Chapter 45: A Knockoff has Appeared

Inside the experience store…

Wen Lingwei and Chang Xiuya were battling against Jia Peng and another guy.

“Senior, could you set up a Wallnut here for me?” Chang Xiuya asked.

“How many zombies do you have saved up? Put them over here on my side, let’s try and get Xiuya’s Cob Cannon,” Jia Peng said to his friend.

Chang Xiuya panicked, “Hey, Jia Peng, you can’t do that!”

Wen Lingwei remained calm. “Don’t worry, I still have two loaded Cob Cannons.”

Chang Xiuya screamed all of a sudden, “Ahh!! Jia Peng, why aren’t you following your plan? Didn’t you say you were going to get my Cob Cannon? Why did you take my Sunflower?”

With Wen Lingwei and the others playing PvP mode, and neither side willing to give up, the experience store was very lively.

Using the developer tools, Su Jinyu was designing new plants and zombies. Of course, she was mainly doing the graphics. Her drawing skills were much better than Chen Mo; she had already drawn three new plants.

The plants she designed had a Chinese theme, namely the Wheat Gatling Gun, Sweet Potato Mine, and Bamboo Wall.

More and more players started playing the game after discovering the social capabilities in the newest update.

Plants vs Zombies had gathered more than eight hundred thousand players in the two months since its release. So far more than half the users were active players, and many of them were starting their own communities in game, resulting in thousands of communities. Many of the communities were small friendship circles where the members were friends or classmates, in order to check on one another’s progress.

Some of the bigger fans of Plants vs Zombies had taken a great liking to the developer tools and were trying to make their own mods, in particular the people who were already interested in game design.

So far there were dozens of mods, although most of them were just changes to some of the numbers, such as unlimited sun or increased plant firing speed. Although there were many players, the average playtime for the mods were quite short.

Chen Mo wasn’t worried. As the number of mods increased, some higher quality mods were bound to appear as they got filtered by the fans and the algorithm.

The multiplayer had also become a hot topic among the players. Within the communities of Plants vs Zombies, many of the players were sharing their experiences and discussing their strategies. There was even a group of three who managed twenty wins in a row, drawing the interests of many in the community.

The consensus on the other forums about the new update was also quite positive, potentially starting another wave of interest in the game.

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“I looked through the developer tools today; this kit is amazing! I’m able to make adjustments to anything I want. Seems like the designer wants us to make anything we want! Now we’ll just have to wait for some god-tier modder to develop a beautiful original mod!”

“I thought I already explored everything the game has to offer, it seems that I was too naive… If the new mods keep coming, I might be able to play this for the rest of my life…”

“Respect to the designer. There’s nobody else who is making a standalone casual game like this!”

“However, releasing the developer tools means that anyone can look through the numbers of the game. The designer sure is daring!”

“Right? Unlike the other companies that try and keep everything a secret, deathly afraid of someone copying them.”

“Yeah, I’m now a fan just based on this developer tool!”

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Chen Mo was quite relieved after looking through the player discussions.

He felt that an update receiving praise like this was good enough. As this update significantly lengthened the game’s playtime, it was quite likely that Plants vs Zombies would continue to be at the top of the casual puzzle game charts for the next few months.

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Out of nowhere, a panic-stricken Su Jinyu said, “Boss, this isn’t good!”

“Hmm?” Chen Mo raised his head, “What’s wrong?”

Su Jinyu showed him her phone, “Look, this game… copied us!”

Chen Mo took the phone from her hands.

There was some random game from the market, and from the introduction screen you could see that the playstyle was very similar to Plants vs Zombies, five lanes on the left, enemies on the right.

However the artstyle of the game was completely different to Plants vs Zombies. The game was called Lunar Defense. The plot of the game was that the player would put down various high-tech weapons on the moon to defend against an alien insect race.

Although the weapons seemed completely different from the plants, their usage was very similar to the plants in Plants vs Zombies.

For example, the Peashooter was now a Machinegun Turret, Spikeweed was now Electromagnetic Trap, the Sunflower was now a Supply Station, the Cob Cannon was now a Nuclear Missile Launcher.

The looks of the Zombies were also overhauled, changed into various types of aliens. They were all ugly insectoids of various sizes with different methods of attacking, but most of the attacks were reminiscent of zombies.

“What’s wrong?” Jia Peng joined in the conversation.

Su Jinyu said, “Look at this! This Lunar Defense game is copying us!”

“What? How can they do that!?”

The others in the store went on their phones and found the game on the market.

Indeed, it didn’t take much for the others to recognize that the game was copying Plants vs Zombies. Although they changed the textures, music, and UI, the playstyle was completely identical to Plants vs Zombies.

“I’m gonna give it a bad review!” Jia Peng said angrily.

The others joined in, “Yeah, bad reviews! I’ll ask the others in the community to do the same!”

Chen Mo didn’t say anything, instead choosing to look at the statistics for the game.

It was released two days ago for free. The rating was extremely low at 2.3, most of the player reviews were one star.

Evidently the players of Plants vs Zombies felt offended by the plagiarism.

The game chose to profit via ads, every time the player beat a level a banner ad would pop up.

Also, there was an ingame currency that could be bought using real money. The player could use that to buy energy supplies (sun in Plants vs Zombies), or up to three revives when they died

The publisher was Sky’s Limit Entertainment, designed by some unknown C-grade video game designer.

Sky’s Limit Entertainment was barely second class, located at the faraway Magic City. They had also released a few fairly average mobile games before this, none of which did particularly well.

The reviews of the company were quite bad, but because they weren’t well known, not many knew about their evil deeds.

Chen Mo only realized what type of company this was after looking at their previous games.

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