A Successful First Broadcast
The viewers staring at the live feed all suffered a brief, collective brain freeze.
- Platinum 1????????????
- Uhh... huh??????
- Wait... this is the first placement match, right?
- Did I stare at my computer too long today, or are my eyes just going bad?
- Is that a typo? It’s a 4, but the lower angle seems to be missing?
Platinum 1.
It was a tier that, as far as anyone knew, had never once been assigned in a first placement match.
To be fair, Platinum as a whole covered roughly the top fifteen percent of the entire Battle Island player base. It was enough to say a person was good, but not enough to call them elite.
The problem was that landing in Platinum during a first placement test with no prior record at all was an accomplishment even active pros would struggle to achieve.
In fact, for a while it had been a trend among pros and other top-ranked players—those who lived in the heavens of the ladder—to make smurf accounts and try to hit Platinum in their first placements as streaming content.
It had eventually faded away, mostly because so few people succeeded that the whole thing just made them look worse.
Plenty of players could grind fifty or a hundred matches and climb to Platinum or higher.
The real question was whether anyone could do it in just five.
- Can you even get that tier from placement matches?
- 2999 points lol damn, one more point and it’s Diamond
- Wow, this is insane...
- As someone who watched God-father’s every move for all five matches, I can kind of understand it
- If it was possible, then it was possible. Still shocking as hell though, whoa
It was understandable that everyone thought their eyes were deceiving them.
Platinum V alone was hard enough to scrape by into, so what was this highest possible Platinum I?
And when you looked at the rank points, it was basically Diamond in all but name.
Even the domestic record for a first placement Platinum IV had been set entirely by pro players on smurf accounts.
For Platinum III, you had to widen the search to the entire world before you could even find a handful of examples.
So when the viewers watched Yeongho’s absurd performance and started thinking, Maybe Platinum III is possible?—it was a perfectly reasonable expectation.
But to leap past that by two full tiers and get assigned Platinum I instead? Naturally, their minds blew apart.
“Platinum I!? Isn’t that a world record? Get it into the Guinness Book right now! I’m calling them myself!”
Choi Pinam, just as shocked as everyone else, snapped back to his senses and promptly added more fuel to the fire.
If you were a broadcaster, this was exactly the kind of moment where you opened the viewers’ wallets.
- It technically is a world record lol
- lol Guinness for barely scraping into Battleground Platinum? Well, not barely, but still, isn’t that too much?
- Honestly, with an achievement like this, maybe it really could get into Guinness.
- It’s impressive, sure, but I doubt they’d officially recognize a game record.
“What, you people are witnessing a historic moment firsthand and that’s all the reaction you’ve got? You should be paying to watch this stuff!”
- Money-grubbing ChoiPinam lol;;
- lol it’s ridiculous, but he’s not exactly wrong, which makes it even more annoying
- God-father set the record, so why is Choi Pinam the one losing his mind? lol
It was infuriating how openly he was baiting them, but there was no denying it worked.
Something this unprecedented might never happen again.
Once Choi Pinam started stirring the pot, it was as if someone had kicked over a hornet’s nest. One by one, viewers began sending donations, and before long the chat was drowning in coin alerts.
“Ah, thank you. There are so many I can’t read them all. Thank you, everyone.”
Watching the coins pile up without stopping, Yeongho could hardly gather his wits.
When he’d hit the ten-thousand-coin mission, he’d thought, Wow, today’s earnings are incredible. But just the donations coming in now had already pushed past ten thousand and were closing in on twenty thousand.
Add in the money from clearing missions like the five-win streak or the hundred-kill challenge, and what did that make altogether?
His nose stung all of a sudden.
His chest felt so full he could barely force the words out.
Have I... ever been recognized by other people like this, even once?
It wasn’t just that he was making a lot of money and happy about it.
Of course, as someone responsible for supporting a family, earning money mattered. That much was undeniable.
But satisfaction like this couldn’t come from a number alone.
Money he had earned by taking insults from his boss, bowing and scraping to clients, lowering his pride and keeping his head down all his life.
And money sent by people cheering and applauding, telling him he was the best, thanking him for showing them something incredible.
There was no need to ask which one filled the heart more.
“...Th-thank you. Because of all of you, I was able to find the strength to show you a good performance.”
- The placements are over, so what are you going to do now?
- I think 2999 points is probably the system cap.
- You’ve got one win left to Diamond, so you should probably hit Diamond, right?
- Let’s go for the crown too!
- Old top-rank players usually start from Platinum when the season resets. The placement cap is probably Platinum, which is why it stopped at 2999.
- You’re going to keep playing Battle Island, right?
As the donation rush finally began to taper off, all sorts of messages started appearing in chat.
Skimming through them, Yeongho realized more and more people were asking about what he planned to do next, so he took a moment to check his condition and think it over.
My head’s getting a little heavy, so it might be better to stop and rest. But I could probably squeeze in one more match.
He had taken a break in the middle, but after staying locked in for all five matches, he could feel a faint headache settling in.
He was confident he could keep his form for one more game, but beyond that would definitely be pushing it.
Truth be told, he had originally planned to end things after finishing the five placement matches anyway, so there was no real need to keep going. The sensible thing would be to wrap up the broadcast here.
Still, the audience reaction was so good that he found himself wanting to stay a little longer.
And then, right in the middle of that thought—
“Huh?”
Without him touching a single setting, the game abruptly ended.
Sensing a strange familiarity, Yeongho stared at the screen, and sure enough, the same message he had seen before appeared once again.
- ???????? What’s with the ban?
- Temporary account suspension notice? What is this?
- Fuck, it’s another wrongful ban!
- LOL WTF, are the Battle Island devs actually insane?
“This... account’s been suspended again.”
Since he’d already experienced it once, he wasn’t nearly as shaken this time.
Battle Island’s system automatically applied penalties when enough reports piled up.
Last time, too, the account had been suspended, only for the restriction to be lifted a day later after it was ruled unfounded.
Probably this would unfold the same way.
“What! Are you people seriously out of your minds? How many matches did he even play, and you already hit him with two bans? At this point you need to fix the system!”
Once he understood what had happened, Choi Pinam deliberately raised his voice and acted the part of an outraged victim.
He had been planning to end the broadcast around this point anyway.
Since things had worked out this way, he might as well use the victim angle and wrap it up as though there was no helping it.
- God-father’s Battle Island count isn’t even ten matches yet, right?
- If he already got one wrongful ban, the threshold should’ve gone up. He shouldn’t be getting banned again that easily.
- How many reports did these lunatics file? lol
- Yeah, that’s probably it. They likely reported every player he matched with as a bug user.
- Two wrongful bans in just ten matches makes no sense at all.
- lol it’s absurd, but somehow I can understand it, so I’m just laughing now
“It’s a shame. Everyone, then I’ll have to end things here for today.”
- T_T What do you mean, end it like this?
- Couldn’t you play something else a little longer?
- You’re coming back tomorrow, right? I’ll be holding my breath and waiting.
- Byeeeeeeeee
- Ugh, what am I supposed to watch now? Nothing else is going to satisfy me after this;
Some people tried to cling to him when he announced the end, but most just sent their goodbyes and let Yeongho go.
The situation left little room for anything else, and if the broadcast dragged on too long, the viewers would only grow tired anyway. It was a natural reaction.
There had been a mukbang segment in the middle, but the stream itself had still run for nearly five hours.
Most of the audience thought it had been a thoroughly worthwhile use of time and felt quite satisfied.
Once the stream ended and he climbed out of the capsule, he could feel that his whole body was damp with sweat in places.
It wasn’t as if he had even been exercising his body physically. And yet he was sweating this much.
They said the human body burned energy just from brain activity, even when the body itself stayed still.
Maybe, because he spent more mental energy than others inside VR, his body was reacting like this.
Right. I forgot to check the revenue before I shut it down.
Earlier, his heart had been so full of happiness that he’d even thought maybe he could keep streaming forever even if he didn’t make much money.
But if he judged it coldly, money still mattered in the end.
He had already earned more than he expected, but to confirm it properly, he went into the channel settings.
“...Huh?”
He stared at the displayed number for a moment, convinced he had misread it.
Total: 44,720 coins.
Is this really... the money I made in one day?
Even after the platform’s cut, it was more than thirty million won.
For the first day of his broadcast, it was absurdly high income.
“Hyung-nim! Today’s broadcast was a total success! And judging by the viewers’ reactions, it looks like cutting it off around this length is perfectly fine too!”
While Yeongho was lost in the complicated feelings stirred up by the number on the monitor, Choi Pinam came striding over, full of excitement.
“Ah, thank you. This was all thanks to you, really.”
“No, what are you saying? I only set the stage a little.”
“Still, without you, would we really have gathered this many viewers on the first day?”
“No matter how big and flashy a restaurant is, if the food tastes terrible, all you get are flies buzzing around the place! This result happened because of your skill, Hyung-nim!”
The two of them bickered over who deserved the credit, passing it back and forth, and in the end they both burst into good-natured laughter.
It had been something he started with a great deal of anxiety, so Yeongho could hardly help being moved by the successful beginning.
And from Choi Pinam’s point of view, he had simply confirmed that his own eye for talent had not been wrong, so it was only natural for him to feel pleased as he looked forward to his partner’s future growth.
“Ah, but being happy is one thing. This part needs to be dealt with for real.”
“Huh? What...?”
“Battle Island, I mean. It doesn’t make sense to keep getting banned like this. I’m going to sort this out properly!”
As soon as he finished speaking, Choi Pinam pulled out his phone and called someone.
“Hello? Junior? Ah, you’re working? Hey, if you’re in the middle of eating, could you help me out for a second? No, I’m with a hyung-nim right now, and we’re doing a stream together—”
Yeongho had no idea who he was talking to, but figured it must be someone who could help solve the problem, so he waited quietly.
Then his phone vibrated. When he looked, it was an unknown number calling.
If it had been from a different area code or an internet call, he would have assumed it was spam and hung up.
But since it was a mobile number starting with 010, he hesitated for a second before tapping the answer button.
“Hello?”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Park Yeongho. This is Assistant Manager Seo Yunju from Ppajijik’s Contents Planning & Operations Team.”
“Pardon? Uh...”
“Streamer name SJ DAD. That is you, Mr. Park Yeongho, correct?”
“Yes, that’s right. How can I help you?”
Ppajijik was the platform where Yeongho had begun broadcasting.
But he had no idea how a platform employee had found him and called.
And of all times, right after his very first broadcast.
Startled by the unexpected identity of the caller, he began to worry that something had gone wrong.
“I watched your stream closely. It seems you’re having an issue, so I contacted you on behalf of the company to help resolve it.”
At the woman’s tone—businesslike, yet faintly courteous—Yeongho steadied his nerves and listened carefully to her voice.