36 An Urgent Maintenance (1/2)
The cab dropped Arata off of his home, and he ran to the bathroom to shower. He got itchy with the rain and sea breeze doing a combo on his not so tough skin. He expected to have Attori around, and so he dressed rather good clothes even though he was staying indoors. Best case scenario, they would even leave his body soon enough.
However, what he heard next was a loud click coming from the door when he was changing. Even his windows suddenly locked, if those were the locks. Arata ran to the door and tried opening it, but it was of no use.
”Whoa, what's going on!?” The player screamed.
He saw his computer lit up, displaying another exclamation point. However, it was not red; the triangle was yellow with black text. He sat in front of it and closed the window. The front page of the forum displayed the problem.
[Greetings, legendary men! Player-kun Complex is going to have its urgent maintenance due to the following: identified third party applications that modify game data, failure to display notifications, and unauthorized access from a remote device. Please be advised that our systems will be live after six hours.]
[As to waste time while waiting, we encourage the players to log onto the forums for an open discussions with CM Hideki and CM Faust who are currently logged in to answer your questions and concerns. Please see pinned post: Urgent Maintenance for the discussions.]
Arata stared at the screen, only to take a deep breath. He entered the forums and saw the friend list grayed again. There was this GM message which only showed: we got MT, but you're gucci. It got deleted five seconds after he opened it. Arata shook his head at the power of this Dev Sayaka. If there was indeed a real god in the game, it would be her.
The forums were accessible due to the fact that it was connected to SNS accounts, aside from their game data. The only difference was that during maintenance, they would not be able to mention or send message to their friends. Even the holy green dots were unavailable. Arata was fine with it, but that would mean he should be wary of the lurkers.
Like usual the thread for the maintenance was receiving a lot of complaints and already asked questions. However, the reply count was bobbing up and down due to some of them being deleted.
CM Faust, who seemed to be new, kept on deleting empty complaints and duplicate questions. He posted with a huffing emoticon. ”Please read the post first before you comment. We already explained why this maintenance is happening. All the FAQs are also mentioned in the entry post.” He also followed it with sweats and crying emoticons.
CM Hideki, who was also pruning the replies, sent in a laugh. ”Guys, let's welcome our new CM, CM Faust. It's his first day in the job. Please be patient with him. All empty complaints, insults, and duplicate questions will be pruned. Yes, I'm doing this for convenience.”
Arata sent in a reply that made the complaints and other useless replies stop. Even he was surprised that everyone seemed to listen to him all of a sudden. Or to what the answer to his reply was, rather. He posted. ”Which game data is being modified, Hideki? RNG?”
”Whaaa, Arata!” Hideki sent in a smiley, and it was too late to realize his mistake. He just posted an awkward emoticon before answering the reply. ”Hi, Arata. We still have no confirmation which data was being modified or to what extent. But top players are affected so we had to check right away.”
”Top players? Like me?” Arata sent a reply, feeling the glares through the screen.
”Top ten. Including you and Horsepower.” Hideki seemed to nod. ”But we're not saying you guys are cheating!”
”Aw.” Arata could only post too little. The thread had gotten silent, and the amount of attention was starting to crush him.
”Hey, what about the notifs? No notif, no reward?” Botan, who was one of the king's dragons, butted in to take the piercing attention away from him.”I did three dates without notifs! Horrified screaming.”
”Uh, no. Rewards and points are given. The notifications just broke.” CM Faust answered him. ”Encounters and Challenge can start without a player's consent so it has become quite an issue. The Dates are not affected because it has options. Some players have their games crash whenever a Date comes up, though.”
”They confirmed crashing will only reset the Date since it's on autosave.” Mumumu joined in. ”I can't proceed for like three days.”
”Hideki.” Horsepower sent in a sweating emoticon. ”Why am I banned? What did I do?”
The thread went silent. Horsepower gasped in real life, feeling the same crushing glares through the screen. Getting banned was a terrible thing to his reputation, but he started caring less about it ever since the comeback event.
”Unauthorized access from remote device.” A person whose tag was Sayaka posted.
”Unauthorized access!?” Horsepower screamed both in-game and in real life. He would do it in all caps, but he did not want to look like he was losing cool. Even though he was being pushed to the brink of his wits.
”Whoa, what does that mean, Sayaka?” Arata sent in a reply with a squint. ”I know Horsie won't even try to hack the game. He's too proud for that.”
”I know, but his account was being used. Gotta ban it. Along with five more.” Her answers were short, unlike how she answer as Usagi in Arata's electronic world.
”Isn't that really confidential, that one just now?” Faust replied.
”Yeah, but I have to protect our players. I just banned six accounts out of top ten. They will be wondering in silence. No email since it might be used by the baddie too.” Sayaka replied in a flash.
”Ay, Sayaka. Get back to work though. We can handle this. Can't stall head dev over the forums.” Hideki sent in two dismissive emoticons.
”I'm uploading codes. It'll take minutes.” Sayaka sent in devil laughs.
”I can't delete Sayaka's posts! Hey, don't talk here about this! Angry.” The guardian of the forum, CM Ruby posted using a level 5 account under her tag, same as what the other staff are using.
”Eep.” Sayaka sent a smiley.
The players had gone silent. It was as if the gods of the game were chattering before them, and only Arata was courageous enough to send in one post to support Horsepower's stand. Soon, the same dragon from earlier came out once more.
”Not that I mind, but... who's Faust in-game?” Botan posted all of a sudden, realizing a small plot hole. He was thinking about how the staff could freely discussing game problems in front of their players; but he noticed one of them was not wearing a tag he could recognize.
”Ah, he'll be the new VP soon.” Hideki answered. ”He was foreshadowed in Ruby's route after all.”
”What happened to the other?” Arata sent another squint.
”Spoilers though.” Hideki sent a rolling smiley.
”Please refrain from talking among yourselves in here, Hideki, Sayaka, Faust.” CM Ruby sent tears before logging out.
”Can you explain more about the unauthorized access?” Horsepower cried.