After all, in the 18th year of the New Calendar, Xia Country’s hard power in the electronics industry was exceptionally strong.

And game developers also had the confidence to make graphics and special effects bigger and better.

“The largest gaming platform in Xia Country is the Dianqu Platform under Dianqu Technology. The basic contract split for independent game developers is 50% before tax... At present, it should be the highest basic split in the industry, and the platform with the most liberal listing policy.”

“That’s the one!”

Eyes shining, Yvonne Harris downloaded the free development tools from the official website’s partnership page.

Although making a game is no small amount of work, it also depends on what kind of game it is.

For a small game like 2048, where even the graphics can be replaced with free materials from PPT, he could finish it in at most an afternoon.

No, it might not even take that long.

There were only two basic modules to develop: one was the game itself, and the other was the leaderboard system.

There were ready-made templates for the latter, and the former wasn’t very complicated either, since the game’s rules were simple.

That is, by moving up, down, left, and right, two identical numbers combine, while two different numbers do not. When all the tiles are full and no moves are possible, it’s a loss; when a 2048 appears among the numbers, it’s a win. These operations can basically be implemented with arrays and functions.

After winning, the game can continue, with the highest number as the score, which is recorded on the leaderboard.

Because the free development tools provided on the official website were so powerful, Yvonne Harris even felt that even someone with no programming experience at all could use those features to recreate this game.

The only difference might just be the quality of the code.

But Yvonne Harris still doubted whether a small casual game like this could really have any difference in quality.

He kept busy until 5 p.m., and after finishing all the development work, Yvonne Harris casually played a couple of test rounds.

After confirming there were no problems, he packaged all the programs according to the format required by the Dianqu official website and dragged them into the folder to be uploaded.

“If I can reach 100,000 downloads, the system’s task will be considered complete.”

With the big job about to be finished, Yvonne Harris’s lips curled into a happy smile as he leaned back comfortably in his chair.

“If I list it at the lowest price of one yuan, the pre-tax income would be 50,000 yuan... I wonder if an individual game developer without a registered company can apply for tax benefits.”

Fifty thousand yuan!

Let alone paying that guy back for a screen, he could even afford to pay for a whole phone.

If everything went smoothly, maybe he wouldn’t even need to trouble his family for next year’s tuition.

But to be honest, Yvonne Harris wasn’t very confident about the things he was fantasizing about.

After all, the game’s file size might not even be as big as a single high-definition image, and in this world, what’s popular are those large-scale PC games with explosive graphics and rich social features.

A small game?

It’s hard to say if there’s even any room for survival.

But...

He didn’t have any better options anyway.

He clicked the upload button with his mouse, and just as Yvonne Harris was about to stretch and shut down the computer, a dialog box suddenly popped up on the screen, making him pause.

[Please select a payment method]

Payment method?

What the heck.

Sensing that something was off, Yvonne Harris quickly opened the Dianqu official website’s instructions for listing games, and only discovered the issue after reading to the very last line.

So it turns out listing a game isn’t free after all—a registration fee of 2,000 yuan is required!

Damn!

He hadn’t even made any money yet, and they wanted him to pay up first.

Isn’t this unscrupulous company just ripping people off?!

Looking at this fee—which wasn’t exactly high, but was just enough to block his way—Yvonne Harris fell silent.

Let alone 2,000 yuan, all the money in his pocket didn’t even add up to 800 yuan. If he didn’t find a part-time job, even scrimping and saving until the end of the year might not be enough to save up 2,000 yuan.

Borrow from his family?

But what reason could he give?

Although in this life, Xia Country didn’t see video games as a scourge, parents born in the old calendar days might not all think that way.

Yvonne Harris felt that if he asked for money and even mentioned the word “game,” he probably wouldn’t even be able to continue the conversation with his dad.

Maybe...

Find a platform where he could publish games for free?

But those platforms usually had very little traffic...

For this lousy game, let alone pricing it at one yuan, even if it was free, it probably wouldn’t attract 100,000 players.

For a moment, Yvonne Harris was at a loss.

But just as he was struggling, the phone he got from a prepaid plan suddenly vibrated.

After a two-second lag, a message popped up.

He glanced at the contact note: “Creditor.”

Yvonne Harris picked up the phone with a helpless look and unlocked the screen.

[Hey, it’s been days—when are you going to pay me back? (Little Jack)]

[It’s just 3,000 yuan. Does it really take a grown man like you this long to pay me back? (｀д′)]