The problem with Reality Quest was not that it was dangerous.
The problem was that it was convincing.
Within weeks of its release, the game had slipped out of the category of entertainment and into something far harder to regulate—a lived experience. Players didn't talk about sessions or playtime anymore. They talked about days, events, decisions. Entire forums were filled with language borrowed from real life rather than games.
"I survived the winter famine."
"I lost my brother to bandits."
"I'm saving to buy land near the river."
To regulators, that kind of language didn't sound like immersion.
It sounded like attachment.
JBL Investment noticed the shift immediately. They also noticed something else—every attempt to attack Reality Quest directly failed. Critics who tried to label it violent or obscene were drowned out by academics praising its historical realism and social complexity. Attempts to frame it as exploitative were countered by the game's transparent pricing model and lack of pay-to-win mechanics.
So JBL changed tactics.
They stopped criticizing the game.
And started worrying about the people playing it.
The first tremor came from a psychology journal most gamers had never heard of.
A peer-reviewed opinion piece—carefully worded, cautiously speculative—posed a question rather than an accusation:
What are the psychological effects of persistent virtual worlds that do not reset after player death?
The author was a respected cognitive psychologist with a long record of studying attachment behavior in immersive simulations. The paper did not mention Reality Quest by name until the third page. When it did, it did so clinically, referring to it as "a commercially available persistent medieval simulation."
The findings were not damning.
They were unsettling.
The paper suggested that permanent death mechanics—combined with NPCs capable of emotional reciprocity—could produce grief responses similar to those experienced after real-world loss. It raised concerns about identity diffusion in players who chose to reincarnate rather than log out. It asked whether repeated avatar death and rebirth could alter risk perception outside the game.
The final paragraph was the most dangerous:
Further interdisciplinary oversight may be necessary to establish ethical boundaries for persistent immersive environments.
It didn't call for bans.
It called for discussions.
Within days, parenting blogs picked it up. School counselors forwarded summaries to administrators. Mental health professionals debated it on private forums before it ever reached mainstream news.
Then came the second wave.
A nonprofit think tank released a policy brief titled:
Immersive Worlds and the New Digital Self
The language was careful. The funding source was opaque. The authorship list included former regulators, sociologists, and one retired senator known for championing "responsible innovation."
Reality Quest was cited as a case study—not as a threat, but as a precedent.
The brief argued that when virtual environments began influencing behavior, economics, and identity at scale, they stopped being games and started becoming systems. And systems, historically, attracted oversight.
Again, no accusations.
Only implications.
By the time cable news picked up the story, the framing had shifted subtly but decisively.
"Experts are asking important questions," anchors said.
"Should there be safeguards?"
"Are we prepared for worlds where death is permanent and memory persists?"
Reality Quest wasn't under attack.
It was under examination.
The real pressure point, however, came from money.
RQ Coin had started as an elegant solution—a way to allow value persistence across avatars without breaking immersion. It was capped, transparent, and pegged deliberately low. No promises of overnight wealth. No speculative hype from Blackfire.
Which was precisely why it worried the wrong people.
A white paper appeared online under the banner of a global financial compliance group.
Virtual Economies and Unregulated Asset Transfer
The document outlined hypothetical scenarios. Criminal enterprises laundering money through immersive economies. Cross-border value transfers hidden behind roleplay. The difficulty of tracking digital assets earned inside worlds that operated continuously across jurisdictions.
Reality Quest was not named until midway through.
And when it was, the language was respectful.
"An innovative example of emergent economic design."
But the implication was clear.
RQ Coin sat at the intersection of gaming, crypto, and international finance—a regulatory no-man's land.
Lobbyists began circulating briefing notes to lawmakers. Not warnings. Not demands.
Questions.
Do existing financial laws apply?
Should RQ Coin be classified as a security?
A commodity?
A digital service credit?
Could it be used for money laundering?
No one said yes.
No one said no.
That uncertainty was enough.
Soon, advisory committees were formed. Subcommittees requested expert testimony. Regulatory bodies began asking Blackfire Technologies for documentation—not as an enforcement action, but as due diligence.
And due diligence had a way of becoming public.
Inside Blackfire, developers watched the news in uneasy silence. They had built Reality Quest as a world, not a battleground. They hadn't anticipated that its success would invite philosophy, ethics, and finance into the same room.
Derek, however, had.
He sat in his office late one evening, reading through a compiled briefing prepared by Alan Payne. Each section was neatly categorized.
Psychological Impact
Ethical Design
Financial Instruments
Regulatory Exposure
"This is clean," Derek said quietly.
Alan nodded. "That's what worries me."
"They're not trying to destroy us," Derek continued. "They're trying to make us official."
"And once you're official," Alan said, "you're visible."
Derek closed the file.
"They think oversight forces control," he said. "But oversight also confers legitimacy."
Alan hesitated. "They'll want you to testify."
Derek smiled faintly.
"That's the point."
In JBL's offices, the mood was cautiously optimistic. Their fingerprints were nowhere on the narrative, yet the pressure was building exactly as planned. Reality Quest hadn't been slowed—but it had been framed.
Not as a toy.
Not as a threat.
But as something important enough to regulate.
And regulation always demanded a face.
Sooner or later, Derek Morgan would have to sit in a room filled with microphones, experts, and lawmakers—and explain himself.
Not as a shadow.
But as a man.
The game continued uninterrupted. Players logged in. Kingdoms rose and fell. RQ Coin exchanged hands quietly, steadily.
But above the virtual world, a new one was forming.
A world of committees, hearings, and legitimacy.
And JBL waited patiently.
Because once power was recognized by institutions, it could be negotiated.
Or challenged.
And either way, Derek Morgan would no longer be invisible.