“Bruh” wrote John, “SM7 is coming to PC”
There was no reply.
He waited around, checking for at least an hour.
The lack of reponse was due to time zones, of course. Not because he was unpopular, he told himself.
Someone tagged his comment with a shocked emote.
John left the chat, again deflated, and went back to work.
Five hours later he noticed the notifications:
Kyo01: The company is fucking up againnnnnn wtfffff
Anime4life2: Two years later they want us to buy an old game kekekeke
Kyo1: Jokers. After that exclusive deal with GGS for a year, now they want us to buy it? lollll dead game
Anime4life2: Doesn’t even have rollback netcode, the lobbies were a joke, and they didn’t add my waifu
Kyo1: Too little too late
Anime4life2: SwordMan7 more like DeadGame7
Kyo1: And Innocent Walker is coming out at the same time, which has better graphics and a public beta, lolllll SM7 big fail
John felt like he was kicking through an imaginary online door with some random guy in sunglasses getting brapped aside as collateral damage, as he tapped in his message.
John: They still got season 3 dlc coming out with that collab character from Innocent Walker! BigtatsLadySword!
He prepared for their excitement, which never came. His fingers lay resting over the keyboard, stale, motionless.
Over at GAFY HQ, Hideki was beating Charles with a rod, for no real reason in particular, blaming him for announcing SM7’s release at a terrible time, even though he had approved the post and not realised the timing either.
Charles bit down on the belt cord and imagined his wife and kids waiting for him at home, asking nicely to play Big Monkey Man.
He wanted to explain that the current backlash wouldn’t last, that the fans on PC would definitely buy the title, if not now, later on sale, and with the relative ease of porting the game to CREAM, it was simply a good investment. With the season 3 downloadable content still to come, the game wasn’t technically old, it was officially current. New players could come in and buy a powerful character and enjoy the matches online. He didn’t want to mention rollback netcode again, not now, as the lashes rained down upon his back. There was a time and place for everything.
Hideki never liked Charles, he was too close to the customers and didn’t think enough about profit. He noticed some blood spots rising on the skin on Charles’s hairy back. The blood was appealing, the hair was not. He struck harder.