Wednesday, November 1st.
Luo Xiaowei was 24 years old this year and worked at a foreign trade company in Ningbo. His shift started at 8:30 AM.
Unlike a few weeks ago, when he would always punch in right at the wire, Luo Xiaowei had recently become much more diligent, clocking in right after 7:30 every morning with absolute punctuality.
Today was no exception. Armed with two steamed buns and a bag of soybean milk, Luo had already clocked in and settled down in front of his workstation computer screen.
"Xiao Luo, don't steal my crops! If you harvest my stuff again, I'm going to get mad."
Just as the computer booted up, the voice of his colleague Li Jinglan rang out from behind him.
That's right—the company Luo Xiaowei worked for was none other than the former Jinpeng Trading, now reorganized as Jinpeng Industry.
After Jinpeng Trading was restructured into Jinpeng Industry and merged into the Shanchi Group, the original trading staff became employees of the company's trade department, keeping their job responsibilities unchanged.
Li Yanning, formerly employee number one, had been promoted to Head of the Trade Department, stepping into a management role.
Aside from being Li Yanning's younger sister, Li Jinglan was Jinpeng Trading's second employee.
She originally had a chance to succeed Yanning in her former position, but she was rather easygoing and lacked career ambition.
Zhang Xupeng had instead arranged a relaxed administrative role for her, which offered easy work and decent pay.
"Hehe, Sister Jinglan, you better move fast then. I can't guarantee I won't accidentally harvest your crops out of sheer habit in a minute."
Luo Xiaowei mumbled around a bite of his steamed bun while clicking his mouse.
Though Luo was slightly older than Li Jinglan, her seniority in the company meant he had to obediently address her as "Sister."
Still, they had a pretty good private working relationship, especially after the vegetable-stealing game launched.
Stealing vegetables together had invisibly bridged the gap between office colleagues, making class distinctions feel much less pronounced.
Across the entire Shanchi Group—including Jinpeng Industry—the office environment was relatively relaxed.
As long as work wasn't impacted, management didn't really mind employees playing casual games to unwind.
"Huh? The version updated."
Opening his web browser, Luo Xiaowei noticed a new friends' ranking leaderboard.
With over 60 friends on his list, he tended his farm meticulously and spent a fair amount of time on it.
With the ranking system now live, Luo saw that he had broken into the top 10 among his friends.
"Hahaha, awesome! Sister Jinglan, the vegetable-stealing game updated with rankings, and I made it into the top 10 among my friends. Quick, check what rank you are."
Luo Xiaowei had come to the office early specifically because he had timed a crop harvest.
Li Jinglan was the same; the two of them were the trade department's most addicted vegetable thieves and made the ultimate gaming partners.
Right around 8:00 AM, Li Yanning arrived at the office.
At 26 years old, Li Yanning still didn't have a boyfriend, causing her family endless anxiety.
However, she herself wasn't in a rush anymore—perhaps she had finally moved past her period of anxiety.
Dressed in a thin black professional suit jacket and keeping a straight face, Li Yanning was trying hard to look like a proper manager.
Having undergone the restructuring for a few months, Yanning still hadn't fully adapted to a leadership role.
In the past, she had always been the one taking orders; she had never imagined a day would come when she would be managing people.
"Morning, Director Li."
Seeing Yanning walk in, Luo Xiaowei quickly minimized his browser window.
It wasn't work hours yet, and the company was pretty lenient, but getting caught playing games in front of the boss still looked bad.
"Morning, Sis,"
Li Jinglan chimed in.
A faint smile crossed the corner of Li Yanning's lips. The two sisters lived together, so she naturally knew why her sister had rushed to the office so early. With any other game, Yanning would have cracked down on her.
However, because Happy Farm had been developed by Boss Tan, and because Li Jinglan and the rest of the department enjoyed it, Yanning chose to turn a blind eye.
In truth, she played it herself, but she maintained self-control and didn't share Jinglan's level of addiction, keeping her level relatively low.
Scenes like this were playing out in countless companies as Happy Farm marked its one-month anniversary. Game enthusiasts who set middle-of-the-night alarm clocks just like Luo Xiaowei were countless.
Far away in Hangzhou, a certain Ms. Liu working at a public institution was feeling rather pleased lately.
Her junior-high-school-aged daughter was going through a particularly rebellious phase, prone to doing the exact opposite of whatever her parents advised. Stubborn and unyielding, the mother-daughter relationship had been quite strained.
Recently, however, her daughter had been chatting with her enthusiastically, and the topic was none other than the viral sensation, Happy Farm.
Ms. Liu keenly seized the opportunity: instead of scolding her daughter for playing games behind her back, she used it as an opening to guide communication and mend their relationship.
Ms. Liu made a deal with her daughter: they would play and steal vegetables together, provided it didn't interfere with homework or academic progress. Naturally, the daughter had no objections to that.
Through this small game, the daughter opened up about many personal thoughts.
Ms. Liu never would have imagined that a little web game could bridge a generational gap and foster communication, making it easy to see why it had exploded in popularity.
Word had it that the game was created by a 20-year-old college student and her boyfriend?
While Ms. Liu represented the more open-minded type of parent, there were plenty of others who discovered their kids sneaking game time and resorted to scolding or beating them.
That demographic of parents utterly despised Happy Farm.
Consequently, those exact parents frequently vented their anger online by scolding Gu Qingqing and Tan Jincheng.
"Boss, we got a lawyer's letter."
"What the hell? A lawyer's letter? What does that mean?"
"It means we're being sued. Sued by Orange Technology."
"Wait, why would we get sued?"
"They say we infringed on their trademark and are demanding we change our name."
The young man addressed as "Boss" took the lawyer's letter and looked it over. Sure enough, it was exactly as stated.
Reading the formal legal notice instantly made his stomach knot with tension.
"Are they out of their minds? It's one thing that they registered the entire 'Happy' series, but they even trademarked 'Kaikai Farm'? Is that really necessary?"
Liu Wenxuan muttered in speechlessness.
This was a move designed to leave copycats riding their coattails with absolutely nowhere to turn.
The massive success of Kaixin001 and Happy Farm had made young programmers realize an opportunity.
The gameplay wasn't complicated, and since Orange Technology had already laid down the basic framework, copying their game design allowed developers to churn out a flash web game relatively quickly.
All they needed to do was anchor it to a social platform or set up a personal portal page to launch it and cash in.
They didn't even need user numbers on the scale of Kaixin001—100,000 or even tens of thousands of registered users was plenty.
The core objective was riding Kaixin001's wave of hype. However, online searches revealed that all domain names starting with "KAIXIN" were already claimed, leaving copycats no choice but to play around with the game's title instead.
"Kaikai Farm" was the name Liu Wenxuan's five-person startup team had come up with.
Because Orange Technology had registered all domains containing the "Happy" branding, while imitators still existed, they hadn't faced the fierce commercial suppression seen in past timelines.
Kaikai Farm had been one of the more successful imitators. By flooding major online forums, QQ groups, MSN, and other social platforms with promotional posts to drive traffic, Kaikai Farm had managed to attract a solid user base.
Just as they were preparing to pull out all the stops and expand aggressively, a lawyer's letter arrived on their doorstep.
Simultaneously, other imitators with names like "Happy Farmer" received lawyer's letter warnings as well.
The respective founding teams were all utterly bewildered—was Orange Technology really playing this aggressively?
Suing every single offender door-to-door was impossible—Orange Technology lacked the manpower for that. Issuing lawyer's letters was the simplest approach; sometimes just the intimidation factor alone was enough to scare people into quitting.
Happy Farm had pioneered a brand-new monetization model for social websites, and its gameplay innovations were eye-catching, inspiring a wave of programmers to launch startups and revitalizing the social networking sector.
In the span of a single month, countless imitators had swarmed the market. Platforms like Xiaonei and QQ Zone were also developing their own versions of "Happy Farm."
Their development wasn't slow either; the only reason they hadn't launched as fast as small startup teams was because they wanted higher polish.
Small teams often operated on tight budgets, resulting in rougher builds and an urgent need to cash in quickly, prompting them to push products to market earlier.
On the other hand, reputable major companies still cared about maintaining a baseline of public decency.
Even Tencent, a decade later, would initially seek partnerships first, only deploying their own cloned products if negotiations fell through, or immediately starting development if necessary.
By this point, Tencent was already in contact with Orange Technology.
The primary point of contact remained Kuang Ping; as Orange Technology's sole outside investor, Kuang played the role of an intermediary.
Tan Jincheng had no opposition to partnering with Tencent. Tencent's business style was far superior to Alibaba's—Tencent actively drove traffic to its partners and never interfered with their internal operations.
Though Tencent's reputation had its blemishes, its money-making engine was genuinely terrifying, and its ability to drag its partners along to make a fortune was equally formidable.
Boss Dong and Pinduoduo had both achieved their breakthrough breakthroughs thanks to traffic support from Tencent.
"What do we do, Boss?"
The young man asked, feeling somewhat unequipped to handle this kind of legal escalation for the first time.
Liu Wenxuan furrowed his brows. He hadn't expected Orange Technology to pull a move like this. Orange Technology had just upgraded the game today to add a leaderboard system, and his team had been planning to follow suit; now, they were completely lost on what to do next.
After a moment of silent reflection, Liu Wenxuan said,
"We have to keep running it. We already have a decent user base—if we don't start charging for virtual items soon, won't we be operating at a loss? Let's just change the name and keep going."
Kaikai Farm had already started generating some daily revenue over the past few days, and momentum was looking promising; stopping operations simply because of a name change was out of the question.
The other partners shared the exact same sentiment.
"What should we change the name to? Damn it, I didn't expect Orange Technology's boss to be such a scumbag."
At that moment, one of the partners suggested,
"How about we call it 'Sunshine Pasture' instead? We can add some chicken and duck raising mechanics to differentiate it from Happy Farm. That way, they won't have any grounds to sue us anymore."
They remained completely oblivious to the fact that what they were doing was outright plagiarism.
But even if it was plagiarism, there was little recourse; due to copyright framework limitations, traditional lawsuits rarely succeeded. The most Tan Jincheng could do was register as many peripheral trademarks as possible.
At least this partner possessed a shred of copyright awareness, recognizing the need to differentiate themselves from Happy Farm.
"Alright, that name works, and the idea is solid. But we need to check if the trademark is already registered first—we can't afford a second lawyer's letter."
(End of Chapter)