Chapter 80: Anniversary!

Time flowed like water, slipping away silently; a mere few days were utterly insignificant.

In the blink of an eye.

The date had arrived at the very last day of April.

For ordinary people, this day held no special significance, and the entertainment industry had no fresh scandals to report; the man who loved bubble tea remained silent on his new album.

Yet.

This was a day so ordinary it could not be more ordinary.

For Qin Xiaoyu and everyone at MHY Studio, however, it marked a milestone anniversary.

As for the reason, it need not be explained.

From the day the game launched until today, exactly one month had passed.

In this past month, the game Genshin Impact had delivered results that could no longer be described as merely impressive.

Its total downloads had exceeded twenty-five million.

What?

Only twenty-five million downloads? That’s not much?

Many games have hundreds of millions, even billions of downloads—so insignificant?

Never mind whether those billions are inflated; even if the figures were real, they were accumulated over years of operation.

Remember, Genshin Impact had only been live for one month.

This figure, within the entire month of April, surpassed every other new game that launched alongside it.

Even when including the first three months of this year, few games could match it.

If this still failed to demonstrate its impact,

another intriguing phenomenon would clearly illustrate the point.

In China’s gaming industry, there had never been a separate category for “anime-style” games—but because of Genshin Impact’s sudden emergence, such a category was now officially created.

The potential and vast market of anime-style games left other game companies envious.

To ride the wave of popularity, many small studios began devising schemes.

Any game of theirs that contained even a hint of cartoonish elements was now labeled as “anime-style.”

Of course… technically, this claim wasn’t entirely wrong.

Whether players would buy into it, however, was up to them alone to know.

Beyond download numbers, the game’s monthly revenue provided a more direct reflection of its popularity.

Although the final day of April had not yet ended, and Qin Xiaoyu himself had not yet received the exact revenue figures,

an unexpected list suddenly surfaced online: the April revenue ranking for Chinese games.

Genshin Impact ranked twenty-third on this list, with a monthly revenue of 210 million yuan.

At first glance, the ranking seemed unimpressive.

Its monthly revenue was barely over two hundred million, a stark contrast to the top-ranked game’s 1.7 billion yuan.

Many outsiders might think this ranking wasn’t particularly remarkable.

But anyone in the gaming industry knew just how terrifying this ranking and revenue truly were.

First,

before Genshin Impact’s launch, it had received virtually no promotion through any channel.

Not only were ordinary players unaware of it, but even fellow game developers only learned of its existence days before its pre-registration opened, through obscure means.

No one had ever heard of it before.