LD Studio (4)
I laid out the analysis report on LD Studio that Senior Dongho had put together, especially the section on Brotherhood M.
Herbert Lentz studied it carefully, line by line.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand.”
“What is it?”
“Characters auto-farm, you have to spend money to get stronger, and even that depends on probability—then the probability itself is suspected of being manipulated. In a game like that... why would anyone play it?”
“Because it’s fun.”
Whatever else you said about it, Brotherhood M was fun.
It had a sweeping narrative that had been built up since the old PC MMORPG days, and its operation was excellent. The trouble was that the thing people were having fun with looked less like a game and more like gambling.
Still, if you didn’t like pay-to-win systems or loot boxes, all you had to do was not play. No one was forcing you.
But that was the same as building a casino and a racetrack in the middle of downtown and then saying, “If you hate gambling, why not just stay away?”
“Even if there’s probability manipulation, how do you expect to prove it? The company will never release the data.”
People had been talking about rigged odds for years, but nothing had ever been exposed. That was how hard it was to catch.
“Couldn’t we do it the same way Empty Pool Research exposed the accounting fraud at Laohu Coffee?”
“What do you mean?”
“Probabilities always converge toward the average. They can drift off temporarily, but in the end they’re supposed to come back. So what if they stray a long way from that average?”
If an item had a 1 percent drop rate, then in theory you should get one after a hundred pulls. But because each pull is independent, it’s entirely possible to go a thousand pulls without seeing it.
And yet...
What if you still hadn’t seen it after ten thousand pulls? Or a hundred thousand?
Lentz nodded slowly.
“You want to pull it ourselves.”
“The timing couldn’t be better. A new skill is about to be released.”
Most of a casino’s revenue comes not from ordinary customers, but from VIPs.
That was why casinos paid for airfare, hotel rooms, and even entertainment, all in order to bring in and keep their VIPs.
Brotherhood M’s revenue structure was similar to a casino’s, not a game’s. In other words, it depended heavily on a small number of massive spenders.
In a pay-to-win game, the more you spend, the stronger your character becomes.
But over time, more and more players inevitably reach the cap.
What happened if the whales had already fully geared their characters, weapons, items, and skills, and there was nothing left for them to spend on?
No need to worry.
That was when the developers added higher-tier classes, higher-tier weapons, higher-tier items, higher-tier skills, and started the whole cycle over again.
But if they handled it badly, the game’s balance could collapse—or players might simply give up on spending altogether.
That was why this kind of operation demanded an extremely high level of control.
And since the PC MMORPG days, LD Studio had been the best in the business at doing exactly that. It wasn’t for nothing that they’d held the undisputed top spot in the Korean game industry since launch.
I explained the plan I’d been thinking about.
“Will you join me?”
Lentz thought for a long moment before he finally spoke.
“Our company doesn’t make impulsive investments. We investigate thoroughly and carefully over a long period of time, and only then do we decide whether to invest.”
“I know.”
Empty Pool Research’s reports were usually hundreds of pages long. Their last report on Laohu Coffee ran to seven hundred pages, and the recorded footage alone amounted to ten thousand hours.
He smiled.
“Still, now that I’ve heard the story, I’m interested. Would it be all right if I look into it for a day and then get back to you?”
I smiled back and nodded.
“Of course.”
Brojussi.
Literally, it meant “an older guy who plays Brotherhood.” But at some point, it came to refer to players who poured an absurd amount of money into Brotherhood M.
That level of spending was beyond anything an ordinary person could imagine.
The top thirty rankers were rumored to have spent more than ten billion won each, and the top five at least thirty billion.
That was why people said the top rankers must own buildings or come from money in the first place.
Baek Geumho.
He was one of the top fifty rankers in Brotherhood M and a famous streamer on CapriaTV.
He had been obsessed with Brotherhood since his school days, and the moment Brotherhood M came out, he switched over immediately. Now he built most of his content around the game and streamed it regularly.
His nickname was taken from his own name: “Platinum Tiger,” shortened to Plata.
Among Brotherhood M players, “BJ Plata” was famous enough that practically no one didn’t know the name.
And the income he made was nothing to scoff at.
Between broadcast revenue and ad revenue, he pulled in 1.5 billion won a year.
For most office workers, that was an unimaginable sum. And yet he always lived like a man on the verge of collapse.
The reason was simple: he poured most of what he earned back into Brotherhood M. He was even carrying loans on top of it.
You might think all he had to do was stop spending, but every character in Brotherhood M was basically standing on a treadmill.
The moment you stopped running, you naturally got pushed backward and fell off.
On top of that, viewers who watched Brotherhood M streams loved seeing powerful characters act like tyrants.
If his character weakened even a little, viewers dropped off in droves, so for the sake of the broadcast alone, he couldn’t stop spending.
Unlike other games, where streamers showed off dungeon runs or hunting sessions, Brotherhood M made gacha pulls the main event.
Just as crowds gather around people making huge bets in a casino, watching someone throw down hundreds of millions or even billions on pulls gave viewers a powerful vicarious thrill.
Back when Baek Geumho pulled a mythic-grade skill, he’d thought there couldn’t possibly be anything above it.
In the PC version of Brotherhood, mythic-grade skills had been the end of the line, after all.
But then...
As more and more players pulled mythic-grade skills, the company added a skill enhancement system. Skills that had originally gone up to +3 were soon expanded to +5.
Damn it. This means I can’t just stop here again.
Baek Geumho dumped money into enhancement as well, and when he finally completed his mythic skill at +5...
He threw both arms into the air and screamed.
“Aaaaaah! I did it! Finally! Finally, I did it!”
The viewers watching him celebrated with him.
The donations came pouring in too, because in this business, congratulations were paid for with money.
The screen exploded with Moon Balloons.
In an instant, tens of millions of won came pouring in, but compared to what he’d already spent on pulls, it was barely a drop in the bucket.
His debts were right there waiting for him, looming like a wall, but for the moment Baek Geumho let himself enjoy this one shining instant.
“Don’t go anywhere just because the pulls are over! From here on out, I’m gonna show you exactly what a +5 mythic skill can do. We’re heading straight to PK those TK Guild bastards. Anyone who steps outside the safe zone is getting cut down on sight. Those sons of bitches are dead!”
But his joy lasted only a moment.
Out of nowhere, an update notice appeared.
The moment he saw it, Baek Geumho let out a grotesque scream.
“Krrrgh!”
[Announcement] Brotherhood M ver. 17.8.0 update scheduled. Primordial-tier skills coming soon!
Brotherhood M was a PvP-first game.
Strong characters trampling weak ones was only natural there.
In real life, no matter how much money you had, you couldn’t act like a tyrant. Here, though, you could do it to your heart’s content—dominating grinding spots, stealing hunts, PKing anyone you wanted, and more.
Spending money to get stronger was an incredible rush. Good items, rare skills, upgraded weapons—those were the things people envied.
So what happened to players who didn’t have any money?
Fortunately, Brotherhood M had a guild system.
If you belonged to a guild, other characters in the same guild couldn’t PK you, and you could receive the guild’s protection.
In exchange, you had to pay a certain amount in taxes.
The guild master and the other top rankers divided up that tax revenue according to a fixed ratio.
That was why guildmates were fiercely loyal to one another, while showing intense hostility toward rival guilds.
That competitive instinct between factions was one of the most important engines driving spending.
The Trocky server was already famous for being packed with veterans even among Brotherhood M’s notoriously hardened player base.
The guild that controlled the server was TK Guild.
But recently, things had started to change. Dark Guild and Dragon Guild had joined forces and decided to stand against TK Guild.
In Brotherhood M, a siege war was held every two weeks, and a grand battle was held once every quarter.
You had to win the grand battle if you wanted the siege war to go smoothly, which meant the results of the grand battle effectively decided the fate of each guild.
Dark Guild and Dragon Guild were determined to bring down TK Guild this time.
This time, we absolutely have to change the regime.
How much longer are we supposed to let TK Guild keep the server under its thumb?
Let’s show them something in the grand battle!
With the members and rankers from both guilds combined, they were no weak force, so TK Guild was on edge.
This grand battle was expected to be the most brutal fight in the server’s history.
And then...
At the worst possible time, the game updated and Primordial-tier skills were introduced.
There were only twelve Primordial skills allotted to each server.
Once all twelve were pulled, they would never appear again. They were account-bound too, so they couldn’t be bought or sold.
The guilds all went into an uproar.
“We need to secure at least one more Primordial skill than the other guilds.”
“Under no circumstances can we let TK Guild get it.”
“We have to pull at least half of them!”
“The guild that gets the most Primordial skills wins the grand battle!”
BJ Plata, Baek Geumho, thought hard about it.
I finally finished my mythic skill at +5 after all that misery, and now they’re telling me a Primordial skill is coming out?
His anger flared up, but he still couldn’t afford not to pull.
Other players were already scrambling to raise as much money as they could and prepare to spend. If he sat this out, he’d be the only one left behind.
Besides, this is a limited-time skill!
If he thought about the upcoming grand battle and his future streams, there was no question that he had to pull.
But he didn’t have any money on hand. He couldn’t get any more bank loans either. In the end, he had no choice but to turn to loan sharks.
He was a famous streamer, with an annual income of 1.5 billion won.
Thanks to that, he managed to borrow 300 million won from a private lender. On top of that, he borrowed from people around him and scraped together a total of 500 million.
He wasn’t doing this without thinking.
This is my chance. If I get lucky and pull the skill on the first try?
His ranking would shoot up in an instant.
Maybe he could even become the guild master of Dark Guild.
A high rank and a rare skill meant more viewers, more subscribers, more donations, and more income.
If that happened, paying off his debt would be nothing.
Baek Geumho converted the entire 500 million he’d borrowed into Crown, the in-game currency.
I just need to pull it. If I get a Primordial skill, everything will be solved!
He shouted with all the force of a battle cry.
“Let’s go!”