Let's Set the Board
Pangea TV is the Republic of CK.
That wasn't a joke. It was the truth.
I'd mentioned it once before, but CK was a nickname borrowed from LCK — Korea's professional League of Legends league — and it applied to every game and every kind of content. The main stages for CK were StarCraft, League of Legends, PUBG, and FIFA: all the heavyweight titles that ruled Pangea TV, and every one of those scenes was packed with streamers who'd planted their flags there.
Why had an ecosystem like that taken root?
The answer was simple.
Because CK made money.
No matter how many elegant excuses you dressed it up with, the essence of the streaming world had always been one thing: making money. CK was the justification a streamer hung out in front of that goal.
I'm going up against so-and-so in a CK match — my longtime rival. Big brothers, a little candy support for the match would be much appreciated!
That pitch played itself automatically in your head. Anyone who'd watched even a little CK on Pangea TV had it memorized.
And then, starting in the second half of 2022, the match-mission system had rolled out in earnest — and that put wings on the whole CK scene. Now it wasn't just the big corporate streamers. Mid-tier names and even well-known small-time streamers were running match missions, and CK events of every flavor started popping up everywhere.
Match missions and the CK circuit practically ran Pangea TV. But there was still one clean zone left that had escaped their grasp.
That place was Minecraft.
Rena World was slowly building word of mouth in the community. Every resident there was a virtual streamer, and among virtual streamers, the number of people who'd ever actually experienced CK or match missions was vanishingly small. Me, Baiyo, Ori-koong… that was about it. So nobody even thought to open a match mission or a CK.
In the history before my regression, the first Diamond CK ever held in Rena World had been planned only after the PUBG streamer Oh-ha joined the server. Oh-ha had loved Minecraft's healing vibe, but the candy donations were painfully thin compared to other game scenes — and that frustration was what birthed Diamond CK.
I remembered the fans having a lot to say once that CK went live. The old-guard Pangea TV natives had soaked up the dopamine, enjoyed themselves, and left glowing reviews. Whoa, Diamond CK in Minecraft? This is actually fun. On the other side, the virtual fans who'd migrated over from Rabbit TV — and anyone who'd come looking for pure virtual-streamer vibes — had piled on the hate. Virtual streamers doing this cash-grab content? PUBG streamers are all money-crazy. Opening a disgusting CK board even in Minecraft!
Oh-ha herself had admitted later that she'd gotten a stack of hate messages from virtual streamers' fans, telling her not to drag dirty culture into the virtual scene. But Oh-ha hadn't cared. She kept running Diamond CK. Virtual or not, before any of that they were all streamers first — and for a broadcaster, nothing outranked money. That conviction kept her pushing CK, and it set off a butterfly effect nobody saw coming.
Once a CK circuit settled into Minecraft, the big corporate streamers started paying attention. Minecraft? Hmm, the viewership's not bad. Maybe I'll dabble for a few days. Could use some fresh content to air out the YouTube channel. That was the mindset they walked in with. Then they got their first taste of Minecraft CK — and it was no joke. Architecture-based CK matches, in particular, could pull over a million candies in match-mission donations. A million candies converted to a hundred million won. Fees and taxes cut into it, sure, but even after that it was still the kind of money that rivaled a corporate manager's annual salary. The big streamers' eyes spun. Streamers who'd only meant to dabble started declaring themselves hardcore Minecraft players one after another.
The unimaginable butterfly effect of the Diamond CK Oh-ha had started. From then on, streamers carried a new conviction: Minecraft made money. That was why, after Rena World, the Minecraft golden age on Pangea TV had begun.
With that history behind it, I might catch some hate myself.
In the original timeline, Oh-ha had been the one to start Diamond CK. This time, I was going to find the courage to be disliked and run it myself. The reasons were simple.
First: crew morale. Their faith in me was solid and they'd followed me this far, but telling people to do nothing but mine and fish for nearly ten days straight was genuinely cruel. Later on there would be virtual slaves who did that work voluntarily — but those people at least got a waterfall of candy donations from the big corporate streamers. We had none of that. So I was going to inject some dopamine through Diamond CK. The sweet joy of splitting match-mission candies was just a bonus.
Second: I wanted a more proactive position inside Rena World. We were working hard, but not hard enough to buck the main current Apple-mong was driving. We were still supporting cast. Opening a Diamond CK board would change that. Small-time streamers thirsty for candy donations would have no choice but to poke their heads out from under Apple-mong's influence and start sniffing around our side.
Apple-mong's main storyline? Sure, it's fine. You get your face out there, and if you're lucky you catch some attention. But it doesn't guarantee any real profit.
Not many people could draw a big picture aimed at a distant future. That kind of patience was never easy. CK, on the other hand, was concrete gain — sweet candy you could collect right now.
Some people might get confused looking at MCK, so for the record: most match missions settled at a 60:40 split between the winning and losing teams. A 10:0 was almost unheard of. Because a 10:0 made real tension far more likely — you were basically throwing away every match-mission candy that had come into the room that day. Plenty of streamers quietly avoided MCK for that reason, especially the ones whose usual candy flow was so thin they couldn't even cover the "entry fee."
Our CK, though? Pure honey pot.
A 60:40 ratio. And Rena World was packed with small-time virtual streamers whose average candy power was far below our crew's. The candies leaking out through match missions in any given room were already low — and if you won you took six, and even if you lost you still walked away with four. That four was still likely to beat whatever match-mission candy your own room had produced. The moment I posted the announcement, application comments poured in like rain.
I'd said applications for Diamond CK were open until 7:30 p.m., and thirteen streamers had left comments. It might have looked like a small number at a glance, but this was a CK limited to Rena World's residents only — for that pool, thirteen applications was enormous.
Decrescendo really is strong, huh.
Nearly double the upvotes of second place. I read through the applications slowly with the chat, then decided to lock in the participants by up-vote ranking. It was the cleanest selection method — no room for backroom grumbling afterward.
I'd been planning to squeeze in any virtual streamers I was actually close with, but I don't really have those kinds of friends.
Outside our own crew, the only people I'd even held a conversation with were Seol Pyo-woo and Park Na-na. The rest? I barely even crossed paths with them. The closest thing had been the friends from the same group in the second round of the Wooga-dol audition, but after elimination they'd either stopped streaming or gone back to Rabbit TV, and the connection had just… ended.
The viewers' reaction was overwhelmingly warm. There was a standing assumption that match missions and CK weren't something just anyone could host — you needed a certain weight class before other streamers would look at the board and decide applying was worth their while. So when the application comments flooded in, the chat reacted like they were the ones being validated, and they were thoroughly satisfied.
And beyond what the viewers like, hosting a CK yourself comes with a pile of other effects.
Hosting a CK automatically went viral in the community. You stacked recognition, brick by brick. On top of that, you got fixed in people's heads: this person has real weight, and she knows how to set a board. That kind of perception was terrifying. At some point, people started thinking you were just… different from the other virtual streamers.
Factor in all those effects and a little candy leakage is more than worth it. Who knows — maybe floating viewers will wander in just from watching me set the board. Even one whale among them and this is a massive win.
Or maybe other rooms would pull more candy funding than I expected. From here on out, even I was in unknown territory.
"Alright, is everyone here? Let's start with attendance."
"Yeeees!"
Before I knew it, 8:00 p.m. — the appointed hour — had arrived.
Diamond CK was beginning.