Shaking off the memory, I refocused on the present. "Sunday, pull up the Octopussy streams… Let's see how our early access ambassadors are doing.".
With Sunday help, the main screen split into four quadrants. There they were. LUXI, Amora, Millie, and my dear sister Emily. Each of their streams was boasting viewer counts I knew were record-breaking for them—well into the multi-millions. Monumental numbers. A lesser man might have felt a pang of jealousy. I just felt a swell of possessive pride. They were riding my wave, and it was carrying them to new heights.
But the real entertainment was the gameplay. All four of them were a beautiful mess.
LUXI, usually so cool and composed, was whispering frantic prayers in Japanese, her character backed into a corner as the flashlight beam shook violently.
Amora had traded her usual sensual ASMR voice for ragged, panicked breaths. "Non, non, non, putain de merde!" she shrieked as a door slammed shut on its own.
Millie had her head in her hands, her character standing motionless in the hallway as she tried to mentally recover from a recent scare.
And Emily… poor Emily. She was just muttering "nope, nope, nope". over and over again like a mantra, her eyes wide with trauma.
The best part? None of them had even made it to the third cycle. The game hadn't even started to get 'really' mean yet. They were still in the tutorial-level terror, was it really that scary? Still, their suffering was the most effective marketing campaign money couldn't buy. They were proving the game's potency live for an audience of tens of millions. I made a mental note to send them all a fruit basket. Or maybe just a case of premium whiskey. They were gonna need it, because I can see that with my game as the driving force all of them slowly creeping into the level of top streamers.
The clock on my screen ticked over from 11:59 to 12:00 PM. The moment of truth. The "Purchase" button on the Vapor store page for Silent Hill: First Fear changed from greyed-out to a pulsating, malevolent red, Its Showtime.
I'd be lying if I said my heart wasn't doing a little tap-dance against my chest. Because this was it, All the hype, all the planning, it all came down to this little button. I had Sunday pulled up on a dedicated monitor, displaying a raw, real-time feed of sales data directly from the Vapor API. No frills or anything, just numbers.
"Sunday, did the sale goes online cleanly?". I nervously asked.
"[Yes, Sir, we are now online… first buyer had completed their purchase…]". Sunday replied timely, reassuring that the sale begins without a hitch.
I turned my attention, at the sales counter that Sunday made for me. At first, it was a trickle. A satisfying, steady trickle.
`50 copies sold.``100 copies sold.``250 copies sold.`
A slow smile started to form on my lips. 'This was good. This was really good for the first minute… That number is definitely impressive for an indie game'. I thought, it was a relieved to see that kind of number. Then the trickle became a stream.
`500 copies sold.``1,000 copies sold.``5,000 copies sold.*
My smile widened, the stream became a river, then a flood. The numbers started to blur, refreshing so fast they were almost unreadable. It was just a constantly escalating digit, a digital roar of demand. at 12:15 PM, it something had happened. The Vapor store page on my main browser stuttered. The image of the game's cover art froze. Then, it pixelated and dissolved into the error message. `Connection Timed Out. Please try again later.`
I blinked. "Uh…. Sunday? What happened?"
Her response was immediate, her synthesized voice carrying a note of what I could almost swear was satisfaction. "[The Vapor storefront has experienced a critical server failure and is currently inaccessible across all global content delivery networks.]".
The silence in my room was absolute, save for the frantic thumping of my own heart. I stared at the error message. I looked at the other monitor, where Sunday's sales counter had also frozen. The last number it displayed was `1,956,467`.
" 'I'd done it….. I'd actually fucking done it.' Oh, Shit….Hahahahaha!!!! YES!!!". A laugh burst out of me, loud and unrestrained in the quiet room.
It wasn't a chuckle; it was a full-bodied, belly-deep roar of triumph. I leaned back in my chair, running my hands through my hair, the grin on my face so wide it hurt. I'd broken the internet; I'd crashed the largest digital game storefront on the planet. This was the stuff of legends; this was the dream. And I am doing it.
*****************
Vapor HQ, New California - 11:55 AM,
In the nerve center of Vapor Inc., the mood was professional, focused, but calm. Director Michael sipped his coffee, watching the large monitoring screens on the wall. Where all the new game on the platform were being sold. The 'Silent Hill' launching was the talk of the office, since the game, even before it was put on the store it was already becomes the talk of the entire internet. Vapor knew that there will be a lot of customers buying the game, so they were ready and prepared. They'd handled the 'Suffering of Duke Winston' launch, which held the record for their biggest day-one. This would be big, but it was just an indie game. How bad could it be?
"Alright, team, eyes on the Meteor Studios title," Michael said, his voice echoing slightly in the open-plan space. "Expect a big surge... Let's keep everything running smooth…".
A senior tech at his console nodded. "Traffic is spiking…, Mike, but it's within projected parameters... It's big, but it can't be 'Duke Winston' big, because that game was 'THE' was a perfect storm… This is just… it's just a very viral indie horror game...".
-12:00 PM-
The counter started climbing. 10,000. 50,000. 100,000. The tech's brow furrowed. "Okay, that's… faster than projected."
-12:05 PM-
250,000. The low hum of conversation in the room died down. People were starting to watch the main counter instead of their own screens.
-12:10 PM-
500,000. Michael set his coffee down, standing up. "Okay, that's Duke Winston numbers…. In ten minutes?!!... What the hell?"
-12:15 PM-
The number blew past 750,000. The tech's fingers were flying across his keyboard now. "I'm seeing massive strain on the East Coast servers! Load balancers are at capacity! We're getting hit from every region simultaneously!"
-12:20 PM-
`1,250,000`. Alarms began to blare softly on the main console, warning lights flashing from green to amber. The mood was no longer calm; it was charged with a rising panic. This wasn't a surge; it was a tsunami.
-12:25 PM-
`1,500,000`. The senior tech's voice lost its professional cool. "The load is too much! We're getting slammed! I've never seen traffic like this! The database can't keep up with the transaction requests! It's—it's seizing up!".
-12:30 PM-
The main monitoring screen, displaying a live map of global sales, flickered once, twice, and then went completely black. A deathly silence fell over the entire operations center. Every single screen displaying Vapor services was dark. The only light came from the angry, flashing red alarm lights.
The last number displayed before the catastrophic failure was `1,956,467`.
Someone in the back of the room whispered the words everyone was thinking: "Oh. My. God."
They hadn't just been broken; they had been utterly annihilated. The Suffering of Duke Winston had sold 3 million copies in its first week. This unknown indie game had sold nearly 2 million in half an hour and literally broken the system.
At 12:35 PM, a humiliated Vapor Inc. was forced to issue a press release no tech company ever wants to send: "We are experiencing a critical service outage due to unprecedented, record-shattering demand on our platform. Our teams are working urgently to restore service. We apologize for the inconvenience."
By 12:45, through sheer force of will and frantic effort, the servers were back online. The sales counter, once restarted, immediately began climbing again at a terrifying pace. But the damage was done. The story was no longer just about a scary game; it was about the game so popular it broke the world's biggest store. And back in my room, I just kept laughing, watching the whole beautiful disaster unfold from my throne. This was better than I ever could have imagined.