Best Streamer
The end of the month carries a lot of meaning for streamers.
This month, that was especially true for me.
If you asked me why, the answer was simple.
First of all—
It was the selection of Pangea TV's Best Streamers.
Best Streamer.
Pangea TV assigns streamers one of three ranks: Normal, Best, and Partner.
Normal streamers, sadly, get nothing. It's the default rank applied to anyone who hits the go-live button, and the Candy exchange rate is miserable—you only take home sixty percent.
From Best Streamer onward, though, the benefits get serious.
The exchange rate jumps by a full ten percent right off the bat. On top of that, you receive twenty-five free thirty-day Boost gift codes every month—paid items that let viewers skip the ads on stream entry. Those gift codes make excellent event prizes for the audience, and thrifty streamers put every last one to work.
You can also register up to three Signature Candies by default—custom Candy with a number and image of your choosing—and pay to unlock as many as six.
And that's not all.
Best Streamers can apply to Pangea TV for content support funding. The amount varies by scale, but you can pull in anywhere from five hundred thousand to a million won—and approvals come through surprisingly often.
Then there's the final boss: Partner Streamer.
The exchange rate climbs all the way to eighty percent. And it doesn't stop there—each Partner gets a customized contract. Extra exchange bonuses, a monthly base salary, you name it. The perks are practically endless.
Boost items? A hundred a month, enough to make the Best Streamer allotment look like a joke. Content funding is in a completely different league, too—a baseline of one million won, scaling up to five million a month depending on the project and negotiations.
Starting in October 2023, they even introduce a Game Partner of the Month program: two streamers selected each month, each getting ten million won in support plus real-time Drops events during their broadcasts.
Even that much is enough to make your hands and feet shake—and there's still more. Medical benefits under the four major insurances, professional corporate and legal consulting, a dedicated one-on-one operator, expanded video upload capacity, and even studio support for planned content production.
Honestly, Best Streamer and Partner Streamer shouldn't even be thought of as a single rank apart. From Partner onward, exclusive platform streaming becomes mandatory, and the partnership effectively treats you as half a Pangea TV employee.
Partner Streamer is a stretch, if I'm being honest.
Rena-ttang was the first virtual streamer to ever receive Partner rank, but roughly half her streams had been cam broadcasts, so the whole thing was a bit of a gray area. Should she really count as the first virtual Partner Streamer? I remember the debates raging over that at the time.
Me? I was just a fan of a tiny streamer back then, nowhere near those big conversations—quietly posting promo threads for Lucy's streams and keeping my head down.
"And now, the November Best Streamer selections for the Virtual category. First up—Streamer Seo-a! Congratulations. As Pangea TV's very first virtual streamer, you've been running hard ever since that debut broadcast that caused such a massive stir. The concert you put on during the Wooga-dol Audition was truly unforgettable."
I sat through the official broadcast announcing the newly selected Best Streamers at month's end, soaking up the flood of congratulations and Candy donations pouring in from viewers like a wildfire.
Yeah. This was it.
I'd finally clawed back that precious ten percent of my fees.
Pangea TV seemed to care about the "first virtual Best Streamer" angle, too—after all the selections were done, I was even chosen as the representative to give a few words during the remarks segment.
"Hello, Seo-a? Can you hear us? Wow, this is genuinely wild. So this is a virtual avatar, huh? It's got expressions, and it moves just a little—it really looks like a cartoon character from when I was a kid. Would you mind sharing a few thoughts?"
"Hello, I'm Seo-a, leader of the V-Live crew. First of all, I'm so happy and honored to be delivering these remarks as the representative. Ah—did that sound a little too Miss Korea?"
"Hahaha, not at all. I was just staring at your avatar's mouth moving—it's fascinating. Please, go on."
"Alright. This might sound a bit cliché, but I'll keep going. First, to Lucy, Miho unnie, and Mayo from our crew—thank you so much. For always trusting and following a leader who's still lacking in so many ways. And to Ssa-yo—I gained so much through the Wooga-dol Audition. Thank you for everything you've done for Pangea TV's virtual scene. And Freeca—fighting! I'm rooting for you hard."
"Wow! Come to think of it, Seo-a was a Wooga-dol Audition contestant herself. Sounds like you've got quite the connection with Ssa-yo."
I wasn't about to waste the opportunity—another round of goodwill farming aimed at Ssa-yo and Freeca's fandoms.
And I kept going after that. Rena-ttang, Park Na-na, Oh Yeong-jun, Oh-ha—I name-dropped every streamer I'd ever crossed paths with, then capped it all off with a pointed jab at Park Bong-sik for the finishing touch.
"You said you'd open an MCK and call me out soon—so where is it? Don't tell me you got cold feet?"
With that memorable set of remarks wrapped up, I headed back to my own stream. I hammered the refresh button in my broadcast station until, sure enough, the Best Streamer medal appeared in the upper-right corner.
Pangea TV's first virtual streamer.
Pangea TV's first virtual Best Streamer.
Two glorious titles hanging off my name. Even if I didn't have a medal for the original debut itself.
"That's all for today's stream. Thanks for watching, everyone—you worked hard!"
After ending the broadcast, I checked the second end-of-month event.
The entry list for Rena World.
Negotiations must have fallen through—yesterday, Park Na-na and the rest of the Decrescendo members had left comments, and now they were all mixed in with our crew across the top ranks. Park Na-na, Baiyo, and Elsa's climbs were especially dazzling. In a single day, they'd taken fourth, second, and fifth respectively.
That's Decrescendo for you. We applied two full days earlier, and they still caught up this fast.
If we'd applied around the same time, even my first-place spot would have been in danger. At least I'd managed to save face—small mercies.
That aside… nobody applied under Mercury in the end. Either they've got some sense, or the company's keeping them on a leash.
Mercury was the new name for the Rena Universe. After cutting ties with Rena-ttang, they'd rebranded in a bid to turn things around—but it wouldn't last long. It would collapse even before Rena World Season 1 ended, doomed to vanish sometime in the first half of next year.
A truly bitter end. As Pangea TV's first corporate-backed virtual group, they'd boasted an enormous scale and looked ready to devour the entire virtual scene whole.
History always says the same thing, though—the enemy within is the most dangerous of all. I need to stay sharp.
Just because those three hadn't caused any major incidents before my regression didn't mean I could let my guard down. History was already shifting, little by little, because of me. And the three people closest to me would inevitably feel those changes the most.
"Rena World's opening is scheduled for December 2nd at 5 p.m. We've already run thorough tests and confirmed that everything runs smoothly with up to fifty players. And since Rena World is fundamentally oriented as a survival server, we ask for your understanding if anything feels inconvenient."
Rena-ttang continued laying out the concrete details for Rena World at a measured pace. I slipped into her stream as a viewer, took the temperature for a bit, then quickly dropped a Candy donation.
Seo-a has donated 1,000 Candies!
Rena-Rena-ttang-ttang~ Thank you so much for opening such a great server this time. Looking forward to having fun!
"Oh my, Seo-a. You didn't have to donate something like this. Alright—let's have a good time together."
Didn't have to donate something like this?
I was the one who'd watched her openly write up a list of streamers who'd come bearing Candy gifts on her birthday, right there on stream. Some things you just handle with a little social awareness.
"Then I'll announce the residents starting now. First up—Seo-a, leader of the V-Live crew! A round of applause, everyone."
Rena-ttang began calling out names one by one, in order. From what I could tell, she was just reading down the UP ranking as-is. Decrescendo and V-Live members got called first, followed by the nicknames of virtual streamers who at least had some name recognition.
Most of them are Wooga-dol Audition dropouts.
The impact of the Wooga-dol Audition really had been enormous. The aftershocks were still rolling through even now.
A thought suddenly struck me.
Ssa-dad… how on earth did you live like that?
He was the founding hero who'd launched the Wooga-dol Audition and revitalized Pangea TV's virtual scene—only to fail at making Freeca a success, give up halfway, and get absolutely roasted for it.
Rena-ttang was the same. She'd ridden the Wooga-dol wave and led the first golden age of Pangea TV's virtual scene, only to end up treated like Voldemort.
Ori-koong opened the Poko Server and crashed too. Looking at all this… is it just the fate of anyone who builds the board to get cursed out and fail?
Every streamer who'd run a Minecraft server after Rena-ttang had followed the same path. Looking at it that way, being a server admin was basically a poisoned chalice.
Anyway… it should be about time.
I watched Rena-ttang's stream with a slightly subdued mood. The announcements were winding down toward the end. Only a handful of names left.
And then, at last, that nickname was called.
"Blueby-nim. You've only been debuted for two weeks, but I've really seen how hard you've been streaming. I hope you'll keep showing that same energy in Rena World. Congratulations."
So it had come after all.
I let out a short sigh and wiped away the last of my lingering attachment. I didn't like it—but I'd already seen this coming.
Don't waver.
I was the one driving the situation, after all.
The end of November was drawing near.