAM!
A brutal reality check to the face.
Her notifications were flooded.
From Xiaohei Box to Players’ Bonfire, from Tian Tian Game News to Huaxia Esports, even TabTab, a platform mostly for casual games and mobile titles, had pushed out stories about PUBG!
Shen Miaomiao was floored.
Sure, PUBG had made a splash at the Asia DevCon opening five months ago, wowing the crowd, getting cheered on by the media, and even winning the “Most Anticipated Game” award.
She’d expected it to be popular.
But this popular?!
Just look at these simping, fawning media headlines—
Xiaohei Box: “MFGA roars forever! PUBG—A game redefining the FPS world!”
Players’ Bonfire: “No suspense left. Other countries might as well start prepping for the PUBG tournament.”
Tian Tian Game News: “Supernova ignites! GoldenSam strikes again—PUBG stuns all of Asia!”
Huaxia Esports: “‘I can’t survive this week!’—Office reactions after the PUBG trailer drop.”
Kissing a**. Shamelessly kissing a**.
Gushing. Relentlessly gushing.
It made Shen Miaomiao’s scalp go numb.
Hold up—weren’t there 25 game trailers released last night?
Why does it feel like the other 24 games just... vanished into thin air?!
Did Lao Gu single-handedly nuke every other dev team overnight?!
Everywhere she looked, it was all PUBG, PUBG, PUBG.
And not a single word of criticism—just endless, drooling praise.
“Pffft! Disgusting!”
“Absolutely disgusting!”
Shen Miaomiao was practically banging her fists on the table, fuming at the shameless media hype.
But—
Realistically speaking... the game was still in its early prototype phase!
After a round of venting, Shen Miaomiao sighed.
She knew there was no stopping the hype train now.
All she could do was cling to her last fallback: the game’s quality itself.
Because let’s be real—she wasn’t expecting the game to be flawless.
After all, Lao Gu had only five months and a 50 million budget to pull this off.
It was inevitable the game would be a little rough around the edges.
They had tight deadlines, limited funds—
Plus, she’d caused chaos at the start of the project, stripping Lao Gu of his authority, encouraging the team to ditch overtime.
With morale in the dumps, Lao Gu’s team had been a nightmare to manage.
“Ugh...”
Shen Miaomiao let out a long, guilty sigh.
Honestly... she felt kind of bad for Lao Gu.
The guy had been working hard for the company, and here she was, being the devilish CEO, always trying to hold him back.
Clasping her hands together like a prayer—or maybe an apology—she muttered to herself:
“Okay, fine... I’ll take the hit. Let me lose a million on this. That’ll be enough to top off the petty cash fund.
Next project, I’ll let Lao Gu call all the shots. He can make whatever he wants—I won’t interfere at all. That’ll be my way of making it up to him.
Please, please, please... next time, I promise...”
Muttering like a mantra, she finally felt a bit better about herself.
But she still wasn’t entirely at ease.
So she decided to head to the company to see for herself—just how different was the actual game from the hype trailer?
She’d watched the trailer—it was slick as hell, she had to admit.
That thrill of being one in a hundred, wading through blood and bodies, climbing your way to the throne... who could resist that?
But—
She also knew trailers could be deceiving.
In fact, sometimes the more polished the trailer, the worse the actual game.
Because a good trailer was designed to build hype, sell copies... not necessarily reflect gameplay quality.
Lao Gu was a sly fox—she had no doubt he’d play that game.
Sure, the mismatch might lead to backlash once players realized the truth...
But as she’d always said—PUBG wasn’t a one-and-done deal.
They could always patch things up with updates later.
Once the rebate money came in next week, and they had funds to pay overtime bonuses, she could throw Lao Gu’s team back into the grind and salvage the game’s reputation.
With all this in mind, Shen Miaomiao thought:
“Let’s see just how much meat there is in this hype pie.”
When she arrived at the office, she pushed open the door, took a sip of water, and practically lunged for her VR capsule.
Yeah, she had her own VR capsule.
Of course—she was a company exec, after all (duh).
And in her capsule, she had access to the official build of PUBG.
Only she and Lao Gu had access.
Time to see for herself!
Firing up the VR capsule, she lay down and powered it on.
Hiss—
The capsule door slid shut.
The neural sync system kicked in.
Shen Miaomiao was immersed into the game.
First up—
A simple character creation screen.
She picked the default female avatar, skipped customization, and went straight to the “Start Game” button in the top-left corner of the lobby.
She wasn’t here for the looks.
She wanted the experience.
The screen went black.
Then—
VROOOOOM!!!
The roar of an aircraft engine, the howling of the wind.
A powerful rush of air slammed into her face, almost making it hard to breathe.
Wait, what?!
Shen Miaomiao’s heart skipped a beat.
Something didn’t feel right...
If she could feel the wind, that meant...
This game had integrated the full-sensory system they’d used in Survivor’s Path.
That wasn’t inherently a problem.
Survivor’s Path had a 10 million budget, PUBG had 50 million—introducing a full-sensory system made sense.
But what didn’t make sense was—
How the hell did they calibrate it this well?!
See, the full-sensory system was easy to add—just throw money at it.
But fine-tuning it? That was a whole different beast.
It was like buying a lump of clay—you could get it anywhere.
But sculpting it into a perfect, lifelike Venus de Milo? That took skill, time, and effort.
Theoretically, five months should’ve been enough to calibrate the airflow system.
But the thing was—
This was just a tiny detail.
One of the least important parts of the entire game.
It’d be like ordering a steak, expecting the chef to spend half an hour cooking it, but when it arrived...
There was a perfectly carved golden marigold on the plate, made from carrot.
If they had time for that, the steak itself must be top-tier, right?
Or... did they just spend half an hour on garnish and forget the main dish entirely?
Shen Miaomiao couldn’t believe someone like Gu Sheng—an industry-level Supernova Designer—would make such a rookie mistake.
Which meant...
She opened her eyes—
And froze.
She was standing at the rear door of a transport plane.
Clouds rushed past below, swirling in a wild, chaotic current.
And beneath those clouds—an endless, dizzying expanse of sky.
The roar of the engines filled her ears.
The wind buffeted her face, so strong it was hard to keep her eyes open.
Looking around—
A bunch of men and women, dressed in tank tops and shorts, just like her, standing by the open door, peering down at the world below.
As the plane flew forward, one by one, scattered prisoners leapt out of the plane, parachutes unfolding like flowers blooming in the sky.
It was chaos.
It was beautiful.
It was the start of a brutal battle royale.
“Me... what the f***...?”
Shen Miaomiao’s pupils shrank.
The detail, the immersive full-sensory experience, the lifelike AI behaviors...
This... was what they were calling a “barebones prototype”?!
Hell no!
This was off-the-charts next-level sh!