Moving In
LD Studio.
One of Korea’s top three game companies, it had been churning out jewel-like PC MMORPGs such as Brotherhood and Blood and Magic since the early days of PC communications, creating legions of game addicts along the way.
But after smartphones arrived, the PC game market entered a period of stagnation, and mobile games began to rise as the new mainstream.
LD Studio, once a titan of PC online games, repackaged its existing IP and released Brotherhood M, then rode that success straight into the mobile market.
Unlike PC online games, which had previously been offered on a subscription basis, mobile games were built around relentless monetization.
LD Studio’s mobile monetization model could be summed up in just two points.
First, pay to win. Second, randomized items.
You had to spend heavily to get stronger, and you did not simply buy the item you wanted; you had to pull for it, like gambling, on a set probability.
Some people got the item they wanted in a single pull. Others could draw a hundred times and never see it. They even refused to disclose the odds, claiming they were a trade secret.
This system created countless addicts and brought LD Studio enormous profits.
LD Studio announced that, rather than continuing to focus on mobile versions of its old games, it would create an entirely new PC MMORPG.
The goal was also to secure a new IP. The project took two years and cost a staggering 150 billion won.
That game was Fantasia Tales.
And then...
Before the game could even properly take hold, an unprecedented scandal broke out: an operator illegally created expensive items, sold them off, and mocked the players.
While Fantasia Tales was trying to placate the public by showering users with compensation, the situation in LD Studio’s other games was heading in the exact opposite direction.
"Huh? When did the login rewards disappear?"
"Seriously. They just vanished without a word."
"Why aren’t items dropping like they used to?"
"Something’s weird. Before, if you killed a hundred slimes, they’d usually drop eight Ridens. Now I’m only getting three. It’s not just me, right?"
"The drop rate has definitely gone down."
"And the gacha is a bust every single time."
"For real! I watched Fluta’s stream last time, and he spent a hundred million won and didn’t get a single one."
"What the hell is going on?"
"Holy crap, did they slip in a stealth patch?"
"Isn’t this just probability manipulation?"
"Maybe they’re trying to make up Fantasia Tales’ losses by squeezing more money out of Brotherhood M?"
On top of that, LD Studio added an extra enhancement system to Brotherhood M and introduced higher-tier classes.
That meant the users had to spend money all over again.
"Wait a minute. This is double gacha and complete gacha."
"You have to use gacha to make blueprints, then collect those blueprints and roll gacha again."
"You can’t even trade before you make the equipment. Everything has to come out of a single account."
"And they won’t even show the odds, lol."
"At this point, is it fixed or variable?"
"Given everything LD Studio’s done so far, I’ve got a perfectly reasonable suspicion the odds drop the more you pull."
"That’s not a reasonable suspicion, that’s a king-level divine hunch!"
"It’ll probably take a hundred million just to make one blueprint."
"How many hundreds of millions would you have to spend to pull everything?"
"Wow, fuck, this is way too much... but I can’t not spend, can I!!!"
"And where’d all those boycott people go?"
"We’re the legends for still whaling like this~"
"Yes. Next up, another pig for the slaughter."
"No, seriously, Fantasia Tales was the one that blew up, so why are we the ones paying the price?"
"This is the world’s first system where users share a company’s losses. Let’s all spend together to prop up LD Soft’s stock price."
"Brilliant. Truly brilliant~"
"Amazing, LD Studio!"
"Amazing, K-games!"
* * *
The developers on LD Studio’s Development Team 3 were scrambling to clean up the mess.
The company issued a public apology and rolled out several compensation plans, but once public sentiment had turned against them, it was not easy to win it back.
Another reason was that, right at this point, IceStorm launched a new PC MMORPG called Morning Star 2.
As if they’d been waiting for it, users poured over to Morning Star 2 in droves and never came back.
Kang Seon-woo let out a sigh and muttered, “They were originally trying to get ahead of the market by launching before Morning Star 2, but instead they ended up helping them.”
Then Cha Su-yeon, who was standing beside him, heard him and said, “Still, if they’re going this far, doesn’t that mean the company wants to save it somehow?”
Kang Seon-woo shook his head.
"No. The opposite."
Cha Su-yeon frowned, clearly not following. “The opposite?”
“If they were really planning to run the game properly, they wouldn’t be handing out compensation like this.”
As a developer and as a gamer, Kang Seon-woo had seen enough to read the situation fairly well.
People said the first month after release decided whether a game lived or died, and Brotherhood M had blown its launch badly.
It was not impossible for a dead game to rise again. But that required an enormous amount of will from the company.
“They’re probably just saying they’ll save it, keeping the service afloat for a bit, and then shutting it down.”
“No way. Then wouldn’t they lose all the development costs they’ve already sunk in?”
“They can always recoup the development costs from other games.”
An online game was never finished just because development ended. It needed continuous management and content updates afterward.
From the company’s perspective, all of that was money.
So they might decide it was better to shut the service down quickly, recycle the setting and characters they’d already built, and make something else instead.
The problem is that this isn’t a PC online game anymore. It’s a mobile game with a P2W system bolted onto it.
Compared to mobile games, PC MMORPGs took far more time, manpower, and money to develop.
Since this one had failed so badly, they would likely shift their focus to mobile, where they could spend less to make a lot more.
Cha Su-yeon looked shocked.
“Ah! Then what happens to Development Team 3?”
“They’ll probably be dissolved.”
At LD Studio, if a development team was dissolved, its members had to go through something called an internal interview just to get transferred to another team. Some of them would likely be laid off in the process.
Not only is my bonus gone, I might lose my head too.
It wasn’t just about the money. What really made my blood boil was the fact that everyone’s hard work had been reduced to dust.
Hold on. If I get fired, I won’t even be able to pay the interest on my margin loan.
Not only had my friend drained my entire savings because he said he wanted to invest, he’d also taken my margin loan on top of it. That meant interest was still being deducted from my paycheck every month.
“Come to think of it...”
Seeing Kang Seon-woo’s expression, Cha Su-yeon asked, “What is it?”
“My friend came back from the States yesterday.”
“The one who borrowed money to trade stocks?”
“Yeah. But the moment he came back, he started saying weird stuff.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked how much this place costs, then said maybe I should pull out.”
At that, Cha Su-yeon’s eyes widened.
“Huh? Maybe he’s trying to quietly take your deposit?”
“No way...”
I was about to say there was no chance of that, but then all the things my friend had done over the years flashed through my mind.
At some point he’d started acting like a completely different person, dragging in every bit of money around him and dumping it into momentum stocks and junk bonds.
The result had been an overwhelming success.
With just two investments, he’d made over a hundred billion won. Then he went off to the United States, saying he was going to use it to start a company.
But luck like that couldn’t last forever.
If he’d been investing in that same all-in style, then one wrong move would have wiped him out completely.
What if he’d gone off bragging that he was going to make a fortune, only to come back after failing?
Now that I think about it, yesterday he really did look terrible. His expression was awful, and when I asked him to explain where he’d invested, he dodged the question. Did something actually happen in the U.S.?
The story of the employee who had lost everything investing in Thomas Motors suddenly no longer felt like someone else’s problem.
Had he maybe lost all his money in the United States?
Kang Seon-woo shot to his feet in shock.
“So you’re trying to go all-in one last time with my thirty million won deposit?!”
Those eyes. Those expressions he’d been showing all this time.
Thinking about it now, he was basically no different from a gambling addict.
Kang Seon-woo hurriedly called Han Miru. For some reason, though, he couldn’t get through.
What the hell? Why isn’t he picking up?
His worry spiked all at once.
Come to think of it, the contract and the seal are all at the house too.
With a bad feeling growing in his gut, Kang Seon-woo abandoned what he was doing and raced home. He punched in the door lock code and opened the door, and his ominous feeling immediately became reality.
“No way!”
The apartment was empty.
The cramped two-room place, once packed with furniture and belongings, had turned into a vast, barren field.
What the hell? Where did all my stuff go?
His hand trembling, he called his friend. Luckily, this time, the call went through.
“Hey! Where are you right now?”
[Outside. Why?]
“Why? What do you mean, why? Why is the apartment empty? Where are my computer and game console? And my deposit?”
[Because I moved.]
“Moved?”
[I’ll send you the address. Come here.]
“You just wait there!”
Kang Seon-woo immediately got into a taxi and headed to the address Han Miru sent him.
Where the hell is this place?
When he arrived, it was a luxury villa in Cheongdam-dong right next to the Han River.
He rode the elevator up, and his friend opened the door for him. Once he stepped inside, he saw familiar appliances and furniture arranged off to one side.
“You’re here?”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I told you. I moved.”
“Moved where?”
“Here. You use that side. I’ll use this one.”
Kang Seon-woo looked around the house.
It was not just large; it was practically sprawling. From the living room, you could look out over the Han River. Was it even okay to live in a place like this? The rent here probably cost several times his salary.
“Hello.”
At the voice, he turned his head and saw a woman in her mid-twenties standing nearby. She was stunningly beautiful.
“Who is this...?”
She bowed politely.
“My name is Sung Yoon-ah. I used to work with Miru.”
“Ah, yes. Hello. I’m Kang Seon-woo.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“R-really?”
Kang Seon-woo looked at Han Miru and asked, “What the hell is going on?”
“Sit down first. I’ll explain everything one by one.”
Kang Seon-woo flopped onto the old sofa they’d brought over from the previous place.
Han Miru slowly explained everything that had happened so far. The story was beyond anything Kang Seon-woo could have imagined.
“Wait, hold on. So you lined up an American investor named David Lockhart, founded a company, and made money by tanking a hydrogen vehicle company called Thomas Motors?”
“Yeah.”
“I saw that article. The company that blew it up was... what, then?”
“Continue Capital.”
“That’s your company?”
Han Miru asked as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“I told you from the beginning I was going to name it Continue Capital.”
“Oh, did you?”
Come to think of it, maybe he did say something like that.
Kang Seon-woo hurriedly asked, “So what happened after that?”