Chapter 681

In summary, Haven Net's influence continued to grow. Its presence could no longer be ignored.

Countless celebrities shared their opinions on Haven Connect. Their posts often attracted tens of millions of followers.

In society, the platform was now seen as a rival to Facebook.

Even so, Haven Net faced a significant uphill battle. It had a long way to go to reach Facebook's hundreds of billions of dollars in stock market value.

After all, Facebook had more than 1.5 billion users worldwide. Its immense influence gave it the power to be truly disruptive.

Yet, with 400 million users, Haven Net was well on its way to becoming a behemoth in its own right. Moreover, the participation of many celebrities, politicians, and world leaders boosted its growth.

Behind the scenes, Jack had quietly been shaping this vast media empire.

By comparison, Genesis Games had a less successful development.

Someone leaked the source code for "Legend of the East" and "Legend of the West". Soon, bootleg private servers flooded the domestic market, draining a large part of the player base.

Some of these private server developers even grew into large-scale, highly popular platforms.

When Genesis Games began reporting these companies to the authorities, an even bigger problem emerged.

Almost overnight, the major private server operators were shut down. But countless smaller ones sprang up like mushrooms after the rain. They divided the player base of "Legend of the East" and "Legend of the West". Content originally comes from find~novel~net

While these private servers didn't pose an existential threat, they did shake their foundations.

A few large private server companies could be shut down by the authorities. However, shutting down tens of thousands of smaller ones proved much more challenging. Additionally, the cost of combating piracy domestically was substantial.

However, Genesis Games faced an even greater crisis overseas. Due to its ties to Maloria, the company was automatically labeled with certain biases.

Rumors began circulating, exaggerating the Malorian heritage of Genesis Games' founder.

They accused "Legend of the West" of corrupting the youth of Euphoria and Federia. This, they claimed, led to their depravity and hopeless addiction.

Even worse, some openly claimed in the media that the game contained hidden backdoors. They suggested it was designed for espionage.

The media sensationalized these allegations, putting Genesis Games under intense scrutiny abroad.

Moreover, accusations of espionage were impossible to verify. Spreading a lie was easy, but the victim had to work a thousand times harder to set the record straight.

Jack's Malorian background only deepened the suspicions of adversaries.

As tensions escalated, Genesis Games CEO, Claude, could no longer remain silent. He held a press conference at the company's Vexburg headquarters. There, he firmly clarified that all Genesis Games products and titles had always adhered strictly to the laws of every country. They contained no backdoors and had consistently paid taxes on time.

The allegations of espionage, he emphasized, were entirely fabricated.

Yet the clarifications failed to silence the skeptics. Instead, they drew heightened scrutiny from Euphoria and Federia.

This was especially true for those already biased against Malorians. Their anger was fueled by secret instigation and jealousy over Genesis Games' success in the region.

Politicians started calling for investigations. Some even demanded that the company hand over its source code for scrutiny by international experts to detect any backdoors.

If Genesis Games refused to hand over the source code, several nations even threatened to ban all their products.