For Early/Extra Chapters: patreon.com/scoldeyjodxd
Already 30+ Chapters Updated + Daily Updates
The joint livestream featuring Maverick, The Professor, and the other big-name streamers had undoubtedly brought absolutely massive traffic to the game Holy Grail War.
We're talking top-tier, mainstream media attention. Millions of concurrent viewers. The kind of viral moment that marketing teams dream about but can never quite manufacture.
However.
At exactly 6:00 AM this morning, under the influence of what could only be described as an "invisible hand," every single positive trending topic related to Holy Grail War was completely scrubbed from the internet.
Gone. Vanished. Deleted.
It was just like that situation with a certain mobile game a while back—you know the one. Where if you dared to criticize it even once, your hundreds of thousands of dollars in player contributions would mysteriously disappear from your account overnight.
The speed of the purge was so swift, so coordinated across multiple platforms simultaneously, that even the most dedicated Holy Grail War fans found it genuinely unbelievable.
How the hell did they move this fast?
What replaced those positive trends was an immediate flood of baseless accusations, coordinated hit pieces, and what appeared to be astroturfed negativity from obvious bot accounts.
This pattern repeated across all major social media platforms—Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, even gaming forums. Hell, even Shark Platform, which had literally just made a fortune off Holy Grail War's streaming numbers, remained conspicuously silent. Not a word of defense. Not even a neutral statement.
Radio silence.
Naturally, the players who genuinely loved the game weren't going to sit around and take this lying down.
They fought back in comments sections, posted counterarguments, shared their actual experiences with the game, tried to cut through the manufactured outrage with facts and reason.
But it quickly became clear that under the suppression of that mysterious "invisible hand," no matter what evidence you wanted to present or how reasonable your arguments were, they would be forcefully suppressed.
If your post gained too much traction? Deleted outright. No explanation. No appeal process.
Accounts that got too vocal? Shadow-banned.
This feeling of powerlessness was frustrating beyond words. It was like being the protagonist in one of those scenarios where you can see what's happening, you know what's happening, but you're completely unable to do anything about it while everyone else pretends everything's fine.
But this blatant suppression campaign also made many Holy Grail War players realize something important.
Something they'd suspected but never quite articulated.
The reason the gaming industry had become such a toxic, exploitative wasteland wasn't because developers weren't trying hard enough or didn't care about quality.
It was because certain powerful interests—those "invisible hands"—actively prevented the environment from improving.
After all, if standards improved, if players started expecting actual quality and fair monetization, how would these companies continue to efficiently extract maximum profit with minimum investment?
Research and development cost real money. Hiring talented designers, programmers, writers—that required actual investment with no guaranteed return.
Why take that risk when you could just... not?
Why stand up and innovate when you could lie down and collect easy money from gacha mechanics and predatory monetization?
If everyone else in the industry is taking the low-effort, high-profit route, why should you be the one to rock the boat?
Yes. Why rock the boat?
Max had spent years criticizing a certain two-word mobile game for its predatory practices and lazy development.
But he had to admit—grudgingly, painfully—that at least that game's developers had tried to stand up at one point. Whether the results of that attempt were good or bad was still debatable, and the game had certainly fallen back into old habits since then.
But the fact that they'd even attempted to break the mold, even temporarily, was worth acknowledging.
And so, amidst this coordinated wave of manufactured outrage flooding the entire internet, countless Holy Grail War players made a choice.
They chose not to stay silent this time.
They stood up. They pushed back against that invisible hand with everything they had.
And although they were still at a significant disadvantage—outnumbered, outspent, fighting against literal bot farms and paid troll accounts—the players' voices grew louder and louder beneath those fabricated attack posts.
Slowly but surely, a strange phenomenon emerged across social media.
Those who already knew about Holy Grail War fought back fiercely. Not just for the game itself, but for their rights as consumers. For the principle that players deserved better than to be treated like walking wallets.
Meanwhile, those who didn't know about Holy Grail War—casual observers who only saw the coordinated hit pieces and manufactured controversy—assumed the game must be absolutely terrible.
"Wow, this game must be really bad if everyone's this mad about it."
"The developer should probably just apologize and shut the servers down tomorrow, honestly."
The polarization was extreme. There was almost no middle ground.
And amidst this chaotic, increasingly hostile digital battlefield, something happened that changed everything.
Forest Studio's production team published an open letter.
A Letter to Our Players
The letter appeared simultaneously across every major platform, posted with deliberate, careful timing.
What is real cannot be faked. What is fake cannot be made real.
We may not be able to single-handedly create a new era for the gaming industry. But we want to tell players something important:
Every bit of your love for games, every dollar you spend supporting what you enjoy, should NEVER turn into bullets and boomerangs used to attack you.
Your money should transform into tangible game quality. Into content that brings you joy. Into experiences worth your time and investment.
At the same time, the internet is not some lawless zone where people can spread malicious lies without consequence.
Those who are engaging in coordinated defamation campaigns against our game and our players will face legal action. We will use every available legal tool to defend our rights and show them what actual justice looks like.
Tonight at 8 PM Pacific Time, we'll be going live on YouTube to address everything directly.
See you there.
— Forest Studio
It said very little in terms of specific details.
Yet somehow, it said everything that needed to be said.
The moment this "Letter to Players" went live, it dominated the top trending positions on every major social media platform at what could only be described as a bizarrely rapid speed.
Twitter trending #1. Reddit front page across multiple subreddits. YouTube trending. Gaming news sites. Tech blogs. Even some mainstream news outlets picked it up.
This completely unreasonable, physics-defying level of coordinated visibility provided something crucial:
A rallying point. A central gathering place. A sanctuary for all those players who had been fighting a lonely, losing battle against the bot farms and troll armies.
It gave them hope.
"That's what I'm talking about, Forest Studio!"
"FOREST STUDIO, WE LOVE YOU! WE LOVE YOU! OH MY GOD!"
"PERFECTLY said! Developers who make millions off their players should use that money for updates and R&D, not just coast on old content while doing the absolute minimum! Players have a RIGHT to demand better games, not be silenced and attacked online for having standards!"
"Holy shit, Forest Studio is incredible! They actually managed to break through what was clearly a coordinated suppression campaign and push their statement to #1 trending on literally every platform simultaneously. Do they have some elite hacker division we don't know about?"
"Don't say stuff like that—you're going to get them sued by some megacorp's legal team."
"Let them try!"
"Alright, I finally found the main base of operations! I'm so pissed—I woke up this morning and the entire internet was flooded with fake hit pieces about Holy Grail War. These trash-tier parents who can't raise their own kids properly just blame video games for everything instead of taking responsibility."
"TRASH GAME! RUINED MY CHILD! SHAMELESS DEVELOPER, IF YOU HAD ANY CONSCIENCE YOU'D SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY!"
"How much are they paying per comment? Don't hide it, we're all trying to make money here. What's the rate?"
"Yeah, seriously, what's the going rate for astroturfing these days?"
"How can you allow such a violent and sexually suggestive game to exist on the market? What if children are exposed to it?!"
"Okay, that's... actually kind of hard to argue against."
"I personally think the mature content could be turned up a bit MORE, honestly."
"Forget arguing with logic—just mass-downvote these idiots and move on."
"Good point. Downvote and report for spam."
The coordinated trolls, seeing that they couldn't actually knock Forest Studio's letter off the trending positions, immediately pivoted to trying to dominate the comment sections instead.
But this time, the players weren't going to let them spread their manufactured outrage unchallenged.
After all, this was their home turf now. Their rallying point.
And so, with players operating at full capacity, firing on all cylinders, working in coordinated shifts across time zones...
Those bot accounts and paid trolls got absolutely demolished in the comments. Their family trees were traced back three generations. Their arguments were shredded with facts and logic. Their credibility was destroyed.
Now, we should probably show some understanding toward certain individuals who display terrible online behavior.
After all, without proper parental guidance, how would they learn basic human decency?
Of course, it's also completely reasonable to show them no understanding whatsoever.
Because why should the rest of society suffer for their poor upbringing?
In any case, amidst this massive wave of public opinion warfare, the players finally felt something they hadn't experienced in years:
The joy of victory. The satisfaction of successful resistance. The empowerment that comes from standing together against manufactured corporate bullshit.
But when the perspective shifted to the offices of Goose Corporation's Information Warfare Department, the mood was... significantly different.
"No way! This is impossible!" A junior analyst stared at his monitor in disbelief, his hands shaking slightly.
"What's wrong? WHAT'S WRONG?!" His supervisor rushed over. "Talk to me, Johnson! Don't just freeze up! We've been working together for three years, man—SUPERVISOR!"
"I understand the situation." The department head's face was grim as death. "I'll report this failure to the CEO directly. Everyone else, hold your positions. This defeat is a complete embarrassment to our entire division."
"God DAMN it!" Someone threw a stress ball at the wall.
How could anyone be happy? The operation had failed completely. The entire department's monthly bonus was gone—evaporated. And this kind of high-profile failure would probably tank their year-end bonuses too.
How could anyone be in a good mood?
However, just as the supervisor was preparing to deliver the bad news to upper management with the expression of someone walking to their own execution, another data analyst's sudden exclamation made everyone present feel their blood run cold.
"Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit—"
"What now?!"
"The FTC just issued a statement."
Silence.
Because yeah. The Federal Trade Commission had just stepped in.
You've got to be kidding. The government had literally just launched a national indie game development competition to support smaller studios and promote innovation in the industry.
And these megacorps were running coordinated suppression campaigns against one of the competition's most successful participants? Right under the FTC's nose?
Did they think regulators were blind? Did they think they could just... get away with it?
Thus, with a simple official statement—"Game developers should serve their players, not exploit them"—every tech giant and gaming megacorporation in the country felt their collective blood pressure spike.
And so, facing this multi-front battle—players, media attention, and now federal regulatory scrutiny—Holy Grail War and its passionate community emerged as the final, undisputed victors.
At least for tonight.
The war was far from over.
But they'd won this battle.
And that was enough.
Show Some By Powerstones
Next BONUS CHAPTER at 200 powerstones