674 Charge Dropped (1/2)

”After a week of investigation, we have determined that Future Technology's operation acted within the principle of a free market. The litigation against Future Technology will be thrown out in the next few days…” In front of the cameras, a Department of Justice spokesperson read out the words without any expression.

The Capital who gave the go ahead to the investigation suddenly changed their mind, the Senators suddenly spoke out questioning the credibility of the investigation.

The Minister of Justice almost wanted to puke blood because of his fury.

M State wasthe home base for B City Consortium and everyone knew what this meant. What the Minister didn't understand was, if you first pushed for the anti-trust investigation, why did you change your mind all of it sudden?

The Department of Justice could no longer withstand the immense pressure from the outraged public. The Capital demanded them to cease investigation immediately and solve any of the lingering problems. Now that even the fat nerds were criticizing the government for preventing them from searching for their true love in virtual reality…

A fine would require evidence. And although it was not impossible to be somewhat reckless in a law-governed state, everyone still must play by the rules of the game. Just like Future Technology had stated, they didn't fit the definition of a monopoly by any means as they were just formed for less than two years.

Since they couldn't be slapped with a fine, the litigation must be thrown out.

On the night of the decision, Future Technology posted an announcement.

”We welcome the correct decision made by the Department of Justice. Future Technology will abide with a fair and justice competitive spirit and operate without interfering with the principles of the market. From today on, the virtual reality network will return. Future Technology, proudly serving you!”

The announcement erupted into waves of cheers on the Internet.

”Hahaha! Godly Land is finally back online! I haven't played in a week!”

”Our virtual reality is back. This is democratic freedom!”

”Thank God. Amnesia is terrible. Although I don't wear the helmet every night, it feels like something was missing without being able to use the helmet.”

With the rumor of Future Technology exiting UA blown out of water and servers back online, Godly Land's concurrent user count broke the 100 million mark!

While Microsoft and Google were envious with Future Technology's success, they must admit defeat. They previously optimistically thought the lawsuit would last for at least two years and they could use the time to break through the neural connection challenge to develop a replacement for Phantom and take over Future Technology's North America market. But who would have thought that the anti-trust investigation would end so swiftly and unexpectedly.

While this anti-trust investigation ended, the influence of virtual reality alerted the Capital and strengthened UA's determination in the development of virtual reality technology.

The Capital established a 400 million US dollar fund dedicated to the development of virtual reality in the military field. The ideal candidates for the fund were naturally the two home grown tech giants – Google and Microsoft.

Not only UA, Nippon on the other side of the Pacific also announced that Mitsubishi and Sony will form a partnership in virtual reality to fund a 5 billion dollars of training equipment for the police and arms force.

Although Hua didn't make a specific announcement, the Central Research Institute already listed the virtual reality project as a top research project.

However, no country could make progress in the field of neural connection…

From some elements, the withdrawal of the anti-trust investigation increased the countries' spending in virtual reality projects. No country would permit such an influential virtual reality network to be controlled in other people's hands.

And Future Technology just needed to maintain the lead in technology to make the countries attempting to breakthrough unable to leave them.