LD Studio (6)
The development division at LD Studio was split neatly in two. Park Hyunjong, the executive director, oversaw Brotherhood PC and mobile, while Kim Jaekyung handled the rest of the company’s game operations and development.
Park Hyunjong had been the developer behind Brotherhood itself, the man who had designed the monetization model for BrotherhoodM. Brotherhood PC and mobile had become the IP that kept LD Studio alive; without Brotherhood, the company as it existed today would never have survived.
BrotherhoodM was, in his eyes, the most perfect game in the world—and the future of gaming itself.
As a child, he had been driven over his studies under his parents’ iron-fisted pressure. If his grades slipped, or if someone knocked him out of first place, he had to stay up all night and study until his nose bled, clawing his way back to the top.
He had been expected to score full marks on every exam, and no matter how exhausted or miserable he became, he could never stop. The moment he stopped, someone would pass him by.
That experience turned out to be a tremendous help when it came time to make games.
People will pour endless time and passion into crushing others if that’s what it takes to rise. The key is infinite competition!
So he created a game in which not only monsters, but even the characters themselves, could compete without end. And of course, victory in that competition had to be rewarded.
That was why the winner gained the right to control lucrative hunting grounds and fields, ruling over everyone else from above. To players, it delivered a satisfaction they could never get in the real world.
But it also led to extreme wealth disparity, and once a player fell behind, many simply gave up on the game altogether. To solve that, they introduced monetization and random boxes.
Even a weak character could beat a strong one if the player paid enough. By adding an element of luck, they opened a path for someone who spent less money to become stronger than someone who spent more.
The game they built that way became a runaway hit in Korea, setting records no other game had ever reached. From the game company’s perspective, random boxes were no different from a goose that laid golden eggs.
Other game companies that had once criticized LD Studio soon found themselves racing to imitate it.
But probability was a double-edged sword. With good luck, a player could pull the item on the first try; with bad luck, they might never pull it no matter how many times they tried.
If the item you wanted appeared immediately, there was no reason to spend any more money. If it refused to appear, an angry player might quit the game. Either way, the company lost.
That made it only natural to adjust the odds depending on the situation.
LD Studio used every kind of algorithm available to time item drops so that each user would get what they wanted at an appropriate moment. That was easy enough to say, but in practice it required an extraordinary level of operational skill.
Plenty of games had tried to copy BrotherhoodM by now, yet none of them had ever been able to threaten it—and that was why.
Inside LD Studio, they had long called it “variable odds,” “adjustable odds,” “personalized odds,” and other such names.
But where there is light, there is always shadow.
As time passed, complaints about probability-based items exploded. Eventually, under pressure from public opinion and politicians alike, the industry had no choice but to partially disclose the odds under the name of self-regulation.
Like every other game company, LD Studio grudgingly disclosed them as well. They even buried the information in image files on a forgotten corner of their website, making it impossible to find through a search.
They had revealed the odds, yes, but the way they operated had not changed at all.
And yet....
Who would have thought a private equity fund would seize on that and use it against them?
In truth, the response was simple. They could just claim there had been a mistake while posting the probability table and fix it. But if they did that, they would have to reimburse the currency spent on the pulls.
In the worst-case scenario, it could spiral beyond the Primordial Skill issue and into other random box problems as well.
Fortunately, they had only raised suspicions; they hadn’t produced any evidence.
Even so, the very fact that they had gone after them like this made me wonder if their real goal was to throw suspicion out there and crash the stock price.
I let out a relieved breath after reading LD Studio’s statement.
“Good. They denied it.”
The worst-case scenario was to admit it quickly and smother the scandal with a decent payout. LD Studio had handled trouble that way for years, and it had worked reasonably well. The best outcome for us was for them to deny everything, just as they had now. That would let the situation grow teeth.
So I had intentionally raised the issue without presenting any proof.
David shook his head.
“I’m honestly amazed. Even when they do manipulate the odds, they do it in such a stupid way.”
I laughed.
“I told you. LD Studio probably doesn’t even think of this as probability manipulation.”
It was something they did all the time, and up until now it had never caused a problem. If we hadn’t taken aim at them, it probably still wouldn’t have.
We were in the middle of discussing what to do next when the phone rang. As soon as I answered, Sunwoo exploded.
“What the hell are you doing right now!?”
“What do you mean? I’m getting revenge.”
“What kind of revenge involves short-selling?”
“Why not do both? Revenge and making money at the same time sounds good, doesn’t it?”
“You crazy bastard....”
“So what do you think? Do you think they manipulated the odds or not?”
Sunwoo sighed before answering.
“Of course they did. They used to say the odds were a trade secret and wouldn’t even disclose them.”
“Do you really think a game that’s more predatory than a casino—and that manipulates the odds on top of it—would be good for the Korean game industry? What do you think as a developer?”
The answer came after a moment.
“Hey! Since you’ve already started, tear them apart completely.”
I smiled.
“That was the plan.”
Continue Capital’s influence was enormous.
The moment we announced that we were shorting the stock, other hedge funds moved in all at once and piled on their own short positions, and the share price, which had been rising more than 10 percent after the earnings report, collapsed in an instant.
Not long after it had hit an all-time high of 1.15 million won on record sales, the stock plunged to the 800,000-won range within just two trading days, setting a new 52-week low.
Continue Capital responded through WST.
Customer Service Reply
Hello, customer.
We received your inquiry asking to confirm the number of attempts for Awakened Beast God.
After checking your information in order to respond to your inquiry, we confirmed that you had attempted the draw a total of 525 times.
First, please note that the success rate does not accumulate in proportion to the number of attempts. Since a new probability is applied each time, the total number of attempts and the success probability are completely unrelated.
Because you felt something was off, we reviewed it internally, but confirmed that there were no abnormalities.
We ask for your continued love and support for BrotherhoodM.
The users flooded customer service all at once, demanding their pull histories.
At first, LD Studio responded, but once they realized those records could be used as evidence of manipulation, they stopped replying altogether.
As the complaints kept coming, LD Studio eventually shut customer service down completely.