When Yogame's staff received the rejection, their brains practically shut down.
They checked the email over and over, even asking a colleague to come look at it with them several times, just to make sure they weren't seeing things or had sent it to the wrong person.
They had most definitely invited this rising designer on behalf of the Ma Family!
And you still rejected them?
You've got to be kidding, right?
It took the staff member about half an hour to accept what had happened. He swallowed hard and forwarded a screenshot of Ethan Vale's reply to his superior.
He was just an ordinary wage slave...
Still, as he thought about that reply, he couldn't help clicking his tongue. This guy really was skilled and fearless, wasn't he?
Who in the entire gaming industry would dare turn down Nanshan Pizza Hut?
Everyone cursed Nanshan Pizza Hut, and everyone wanted to join Nanshan Pizza Hut.
Sure enough, as soon as he sent the screenshot upstairs, the relevant measures were announced.
Major platforms banned streams of Getting over it. They weren't stopping players from playing the game, but they were banning people from streaming themselves playing it.
The reason given was that the game could make people violent.
As platforms hosting the game, they had the right to restrict games they deemed harmful.
Silver was streaming at the time, and he had already reached the snowy mountain. Now every step felt like walking on the edge of a knife.
Heaven knew how much he had suffered to climb this far.
'He made it to the snowy mountain. The way he moves is so practiced it hurts.'
'Hello, everyone. I'm a trainee who's been digging for two and a half years.'
'Little chicken, you've shown your black feet!'
'I bet a pack of spicy strips he'll fall within ten minutes!'
The comments scrolled by rapidly, trying to send even bigger waves through Silver's already turbulent heart.
He stared at the computer screen without blinking, his Adam's apple bobbing as he repeatedly swallowed.
[Ring! Ring!]
The phone on his desk rang urgently. Silver had just swung his hammer, and the sudden sound made his mouse hand slip.
The pot-bound little man shot backward like a rocket. The background changed from the pale violet and blue glow of the Northern Lights to the warm, blazing Orange Mountain, then to Furniture City, with its white clouds and blue skies...
Thud!
The pot hit the ground with a solid thump, as if a hammer had struck everyone in the heart.
Everyone watching the stream felt as though they'd taken a blow to the head. Silver, who was controlling the character with his mouse, felt it even more.
The game's trash-talking voiceover kept going, relentlessly reminding him of his failure.
"Fuck this! I want to see who's calling me!" Silver glared with bloodshot eyes. He'd never wanted to tear someone to shreds so badly.
The comments were furious too. They liked seeing Silver lose his cool and fall, but only when it was because he'd made a mistake, his hand had slipped, or he was bad at the game...
It was like your own game equipment failing an upgrade, versus someone else melting it down.
Those were completely different things.
'Fucking death ringtone!'
'Honestly, if I'd made it this far and someone called and distracted me...'
'Just imagining it makes me want to break down. Getting this far is so hard!'
'The higher you climb, the more heartbreaking the fall!'
'I can totally relate, folks ToT!'
"Hello? What is it?" Silver asked, his face expressionless and his voice cold.
The call had come from Shark's official operations team. If they didn't give him a good explanation, he wasn't going to let this go.
The person on the other end seemed to know what had happened and quickly explained the latest situation.
The more he said, the deeper Silver's frown became.
It was a long while before the person on the other end finally hung up.
Sitting at his desk, Silver stared at the game. The character had returned to the familiar starting area, and he instinctively touched his chest.
For a moment, it had really hurt.
But even that pain couldn't compare to the shock of the news he'd just received.
The game couldn't be streamed?!
He was a little confused by the news. A tendency toward violence? He didn't think so. He'd only slapped his keyboard twice. Was that supposed to count as violence?
The platform had given him a final warning: if he didn't close the game, he'd face a temporary streaming ban.
"Guys, we'll stop playing for now. Something's come up." Silver still didn't know how to explain it to everyone in his stream.
Before he could say anything else, the chat had already exploded.
'What's going on? Sister Zhou and the others quit the game too!'
'All the streamers got calls at the same time and stopped playing. I smell a conspiracy.'
'Monkey, tell us what's going on!'
"I heard from a small streamer that Getting over it has been banned from streaming. No one can stream it anymore."
Silver looked at the comments with a complicated expression. There was no way to keep the news under wraps. As it was, everyone already had some idea of what had happened.
"Yeah, we really can't stream it anymore," Silver sighed.
At that moment, he couldn't understand it either. This game had put him through the most suffering and messed with his head more than any other. It had even made him angrier than anything else while playing.
But now that he couldn't play it, he felt strangely empty.
"Some platform has slapped a 'violent tendencies' label on the game," Silver said, sounding exasperated.
"I only smashed a few keyboards, and they're saying the game gave me a strong tendency toward violence."
"Anyway, it's a pain in the ass. We just can't stream it, but you can still play it yourselves. It hasn't been banned."
After hearing him out, the chat was baffled too. No one thought the game encouraged violence.
People had smashed keyboards and slammed desks when they lost at games before. No one had ever treated them like this, had they?
'A word of advice to the designer: don't mess with the gaming industry's pie.'
'Is some platform going to make a game called Shovel Your Way Up?'
When Silver saw that comment, he jolted. "Fuck, if they really make games like Shovel Your Way Up, I'll be the first one to curse them out!"
In an instant, footage of Getting over it vanished from every streaming platform.
Meanwhile, Ethan Vale had received some news as well.
Yogame had taken his game down and asked him to make changes. It wouldn't be put back up until he had finished revising it.
Song Shan glanced at him without changing expression. "I don't know if you get it, but I do."
Ethan fell silent. How could he not get it?
He knew that standing out would make people target him, but he hadn't expected to be targeted like this.
At the same time, the Yogame platform issued an announcement.
[After receiving complaints from many parents, we have decided to take down Getting Over It because the game contains too many violent elements. It will be put back up after the creator has completed the required revisions.]
Ethan laughed and withdrew all of his earnings from the past few days.
After taxes and the platform's cut, he was left with only 1.6 million yuan.
That was enough to make his next game, though.
No one could refuse Dead Cells, even if they died charging toward it.
Is it really over 95? I'm so touched! o(╥﹏╥)o
Before you continue