Money-Hungry
Whenever collection events like this rolled around, certain people always stood out.
The hardcore fans.
No matter how you sliced it, this was a broken system. It jabbed at the hunger for recognition and the competitive streak every human being carried, making them open their wallets with almost insulting ease. There was a reason people said that on Pangea TV, locking down just one solid President meant monthly income over five million won was never a problem.
And honestly, from the perspective of someone with real money, they'd prefer Pangea TV over Rabbit TV anyway. It was a platform where you could receive more definite treatment. There was a reason Pangea TV raked in overwhelming revenue relative to its user base.
Of course, that also came with plenty of side effects…
The kinds of incidents that even made the news. People who overdid Candy donations, slid into financial ruin, and turned to crime. Cases where someone demanded a refund from a female cam streamer, and when it didn't go their way, launched a full exposé war.
I thought I'd been managing things carefully so nothing like that would ever happen on my stream. Surely not… right?
But the moment the roulette started, the signs turned ominous.
In particular, the rampaging eighth-ranked hardcore fan, CoinPlease, was impossible to ignore. This guy had vanished for a while after I stopped doing stock streams, dropping two ranks on the hardcore board—and now he was back like a man possessed by pure dopamine.
The second the clock hit seven he started sprinting, and even ten minutes later he was still donating at nearly one-second intervals. Which meant he'd already dumped close to twenty thousand Candies.
Maybe he really did make bank on crypto…
There had been actual data showing that during the pandemic, a flood of viewers who'd struck it rich on coins poured into Pangea TV and massively boosted the platform's revenue. His username was CoinPlease—pretty on-the-nose—and he was already pulling prizes at a rate that left the other hardcores in the dust.
"Manager, please log every prize that comes up carefully. Once the roulette ends I'll post the winner list, so if any fans notice something missing, leave a comment and I'll check the VOD and add it."
So far, no one had hit a 0.5% prize.
CoinPlease's solo run from the opening bell. Slowly, the other hardcores started joining the fight in earnest—pride as top fans demanded it.
Three, four donation messages exploding every second. Regular chat got buried the instant it appeared, and the nonstop cascade of donation sound effects was enough to make anyone dizzy.
This is a roulette? When I checked Park Na-na and Baiyo's VODs for reference, it was nowhere near this intense.
Honestly, I'd felt both anticipation and anxiety. On the current Pangea TV virtual scene, Decrescendo and V-Live were realistically considered the two great mountain ranges—even if we were still a little short in some areas—and the smallest thing could escalate into a pride war. Now we were forced into a direct contest over the one thing streamers and fans were most sensitive about: Candy donations.
If today's roulette haul fell short of not just Park Na-na but even Baiyo, our fans would spend the next stretch getting roasted in the underground galleries. Even the Pocotin fandom—currently observing a vow of silence after their streamer's consecutive disasters—would lift their heads and start running their mouths, sensing opportunity. Decrescendo's fans wouldn't even need explaining; they'd just tilt their noses skyward and say:
The underground galleries, where malicious slander and pure fabrication ran wild. The problem was that a huge portion of streaming viewers were, on the surface, people who pretended they never touched those galleries. So you always had to keep one eye on underground opinion—especially on fabricated info spreading unchecked.
Which meant special-day roulette events required careful calculation before you greenlit them. They were guaranteed Galde Cup material.
That's why I was worried. Too many Candies was a problem. Too few Candies was also a problem.
He who would claim the throne must bear the weight of the crown, right? The more fans you gained and the better the stream performed, the more anti-fans multiplied right alongside them.
So I made my decision.
If I was going to catch hate either way, the only thing left standing at the end was Candy. Might as well collect properly.
That was the mindset I started the roulette with—and I never expected it to go this well.
The hardcores, competition fully detonated—and regular fans, drawn by the rare prizes, came flooding in too. The hit rate on the 1–2% prizes seemed to be climbing. And then, finally, it hit.
Dear God. Of all people, the first 0.5% blessing had to land on that absolute menace of a hardcore. Congratulatory chat poured in for the ecstatic Vice-Chairman, Seoah Not Streaming.
Of course the 24-hour stream ticket had to drop first. Of all the homework items, that one took the longest.
Thirty minutes into the roulette. The Candy gauge bar in the upper right—tracking today's total—had already blown past eighty thousand. And the momentum still hadn't died.
President Seo-a-ui-bin-ji-gap, who'd been standing back with his hands folded like he was just watching at first, finally entered the fight for real. Regular fans piled on, and even the casual drop-in viewers started spooning in, drawn by the spectacle.
Yeah. This was a people born for gambling and games of chance. Even the passersby couldn't resist a roulette.
Some unlucky hardcore would dump ten or twenty thousand Candies and walk away with nothing but R-grade Bang-sels and Reverse Fans—while a regular fan with good luck that day would fire off three measly 33s and pull an SR-grade Bang-sel. A completely deranged gambling den, dopamine skyrocketing. That hardcore would whine about a rigged roulette like a gambler cleaned out at the casino, and the rest of the chat would just spam "lmao" and howl with laughter.
"Hey! You absolute maniac! That is way too far."
The sheer unhinged creativity of the recommended title made my head spin. Was this even real?
But the viewers just pointed at the Candy gauge bar in the upper right and told me to look at that before complaining.
Hmm… one hour in, past one hundred thousand Candies. Which meant an hourly rate of seven million won.
I changed the title without another word.
[New Girl Cam] About to Clock Out Underboob, High-Leg,
Cat-Back Pose Ready Zipper Broken Peek-a-Boo No VOD
Fine. If we were going this far, might as well go all the way and take a few "money-hungry" insults in the underground galleries.
Are you trying to insult me?! Are you trying to buy me with money right now?!
…was a line I couldn't exactly deliver when the sum involved was this large. A famous meme flashed through my mind.