How's Rena World Doing Now?
"Effective today, Oh Ha Company will be renaming itself O-Wang Company — under me, Wang-ko!"
"Woooooo!"
Oh Ha Company had folded under the banner of mega-streamer Wang-ko and changed its name accordingly.
"If we want to survive, we have to stick together too. For now, the two of us will serve as co-representatives…"
"Yeah. Got it, unnie. If we wait, good days will come."
Dananyang and Rim-ani clasped hands, waiting for the day Park Bong-sik returned to streaming.
"Hey, Snap. Minecraft's actually pretty fun these days. You should try it."
"Yeah? Maybe I'll mess around a bit before I ship out for the military."
Legendary former pro League of Legends player Snap, at Kim Hak-do's invitation, joined the server and signed on with Lethal Company!
Interest in Rena World — and the expectations riding on it — kept exploding higher.
Even the viewers who'd once scoffed, Minecraft? That's a kids' game. How is that trending on Pangea TV?, were slowly changing their minds.
Rena World was riding high. But there were still corners of it that nobody cared about.
First among them: Bad Potato Company, the group that had nearly become the early face of Rena World.
Once its leader, Mi○t, went down in flames, the staff under him lost all their attention right along with him.
A handful of Bad Potato's original hardcore fans still tuned in, but next to the employees of the companies that were actually thriving, they looked pitiful.
I even offered them a spot. They turned me down themselves, so there's nothing I can do.
It was a shame for Dorai and Coco-nyang.
I'd tried to look out for them a little, given the early stream chemistry that had tied us together — but they'd gone chasing the short-term payday and followed Mi○t, so you could call it reaping what they sowed.
Leaving the company now was already too late.
Whatever the other staff might do, those two counted as founding members of Bad Potato Company.
If they ever did quit, the last remaining handful of Bad Potato fans would swarm in and brand them traitors.
Maybe that was why Dorai had the look of someone who'd given up and let go of everything lately.
Coco-nyang, though, was different.
This is kind of a shadow-side topic.
Not something you could discuss out in the open on FM Community.
It was too blatantly degrading toward the streamers in question.
So it was mostly the underground galleries that talked about it.
Namely: who were the top three "mosquitoes" of Rena World?
The "mosquitoes" in question were a pejorative for people who, without fail, showed up to cling and freeload whenever a mega-streamer — or anyone whose viewer count had spiked off some controversy — was around.
And the underground galleries ranked Coco-nyang as one of those three.
Honestly, she was pretty shameless about it.
Latching on hard from the moment Mi○t first arrived? Fine, call that understandable.
You couldn't really blame a small-time streamer for chasing the trickle-down.
But after Mi○t crashed and burned, the rest of Bad Potato's roster accepted their bad choice and went quiet. Coco-nyang only got more aggressive.
She started with the relatively chill atmosphere over at Lethal Company.
The "sniping" incident had been papered over once Seol Pyo-woo apologized, but Elsa and Seol Pyo-woo still wore masks around each other — and with two of the company's core members like that, the whole vibe floated a little unmoored.
Coco-nyang slipped right into that gap.
Under the pretext of helping build Do-zney Castle, she edged closer and closer, until before long she was casually joining Candy loyalty games and splitting the trickle-down like she was actual company staff.
And that same Coco-nyang trajectory eventually stretched all the way to O-Wang Company.
Honestly, O-Wang Company is where she really put down roots. She was from a completely different company and still managed to slide into their meetings.
She stuck to O-Wang with that much brass, eventually won them over, and later became one of the few virtual streamers ever inducted into the PUBG cartel.
Which was why, as I remembered it, the underground virtual-streamer galleries had absolutely torn into Coco-nyang over it.
Can't help it. If that's her survival strategy…
I had no intention of condemning her for it.
Coco-nyang was still standing proud as of 2025, and her survival proved there was clearly an audience that wanted what she offered.
Still, I'd rather she not come sniffing around our company. Just looking after the trickle-down for the staff I've already got is going to break my back as it is.
The moment I'd held out my hand had been the last chance Dorai and Coco-nyang were going to get from me.
They'd refused it, so that was a clean end as far as I was concerned.
Coco-nyang and Bad Potato Company aside… next up is Jagalchi-pa?
A small collective centered on So Yeon-ha, Hanamon, and Tu-nyang-i, who'd banded together to leave Seoul behind and build a "Busan."
With no clear leader, you couldn't even call them a company.
Just Rena World's fringe cast huddled together in a corner.
A bunch of people living timidly off in the boonies — until recently, a single ray of light had flashed for them.
Through every sweet-talking pitch in the book, they'd kidnapped partner streamer Aengdu — who'd moved into Rena World at year's end — and dragged her off to Busan.
In the meantime Busan's roster had grown some, with Ripinpi, Hyeondana, Yeonjadu, and others joining up.
One way or another, partner streamer Aengdu got pushed into the role of Jagalchi-pa's leader.
Unfortunately, Aengdu's weight class didn't even reach Dananyang or Rim-ani.
Other companies were soaking up their leaders' trickle-down, drawing more eyes and growing by the day — while this lot sat stuck in a backwater corner. Of course their energy was draining.
Put it this way.
Even doing the exact same mining work, a company employee riding the trickle-down pulled two or three hundred viewers, with Candy donations popping off constantly, and worked in high spirits. A company with no trickle-down, on the other hand, scraped by with twenty or thirty viewers and the occasional chat message, grinding all day long.
Just thinking about it is exhausting. And until the mega-streamers started joining the server, they'd all been in roughly the same boat — so the gap hits even harder…
If the other side had always been way ahead, people might have just accepted it.
But until last month they'd been the same small-time streamers carrying similar viewer counts — and a single company choice had done this to them.
So Jagalchi-pa's rank-and-file morale kept sinking, and Aengdu, stuck as the leader, couldn't help feeling the pressure.
And right then!
A single move that could bring Jagalchi-pa back from the dead appeared.
NS Namsin's move into Rena World was announced.
Lethal Company and O-Wang Company, currently the two hottest operations, already had solid leaders. Partner Company and Tofu Company had resolved to ally and were waiting for Park Bong-sik's return from his long hiatus.
That left only V-Live Company and Jagalchi-pa.
Crushed under the weight of leadership, Aengdu gritted her teeth and charged in hard.
"Namsin oppa, please, our company! Come to our company and save me! I'm gonna die at this rate, for real!"
"Hey, hey, Aengdu. Calm down a little. Come on, you were never the clingy type."
"I don't care! Just come with me first. If you don't, I'll drop dead right here, okay?"
"Alright, alright. Just settle down."
With Aengdu going all-or-nothing, NS Namsin got dragged straight to Busan the moment he moved in.
After that, he naturally rose to the head of Jagalchi-pa.
But the name was too hokey, so they rebranded after NS Namsin's main content brand, the Sunny Group, and christened themselves Seoni Moon.
Will Seoni Moon's staff finally get a little light of their own?
Seoni Moon's virtual streamers were thrilled to finally have a leader they could trust — but unfortunately, NS Namsin was already swamped just managing the Sunny Group.
Not much different from Kim Hak-do, who'd treated Rena World as his secondary content.
So even after that, he never broke through as a mainstay of Rena World.
O-Wang Company, and the Mu-yang Group that would appear later, both had mega-streamers with real weight and rock-solid Rena World playtime.
Looking at this, you can really see how much a leader's level of investment shapes a company.
If Kim Hak-do, NS Namsin, and even Baek-gu — who would join later — had sunk a little deeper into Rena World, the future wouldn't have collapsed into a two-way O-Wang Company versus Mu-yang Group showdown.
"Hm? Seo-a, what are you doing here?"
I was turning over Rena World's future in my head when I ran into him beside the fountain in peaceful Genesis Village.
"…Hard to believe a guy with a water-buffalo concept and that dumb look on his face is going to kick up a storm that big."
"What? D-did you just insult me? That's what that was, right?"
I left a flustered Oh Yeong-jun behind and walked out of Genesis Village.
Unfortunately, our V-Live Company's turn still hadn't come.
We had to yield the stage to the "seniors" ahead of us.
The group that would write the legend of the elite small-company model in Rena World.
The cosplay club that chased romance and was called the greatest output of them all — Akatsuki.
The wind was already blowing their way.