Eric Turner's words contained several extremely fatal flags, such as "Once I fix the bug, I can get off work," but that's all he could say.

Jason Foster nodded, but as his gaze swept the room, he immediately noticed William Carter's empty seat.

Everyone on the project was working, except for this one glaringly empty spot...

At first, Jason Foster didn't realize it, because this seat had been empty for the past two weeks, and before William Carter arrived, no one sat there; but when Jason Foster saw William Carter's water cup on the desk, he suddenly realized—wait, this seat is taken, William Carter sits here!

Looking at the neatly organized desk and the chair pushed under the table, Jason Foster was a bit displeased and asked Brian Clark, "Is this William Carter? Has he already left?"

Brian Clark hurriedly stood up. "Yes, Manager Foster. Actually, I mentioned to him earlier that the new version would go live tomorrow, but maybe he didn't understand what I meant, and as usual, he left right on time without saying anything. That's my fault, my fault."

Jason Foster waved his hand. "Forget it, it's not your fault. Our project is all about voluntary overtime, so it's not easy for you to spell things out so directly. Never mind, I'll talk to him another day."

Seeing Jason Foster's expression, Brian Clark knew that Manager Foster was unhappy with William Carter.

Logically, as a newcomer, William Carter should at least show some initiative in his first few days at work, right? Even if you don't know to work overtime on your own, you could at least quietly ask others. But William Carter didn't even ask—he just left right on time, more punctual than an alarm clock.

"Well, that's not on me. You're digging your own grave."

Brian Clark knew that Manager Foster wouldn't go so far as to fire William Carter; after all, William Carter was just an intern and wasn't making much money. Firing him just for not working overtime wouldn't make sense.

But with this kind of work attitude, Jason Foster already had a bad impression of him. Once this kind of stereotype forms, who knows how many times you'd have to work overtime to change it.

...

Early the next morning, William Carter got up and washed at the usual time, went out for a stroll, had breakfast, and then took the skybus to the Guangyi Interactive Entertainment building.

Even though he had a job now, he was still living on credit this month, since he hadn't received his salary yet and still had to dip into his savings.

William Carter checked the balance on his wristband account—just over five hundred yuan left.

There were still more than twenty days left in the month, so just for food alone, he'd have to scrimp and save every day.

Fortunately, the technology level in this world was advanced, and there were all kinds of compressed foods available everywhere. These compressed foods were cheap and fairly nutritious—the only problem was that they tasted terrible.

But for William Carter, he could make do.

On the skybus, with nothing else to do, William Carter opened "Mecha Age" on his wristband and saw a prompt for an available update.

"As expected, the new version is out."

Each company had different update times for their versions—some updated at midnight, some at 6 a.m. or 8 a.m., and some incremental updates could be done without taking the servers offline. It all depended on the project.

Most of Guangyi Interactive Entertainment's projects were used to updating at 8 a.m., and usually the servers would open around noon. The biggest advantage of this was that if the version really couldn't be finished on time, at least you could pull an all-nighter until 8 a.m. the next day.

The new version wasn't a big update, so it finished quickly.

William Carter opened "Mecha Age" and checked out the new features.

Chapter 11: New Version, No Good!

"As expected, just minor tweaks and fixes."

William Carter quickly looked over the new features and didn't find anything impressive.

Actually, he had already read all the design documents for the new features and had tried out a few half-finished ones on the internal test server. But the test version and the official version were still different, so William Carter played through it again.

This didn't change William Carter's previous opinion—the update was, at best, just "minor tweaks and fixes," and wouldn't make much of a difference.

The content of the new version that players were most looking forward to was probably just the "new mechas"—a few new mechas that players could spend money to draw for or buy directly.

For Jason Foster and Eric Turner, this was also the part they cared about most, because it directly affected the project's revenue.

If players really liked the new mechas and spent more money on them, the project's profits would go up, and then Jason Foster could take this month's revenue numbers to ask upper management for more resources.

So Jason Foster put a lot of effort into the new mechas, hoping to stimulate the players and get them interested in the recharge button again.

"With just these changes, it's hopeless."

William Carter shook his head and exited the game.

He knew very well that while the new mechas might slightly improve the current situation, it was unlikely to boost revenue.

Sure, some wealthy players would buy the new mechas, but the key was—how many of them were there? And don't forget, "Mecha Age" was steadily declining, losing a large number of players every month, and this trend would only get worse.

If it became obvious that no one was playing the game anymore, who would spend money on new mechas? Who would you show them off to after buying them?