"Forget it. If I can't sleep, I might as well get up and browse the forums!"
After lying under the covers with his eyes shut for half an hour, only to find that he still wasn't the least bit sleepy, Li Si gave up in frustration and opened the forums to kill time.
It had to be said: there were plenty of night owls on the forums. Even this late at night, new posts were still popping up, especially in the handful of pinned threads at the very top, where a dozen or more replies appeared every second.
And almost all of those threads were about him. One called "Hidden Profiteer of New York" had even devoted an entire feature to venting and cursing out the Astral Gaming Company. Nearly all the replies beneath it were from players who had been burned by the loot boxes, bumping the thread.
"My money... I opened five whole boxes and didn't get a single thing. Damn Merchant!"
"I can't believe the Merchant even gives speeches to con people. 'I have a dream'—he said it so well, I actually believed him... I'm so mad!"
"Didn't they say there wouldn't be microtransactions or pay-to-win? I strongly protest this dishonest Astral Gaming Company!"
"I can accept microtransactions and pay-to-win, but the Merchant's personality settings are a total trap..."
"..."
Well, it looked like the Astral Gaming Company was definitely going to take the blame for this.
Li Si silently closed the thread, but before doing so, he glanced at its posting date. It had been posted several days ago. It had already become a dead thread, but now someone had dug it up to beat the corpse.
The reason it had been dug up was two other threads.
The most popular one was called "You Thought