"Battle.net has gone insane! They're slaughtering game developers indiscriminately! Any game that doesn't suit their tastes can be removed at will—this is blatant monopoly behavior! It's trampling on free trade!"
"That's right! Battle.net—no, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment—is abusing its position as the world's largest game distribution platform to disrupt the market and destroy market freedom. We must firmly oppose this behavior! We absolutely can't let Gamestar Electronic Entertainment continue acting so tyrannically!"
On Facebook, across many forums, and within various social circles, a large number of articles and posts condemning Gamestar Electronic Entertainment suddenly appeared over the course of just a few days.
These voices all came from developers who had ridden the cyberpunk hype.
They tearfully accused Gamestar Electronic Entertainment of shameless conduct, arbitrarily trampling on the free market.
"We propose that the Battle.net platform be completely abolished and fully nationalized! A platform that controls such absolute resources should not be held by a single corporation—it should become a fairer, open platform!"
"Break it up! Nationalize it!"
"Give us back a free Battle.net platform!"
…
This time, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's actions had struck a nerve among the loudest troublemakers, dealing them a fatal blow.
Suri Electronics and Mickfow were also somewhat taken aback.
They hadn't expected Gamestar Electronic Entertainment to act so decisively—directly removing those developers' games from the platform.
Truly a game company that never played by the rules.
If a typical publicly listed company dared to do this, its shareholders would have probably banded together long ago to impeach the current CEO.
This kind of behavior could easily trigger a wave of negative public opinion, which was hardly a good thing for Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.
But for Suri Electronics and Mickfow, it actually counted as good news.
They could seize the opportunity to loudly promote their own platforms as being more open and free, offering developers greater creative space.
However, just as they were getting eager to recruit these developers, they realized that this entire group consisted of people who made reskinned, hype-chasing games.
Only then did they understand—Gamestar Electronic Entertainment was actually eliminating bad actors.
Removing these people was, in fact, beneficial to the game industry as a whole.
If they brought such developers onto their own platforms, it could end up damaging the reputation they had worked so hard to build.
They weren't nearly as domineering as Gamestar Electronic Entertainment. A bit of negative public opinion wouldn't hurt Gamestar's foundation at all.
But their own market positions were far from stable.
As a result, Suri Electronics and Mickfow decisively chose to sit back and watch the drama unfold without getting involved.
That said, they didn't mind taking the opportunity to brag a little about their own products.
In business, sentimentality never mattered. Striking when a competitor was weak was always the best strategy—though they also knew that this level of public opinion wouldn't truly shake Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's position.
Online, the outcry against Gamestar Electronic Entertainment grew louder and louder—but Gamestar wasn't defenseless.
In response, they promptly dispatched an elite legal team, sending lawyer's letters to the loudest critics one by one.
Of course, anyone familiar with these tactics knew that lawyer's letters were practically equivalent to toilet paper—legally toothless—but they still served to make a statement.
As expected, the noise quieted down somewhat, though there were still some particularly stubborn individuals who refused to give up, continuing to cry and condemn Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.
They even swore that if the issue wasn't resolved, they'd spend their entire lives opposing Gamestar—and declared that they would "carefully consider" their votes in this year's presidential and gubernatorial elections.
Votes were extremely important to U.S. politicians. Even a handful of votes had to be taken seriously.
What's more, these game developers seemed to have at least a bit of influence. U.S. politicians began taking the matter more seriously, even proactively reaching out to Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's U.S. headquarters—subtly and not-so-subtly reminding them not to go too far and make things difficult.
Gamestar Electronic Entertainment contributed significant tax revenue, but public votes were equally important and couldn't be ignored.
"Boss, several lawmakers are hoping we can 'resolve' the situation with those game developers," said Bellrade, the head of the Battle.net platform, sounding stressed. "They don't care how—pay them off privately, or even put out bounties to have them assassinated. As long as they stop causing trouble. Otherwise, it'll affect their upcoming elections."
Bellrade had been dealing with nonstop headaches lately.
Takayuki had given a single instruction to remove certain games from the Battle.net platform, but all the aftermath had fallen on employees like him to handle.
Still, Bellrade had no real complaints. Gamestar Electronic Entertainment paid extremely well—on salary alone, he had no reason to grumble.
Besides, the games Takayuki had ordered removed really were trash, one worse than the next.
He didn't even need to play them. Just looking at the covers and a few promotional videos and screenshots was enough to tell they were garbage.
One of the most outrageous examples had a promotional video that looked incredibly grand, seemingly on the same scale as Cyberpunk 2077.
But once you bought it and entered the game, you discovered it was a damn jigsaw puzzle.
And the puzzle images were all unlicensed assets—pure garbage to the core.
And yet this thing dared to sell for ten dollars, and actually sold tens of thousands of copies.
It was basically rubbing players' intelligence into the dirt.
Even if Takayuki hadn't personally ordered it, Bellrade would've been willing to take the pressure and force it off the platform himself.
Though he probably wouldn't have gone quite that far—at least not confiscating all the money those developers had already made.
But Takayuki could do that.
Because he was the boss.
He held absolute authority.
Listening to Bellrade's report, Takayuki asked, "So those lawmakers just want us to solve the problem—make those people stop making noise—by any means necessary?"
"Yes. Of course, nothing too extreme or too obvious. Even if you really wanted to hire assassins, boss, don't be too blatant about it, or they'll have a hard time dealing with the fallout."
Takayuki felt those lawmakers were truly outrageous. This was… eye-opening, to say the least.
Of course, he had no intention of actually hiring assassins. Over a few trash games, it wasn't even remotely worth it.
Still, something had to be done. Letting them keep screaming like this was undeniably annoying.
Takayuki said, "I'll book the nearest flight to the U.S. Then you release an announcement—on both Battle.net and Facebook's official accounts. Say that I'll personally meet these developers face to face for a discussion. Everything will be livestreamed publicly. But this will be a one-time thing. In the future, if similar situations come up, you can use this exchange as the precedent."
"You'll confront them personally, boss?"
"No—not confront," Takayuki corrected. "Communicate. A discussion about game development. Not just the developers whose games were removed—anyone interested can participate. We'll just… talk."