At the very moment the two sides reached their gentlemen's agreement, a technician at a gaming platform was getting grilled by his boss.
"You're telling me one tiny bug needs to be fixed for the fourth time??"
The technical director was beside himself with rage. As he stared at the technician before him, whose hairline had already begun to recede, the fury on his face made him look like a beast that had lost all reason.
"Director, it really isn't a problem with our backend code. This... I don't know how to explain it either."
The programmer spoke timidly, occasionally looking up at his boss.
The technical director had worked his way up step by step himself and knew the technical side inside out. It was just that he rarely got his hands dirty after entering management.
Looking at his timid subordinate, the director felt a flicker of doubt himself.
Their technical department made its living on skill. Whether it was design or marketing, there were plenty of explanations available when things went disastrously wrong. But with technical work alone, competence was competence, and being a noob was being a noob.
But if he couldn't even solve a problem this small, what did that make the subordinate standing before him?
The answer was a complete noob.
One evening about a week earlier, dozens of bug report tickets had appeared in the gaming website's backend system.
The staff quickly opened them and discovered that all these reports were about the same thing: an immersive game called "World of Disorder" had somehow forced its way onto the bottom of the second page of the new games rankings, in twentieth place, despite having released only a few promotional images.
At first, the director and the technicians had thought it was just a bug. After all, no matter whose game it was, doing something like this would only ruin its own reputation. This kind of cyber-deception was the biggest taboo in their line of work.
With the programmers' hair offered up as a sacrifice, the bug was soon defeated. "World of Disorder" hadn't even lived to see the next sunrise.
That should have been the end of it.
Should have.
Two days later, on August 2, "World of Disorder" appeared at the very bottom of the second page of the new games rankings.
The same position, the same fake popularity, the same description. Only the content had been updated, with a few new pieces of promotional concept art.
The programmers worked overtime through the night and finally brought it to justice.
When the news reached the director, he let out a long sigh of relief.
After all, in the mildest terms, something like this was a mistake at work. In the harshest, it was a blatant scandal.
But thinking carefully over the whole affair, the director couldn't help finding it strange. There had been absolutely no sign of intrusion in the website's backend. It was as though, at some instant, an enormous invisible hand had simply stuffed "World of Disorder" in there, cutting the line in full view of everyone.
And the game was still taking reservations for its closed beta. Leaving everyone hanging like this would undoubtedly cost it an enormous amount of goodwill. Nobody could understand such behavior.
But whatever. The problem was solved.
Then-
On August 3, "World of Disorder" made another appearance. The same familiar formula, the same familiar flavor: second page, very bottom, number 20.
The timid programmer browsed the page on his own account, staring fixedly at the game whose cover featured a ruined castle, and muttered indistinctly:
"How is that possible? How could it be?"
And today was August 4. In the end, the matter could no longer be kept under wraps.
Even though the programmer personally made "World of Disorder" disappear from the website every day, at some point the next day, this cyber ghost would poke its head out again, in its original position, as though issuing a challenge.
Or rather, it was issuing a challenge-
With technical capabilities this powerful, if the game had been slipped into the reservation rankings or the most anticipated rankings, it might have gone unnoticed for a week or two.
But the mastermind behind it seemed to have something wrong with their head. They insisted on making it appear in the new games rankings. It made absolutely no sense.
And as the tickets piled up, the matter was finally exposed, leading to the scene of the programmer standing before the director and admitting his mistake.
The director said nothing. He merely stared at the programmer before him like an outwardly placid madman.
After a long while, he rolled up his sleeves and said:
"Come on. Take me to your workstation."
Knowing that the director was going to handle it personally, the programmer breathed a long sigh of relief inwardly.
This wasn't because he was confident the director could solve the problem. Quite the opposite: it was because he firmly believed the director could do absolutely nothing about the cyber ghost.
It was still that simple principle-if you're so good, do it yourself. If you really can... then I'll admit defeat.
Soon, the director was sitting in the programmer's seat, seriously working on fixing the bug and trying to banish "World of Disorder" from their gaming platform's homepage for good.
An hour later, the director spread his hands and gave his subordinate a scornful look, as though saying:
"If you're a noob, practice more."
After an hour of hard work, he had completely deleted "World of Disorder" from the backend and even caught two minor bugs in his subordinate's work along the way.
By then, members of the technical department were crowded behind him, watching under the pretense of learning when they were really slacking off.
The director was thoroughly pleased with himself. As he privately reflected that he hadn't lost his touch, he prepared to hear some flattery.
It seemed his skills were still perfectly sound. Even a bug this troublesome hadn't lasted long in his hands.
The programmer who had been left off to the side thought for a moment, then finally decided to burst the bubble of the director's lovely fantasy.
He switched back to the website's frontend and clicked refresh.
In twentieth place on the new game recommendations list near the bottom of the homepage, a hauntingly persistent dark castle appeared. Written over it in an ancient, elegant font were the words:
"'World of Disorder.'"
Silence filled the office that night. The director stared at the website's frontend in disbelief, snatched the mouse from the programmer, and refreshed it again and again, still finding it hard to believe his eyes.
After a long while, he let out a long sigh from the office chair:
"I'll go talk to the boss."
Seeing that the director had been put in his place, the programmers returned to their workstations to pack up and go home.
There was no need to work overtime today. Whoever wanted to deal with a cyber ghost like this could deal with it. They certainly couldn't.
An hour later, the programmer who had taken a scolding and successfully struck back arrived home. Lying on his bed with nothing to do, he found himself browsing his company's gaming platform homepage almost despite himself.
He was actually a gamer too, but because he didn't want work and entertainment interfering with each other, he normally used another, relatively less popular gaming platform.
Right now, though, he wanted to take on this so-called "World of Disorder" as a player and see whether he could find any clues. He believed every bug had an explainable cause. If it didn't, then he simply hadn't considered everything thoroughly enough.