Setting: SILICON VALLEY, CALIFORNIA

Date: January 31st, 2026. (14 days until expansion launch)

The young man had no words. Usually he was an anthology of small talk, able to crack jokes without hesitation. Yet at this precise time, the words couldn't be found. He sat there, looking at the offer that was made to him. A golden parachute, which was pretty decent for someone who was being forced out of his own company. Forced to watch others play around with and degrade the quality of his product, as he knew what the company that bought him out had always wanted.

Micro-transactions.

Pay to win, rather than pay to play. It wasn't fair to rape and pillage every user for every penny you can squeeze out of their loyal fans. How is this being loyal to them. This is a betrayal in every level to a gamer with even an ounce of street cred. Everyone who claimed to know anything about modern games already know his name and what he brought to the damn table. His name was Gregory Janssen, and his pushing out of the company would be headline news 24 hours down the pipe.

Gregory couldn't look at it any further, as he slammed his fist into the desk.

Bang!

The two men looked back to see Gregory's initial reaction to being pushed out.

"I made this company the success it is today," he calmly started, "Do you honestly think I'm not going to challenge this injustice in court?"

"You can challenge it all you want," one of the suits standing at the other end of the table replied. "It will not change the outcome. After the new expansion launches in February, your services will no longer be required."

"You would be unemployed if it wasn't for my hard work!" Gregory repeated.

"That doesn't matter any more," the suit chided back. "This was all your doing Gregory. You chose to let the company go public, you chose to sell you controlling stake to the Omni-vision corporation. You made these choices that led to this moment, not use. You want to find who's to blame? I suggest consulting a mirror."

"This isn't fair," Gregory murmured to himself as he begun to realize how futile it was to speak with this heartless corporate whores.

"Life isn't fair, Gregory." The suit coldly retorted. "If you want fair, go to church and take your case up with the big man himself. He cares."

"Didn't take you for a religious person, Karl." Greg said, standing up from the board room table.

"The only god I care about is profit." Karl replied, "Everything else is a distraction that takes us away from the only thing that matters: keeping our shareholders happy."

"And what if this all comes crashing down in my absence?" Gregory said, gesturing to the building around him. "Who will you blame when the users desert the game and move onto something else more worthy of their loyalty?"

"Never going to happen," Karl said, smirking at the very thought. "Your users are hooked on this game as if it were crack. We could double the price, and they'll still pay for it without hesitation. We're not going to make less money in your absence, we're going to be fucking rolling in it."

"You say that now," Gregory said, walking away from the desk. "But something could happen that might break their habit. Something that might scare them away and to the loving arms of a new program that is more comforting."

"There is no competition out there to be afraid of," Karl countered. "And until there is, we have nothing to worry about."

"Hey," one of the other suits in the room called out, "You have to sign those!"

"No, I don't." Gregory said, as he walked towards the door. "Send a copy to my lawyers, and after I've had them go through it with a find toothed comb, then I might consider signing them."

"This offer is only good for three days," Karl reminded him. "If you refuse to take this golden parachute, we'll just shove you out the door. We're offering you a quiet way out, to bow out with dignity."

"You're afraid my firing will cause protest." Greg countered, "And it will regardless of how quiet you try to make this happen. Did it ever occur to you that I might want to be fired?"

"It did not," Karl honestly replied, "Have you done anything that would give us a reason to fire you with cause?"

"Not yet," Gregory said as he opened the conference room door, "But give me time, and I'll come up with something for you."

After Gregory walked out the door and into the hallway, the two suited men stood there and just stared at one another.

"I'm sorry," the other suited man said to Karl, "But did he just threaten us?"

"No, I don't think so." Karl confessed, "He's just angry, and lashing out. I know him, and he'd never do anything to harm his own players. He would never do anything to his game to screw us over, and taint what is his virtual legacy."

"Are you sure about that?" the suit asked, "What if he decides to burn the store down rather than let someone else take over?"

"He'd never do that." Karl assured his friend, "We also have many people in place to make sure the game is never harmed nor interrupted. We have experts running the platform that are on our side. They won't let Gregory do anything that will interrupt the servers or our revenue stream."

"The expansion launches in two weeks," the suit reminded him, "I can't begin to tell you how bad this could be if he raises a stink before that happens. We could lose a lot of players and money if he chooses to make this public!"

"Calm down," Karl said, as he walked towards the window which had an amazing view of the bridge. "No one is going to leave before the launch of a new expansion. That would be like a kid boycotting Christmas. Never going to happen."

"Keep an eye on him," the suit insisted, "This is on you if something goes wrong, we clear on that?"

"Crystal," Karl replied, quoting one of his favorite movies.

With that cleared up, the suit walked out of the room and left Karl there alone to collect his thoughts. Karl walked over to the table and picked up the papers that they had given to Gregory only moments ago. Omni-vision was offering the soon to be former C.E.O. of Jannsen Gamer Solutions a golden parachute worth millions to accept his fate and step away from the company he build. Considering he was being pushed out of the company he helped build from the ground up, he took it rather well. With the launch of the new expansion to what was in essence the most successful virtual reality game in human history, they had just given the man who created it two weeks notice. Karl took the papers and tucked them under his arm. As he walked out the door, he was well aware of how chaotic the next two weeks were going to be. He didn't expect too much of a fight out of Janssen, but he also never expected Janssen to sabotage his own game to get back at the company that sold him out. In two weeks time, Karl would learn the hard way how wrong he was making those two assumptions.