To the outside world, Takayuki was the God of Games, and within the company, his status was just as revered.
This prestige was built over many years through his continued creation of all kinds of innovative games.
Employees often praised Takayuki privately during regular conversations.
They were genuinely happy to work in such a company.
There was an endless supply of joy in this workplace. Even when the workload was heavy, it never felt overly exhausting.
"Now that the president has finished Stardew Valley, I wonder if he has any new plans for another game?"
"Of course he does. Didn't we hear before that he was planning a horror game? I think it's called Resident Evil?"
"Ah right, I almost forgot about that. Too bad, though… I'm a bit of a scaredy-cat, so I probably won't be able to play Resident Evil."
"I heard it's not actually that scary. The horror elements are pretty straightforward. Maybe you can handle it?"
"Nope, no way. I've never had a strong tolerance for scary stuff."
"That's a shame. I make it a point to play every game the president makes."
"Aside from Resident Evil, has the president talked about making anything else? Heard anything?"
"Kind of. I heard he's already spoken to a few department heads. Not sure what they discussed exactly, but I think it was related to developing new games. This time, it seems he's considering supervising multiple projects at once."
"Seriously? That's great news! That means we might get to see even more quality games!"
"Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it!"
The two employees continued chatting while exercising, casually discussing company affairs.
Their night shift didn't even feel like work—more like a mini vacation with eight people hanging out.
"Whew, I'm beat. Gonna head back to my desk for a break. We can group up again later tonight!"
One of the Monster Hunter players stretched out, exhausted after playing non-stop all evening, and decided to rest for a bit.
The others groaned in protest but didn't argue. Three people could still play, and they were determined to grind through until morning.
The guy got up from his seat and left the break room to return to his desk.
Though it seemed like all play, their night shift did have a real responsibility—monitoring the company's network servers.
The company had dedicated servers providing service across the Tokyo region, offering the lowest latency thanks to direct connections and state-of-the-art hardware.
Usually, the servers ran without a hitch unless it was a big game launch or a sudden popularity spike. And Takayuki's servers had such high thresholds, they could easily handle four or five times the usual user traffic.
That's why the night staff could be so relaxed.
Still, someone had to check in from time to time just in case.
After stepping out of the break room, the guy decided to stop by the server area for a quick check.
Coincidentally, this was exactly when YOO's team was attempting to hack into Starnet, the online platform run by Takayuki's company, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.
YOO's CEO, Nagao Ame, was overseeing the operation personally. He wanted firsthand info on the mysterious game developer and was determined to find out who this person really was.
Under his instructions, his team began issuing access commands and deploying stealthy data-theft software to infiltrate the Starnet servers.
Everything went smoothly at first—it seemed like Starnet had no defense in place.
Nagao smiled in satisfaction, assuming Gamester Electronic wasn't that great in areas outside of games. Their cyber defense looked weak.
But suddenly, all access stopped. The invasion software and traffic spikes were instantly cut off.
Nagao's face changed.
"What's going on? Why isn't the data responding anymore?"
"President… they've detected our breach…" one of his staff replied bitterly.
They had prepped for days and considered the risk of being discovered. But they never imagined they'd be caught so quickly.
This was nighttime, after all.
How could they be found out so fast?
It was just a game company.
"Detected? How could you screw up so easily?"
The employee looked helpless.
"It's not that we were careless. It seems Gamester Entertainment has some incredibly sensitive detection systems. Their firewall is much more powerful than we expected."
Nagao scowled.
"It's just a game company! Don't tell me our top-tier internet company can't even break through the network of some game developer?"
What they were doing was, of course, illegal. But Nagao didn't care anymore.
What bothered him now was that their attempt failed at all. As a major internet company, how could they not crack a game company's defenses?
To him, it just didn't make sense.
But in truth—it wasn't that hard to explain.
Gamestar Electronic Entertainment had never been weak in internet tech.
Takayuki, after all, came from a future parallel world.
He deeply understood the importance of the internet and made it a core focus from the start.
Though his company was mainly for games, many advanced technologies they developed didn't even get put to use yet.
Oh, and by the way—some of Facebook's backend tech services were provided by Gamestar Entertainment.
When Bob, the very talented CEO of Facebook, saw the cutting-edge systems they offered, he was shocked. He couldn't believe a game company had such technological capabilities.
But he was thrilled to get access to them—it saved him a ton of time and effort.