A New Step

There were any number of ways a streamer could make money.

First and most fundamental: Candy donations from viewers.

Right beside that, the equally foundational monthly subscription fees from fans.

And though it was modest, there was also ad revenue from viewers without boost items who sat through commercials.

Those were the most orthodox routes. Income every streamer received, more or less by default.

Of course, the methods beyond that were far more varied.

There was so-called live commerce, where a company contracted a streamer to promote and sell products for a set period — something mostly mid-tier streamers and above took on. After all, a company only bothered calculating promotional value and offering a contract once the viewer count cleared a certain threshold.

And that wasn't all. Among the three tiers of streamer rank, the endgame status of Partner Streamer sometimes came with something resembling a salary on top of content support funds, depending on the contract terms.

So what about the small-time streamers, or the ones stuck at an ambiguous scale?

Their streamer rank was barely worth mentioning, and live commerce offers were never going to come knocking. In the end, the only way they survived was on pure personal skill — wringing their brains dry to invent "collection" content that somehow coaxed more Candy donations out of people.

Every so often a viewer would sneer at that kind of naked monetization play as vulgar. Flip the positions and the problem solved itself. Streaming was a job. Tell those same viewers to go work without a paycheck, or at minimum wage, and they'd foam at the mouth and throw a fit.

Ridiculous, really.

That said, there were cases where the streamer side was the problem — collection plays so excessive they crossed the line entirely. The kind of thing that occasionally made the news: female cam streamers and their messy private lives. That sort of thing was obviously off-limits. In Korea, prostitution sat firmly in the realm of the illegal.

But setting those illegal elements aside, I believed the rest deserved respect.

On that front, female cam streamers definitely had things worth learning from.

They were the ones who could pull a hundred-odd viewers and still out-collect most mid-tier streamers. When it came to developing monetization content, their ability was unmatched.

Some viewers look down on female cam streamers as nothing but face-and-body peddlers — but the truth is, a huge chunk of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠virtual streamer revenue model was lifted straight from them.

Roulette. Gacha draws. Reverse fan service. Bang-sel. Signature dances. And so on.

There was a reason Pangea TV's virtual streamers boasted Candy power wildly out of proportion to their average viewer counts. They'd benchmarked nearly every offline-excluded piece of the female cam streamers' successful revenue model.

And early on, Bang-sel was king.

Bang-sel meant a streamer took a photo and posted it to a fan's channel board. Buyers could request specific outfits or poses, so from the viewer's side it felt like acquiring a rare collectible no one else could have. Decorating your channel page with it also scratched the itch to show off to other people.

If the streamer in question was famous, or simply didn't sell Bang-sel often, the value ballooned like a legendary Pokémon. In those cases, the unit price climbed even higher.

Honestly, the virtual streamers who transferred over early cleaned up hard on that front. They didn't hustle or pitch anything — their market value just inflated on its own.

Whenever goods change hands in a market, a going rate tends to form. By the time the first wave of transfer virtuals arrived, Pangea TV already had a Bang-sel market rate established by the female cam streamers.

Roughly one thousand Candy per Bang-sel photo.

For the transfer virtuals, it was a pure windfall. Curious floating viewers who'd never seen a virtual streamer before started demanding Bang-sel sales, and small-time streamers who'd struggled to scrape together two million won a month on Rabbit TV could now click a shutter, slap on some light editing, and rake in serious money off a single photo.

Of course, that trend didn't last forever.

Female cam streamers were professionals in this arena. The Bang-sel from transfer virtuals who'd spent years as small-timers was embarrassingly low quality by comparison. When the goods aren't equal in value, the weaker side's market rate naturally drops.

Virtual Bang-sel demand looked like it was sliding — and then Pangea TV was hit by a seismic shift no one saw coming.

Rena World, the greatest virtual content in Pangea TV history, arrived.

Through Rena World, countless virtual streamers skyrocketed and built name recognition. Bang-sel demand for them exploded right along with it.

And with that came polarization. Small-time virtual streamers could barely sell Bang-sel even at five hundred Candy outside their hardcore fans, while the popular picks had so many buyers at a thousand Candy that they had to cap quantities. Later on, some of them even picked up skills rivaling the female cam streamers and started selling event Bang-sel and content Bang-sel on top of everything else — truly surpassing the master.

The virtuals got their early honey pot snatched away, and the real competition began.

To survive, you had to change. Which meant long-term strategy and planning were essential.

And that, as it happens, is exactly my specialty.

The Donation Doctor's brain started turning.

Tuesday, November 1st.

With five days left until the Wooga-dol Audition, Ssa-yo's stream went live without any prior notice. He'd said today was an off day.

Viewers were puzzled at first — then they stampeded into the broadcast chanting "It's Lucky Vicky!"

Hold on. That stream title looked ominous.

His face was even more haggard than usual, and the heavy sighs he kept heaving set the viewers' nerves on edge hard enough to make the backs of their necks tighten.

Surely not. Right?

The Wooga-dol Audition had already been plagued by enough incidents and dropouts. And every time something like that happened, it wasn't just the audition's operations that took the hit. The countless viewers who'd immersed themselves in the contestants and watched with real fandom — their mental states took serious damage too.

Ten years of streaming experience, all right. He knows how to set the mood from the jump.

I watched Ssa-yo's stream with Discord on standby. Having him tank everything unilaterally wasn't enough on its own — if he just sat there taking hits alone, sympathy for him would naturally start to form. A contestant drops out, so why is Ssa-yo always the one explaining and taking responsibility?

Which meant that for image management, I needed to at least make a show of shouldering some of that heavy load.

I didn't spend all that time building goodwill with Ssa-yo's fans for nothing. Every time something came up, I shouted him out. All of it was pieces I'd set down looking ahead to a future exactly like this.

Ssa-yo's confession began.

Statements about my and Lucy's withdrawal. The focus snapped onto me in an instant. Compared to Lucy, the gap in weight class and buzz was stark — and in my case, there was also the lingering impression that I'd raised a flag against Ssa-yo through the Wooga-dol Audition's second round for-and-against debate content. I even remembered a brief conspiracy theory floating around that he'd eliminate me in round three because of it.

The chat was already on fire. Against the wild flurry of attacks, Ssa-yo's only response was, "It's all because I wasn't good enough. I'm truly sorry."

Timing feels about right.

About five minutes in? Thanks to his mindless sandbag routine, the temperature had dropped a little — but plenty of viewers still wanted the full, unvarnished truth about the withdrawals. Rather than lashing out blindly, they waited for further explanation from Ssa-yo with cold eyes. A far more terrifying crowd than the ones who just got angry.

It was time.

Ding-ding, ding-ding—!

A Discord call request chimed through Ssa-yo's stream. Wow. Look at that acting. He glanced at the caller as if checking who it was, then put on a startled expression — even though we'd run a short practice call that very morning.

Right. In internet broadcasting, the performance was half the job.

"No, I told you I'd handle explaining it."

"How can I let you do that alone? I clearly share responsibility here too."

The sudden sound of my voice flipped the viewers straight into emotional mode. They welcomed me like a lost child come home.

Ahem. I did feel a little bad.

But as long as Ssa-yo's operating style didn't change, Freeca was a ship far too dangerous to board.

"First of all, to the fans who supported me, and to every viewer who's been enjoying the Wooga-dol Audition — I want to start by saying I'm truly sorry. I'll turn on my own stream separately and apologize again properly. I'm sorry. As for how this happened……"

From there, everything followed the script Ssa-yo and I had prepared in advance.

The difference of opinion that had come to light through the for-and-against debate. How Ssa-yo's call had led us to lay everything out and have a serious conversation. How we'd failed to close the gap.

Then why had Seo-a applied to the Wooga-dol Audition in the first place? He'd announced from the start that the goal was a virtual idol crew.

"Honestly, that part is my fault. I found Seo-a's streams so entertaining, and I thought she had so much potential, that I really pushed her to join the audition. Frankly, I was confident I could persuade her as we went through the process……"

"No. It's my fault. I wanted this big stage so badly, and there was so much I wanted to show the fans, that I got greedy. I'm sorry."

Ssa-yo and I competitively piled apology on top of apology. That made it hard for viewers to lock onto a target — because the clear subject of the "fault" never got pinned down.

Even so, the regret lingered. Couldn't one of them just give a little?

The chat still surged with messages wanting streamer Seo-a to stay.

"Everyone, I'm truly grateful, but I believe right now — before it gets any later — is the moment we can step back with good feelings intact. I shouldn't be stealing more of the finalists' share, should I?"

"Yes. I feel the same. Frankly speaking, if we'd gone the route of eliminating Seo-a on the final stage, we wouldn't have needed to make a space like this at all. But that would have meant lying to the viewers, so we're being honest about it."

We repeatedly stressed that this was the best option. Even if you forced the disagreement down and folded someone into an idol crew, that ember would eventually catch and become a much bigger problem down the line.

Most viewers had no choice but to accept it or give up — but among them were still people who couldn't swallow their anger. That was something Ssa-yo and I simply had to bear. There was no method that left everyone a hundred ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠percent satisfied.

Still, from Ssa-yo's perspective, this was far ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠better than planting a bomb inside ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the crew.

Same for me. If things went wrong, I might be standing right next to that bomb when it went off.

And so, with a hundred apologies, we managed to smooth the whole thing over one way or another.

The next day I turned on an apology stream and played second sandbag after Ssa-yo. I brought Lucy on too, and we took the snide chat hits together. Even if her share of the situation was smaller, ducking out of something like this entirely would only leave a bad image.

A few days passed like that, and Friday arrived.

Two days before the Wooga-dol Audition's final round.

"Heh heh. Today's finally here. Let's go all out~"

A new challenge, free of the Wooga-dol Audition, was about to begin.