Ch. 23
“Aaah!”
- Eek haha, that’s Madcat’s scream
- What is it? Another fight?
- Clover, what’s going on?
“Ugh, for real. I told her I’m streaming, so keep it down.”
Seo Jaehyeon rubbed his forehead and glanced at the chat.
Normally, mentioning other streamers was against the rules, but they bent it slightly for Madcat because she was his sister. Any commotion in her stream always spilled over here.
“Did she lose again?”
- Yup
- She got stomped
“She stayed up late trying to get into promotion matches, and she failed again?”
- Yup
- Annihilated
- Their mid-laner blew the game wide open
He had told her not to go mid. He wasn’t clueless, either. He was a former pro. He had no idea why she insisted on mid so stubbornly.
- By the way, that mid-laner was definitely not from that rank
- The moves and skillshots were insane
- There’s no way it was a normal local player
-
Seo Jaehyeon’s expression sharpened at the mention of a sniper, smurfing, and stomping weaker players. As a streamer and former pro, that raised a lot of red flags.
Sniping was destructive for any broadcast. The sniper had fun, but the streamer and other viewers got annoyed. Some streamers even covered their queue screens to avoid it.
Madcat was a new gaming streamer, so it might be a bit more lenient, but as soon as Seo Jaehyeon started his own streams, he was constantly hounded by snipers.
Smurfing was even worse than sniping in his eyes, especially because he was a former pro-gamer.
People who kept newcomers out of the game ultimately destroyed it. Even if the player base was huge, it would eventually rot. They forced everyone into the same repetitive environment until it withered and died.
He was reminded of how furious it made him to see people cackling about crushing lower-skilled players.
“Guys, did it really look like he's smurfing? You’re sure it was a second account made for stomping?”
- Yes
- Madcat wouldn’t complain like that for no reason
- Their movement and skillshots were insane, and they had perfect vision control
- Impossible to be a local
He wondered what to do. Typically, you were supposed to ignore other streams. However, if someone was sniping, smurfing, and stomping noobs, it was hard to overlook.
Seo Jaehyeon folded his arms and hesitated, then grabbed his phone.
“…Yeah, it’s me. Send me an edited replay later. The mid-laner from your Bronze match. My viewers say there’s no way that was a local.”
- Haha, they’re in the same house but still talking by phone
- True siblings
- Couldn’t he just go in person?
While chatting with his sister, he got the user’s ID and started looking it up on a records site.
Tap, tap—
“What’s this…?”
It was not what he expected. Red lines everywhere, then a few spots of blue, then red again. The KDA was all over the place.
This ID didn’t look like a quick alt account. Some details didn’t fit if it was a fresh purchase for smurfing.
From a pro-gamer’s standpoint, it was confusing.
The match history looked normal enough
- Maybe nothing special
The viewers who looked up the ID themselves agreed that nothing about it stood out.
- Just your average Bronze-Silver record
- Could be an account someone bought, then used to stomp
- Would they really buy an account for that?
Stranger things had happened. Seo Jaehyeon had encountered countless bizarre players when he was a pro.
He had met players who wanted everyone to lose with them, or who purposely threw after a lead just to see the game reversed. There were also those who deliberately bought low-rank accounts to mess around on. There were more indescribable trolls out there, too many to count.
“Huh.”
He checked his viewer count, which hovered around seven or eight hundred. He decided it wasn’t worth publicly dissecting the entire replay in front of everyone.
“Folks, I’ll look at the replay later on my own. After all, it’s a family matter.”
People wondered why he would do that, but he ignored them and focused back on his stream.
He did feel a tiny twinge of pity for his sister, who had failed her promotion yet again…
- Game found!
…But he was also starting his own promotion match right now.
- Right, Clover is on a Grandmaster promo tonight
- Indeed
- Predicting both siblings fail promos on the same day, haha
His pro pride was on the line. He couldn’t settle for anything under Grandmaster. He had dropped to Diamond before, and they had teased him for a month by calling him “Dia.” Master was unstable, so Grandmaster was the safe zone.
When the queue popped, he closed every window, including his record search tab.
Match History Search: PleaseLetMeSilver