This Chinese New Year, the news that several old games from Tianba Studio would be given away for free quickly spread throughout the Tianba Community.

Most players had no objections.

Like they say, the earlier you buy, the sooner you enjoy. They’ve been enjoying these old games for three to four years already, and they were dirt cheap back then. Now giving them away for free doesn’t really matter.

But there were a few players who felt betrayed, saying, "I just bought it and now you’re giving it away for free?"

Refund, I must get a refund!

Those who could get refunds initiated them, then grabbed the freebie, basically getting it for nothing.

For players who didn’t qualify for refunds, they gave the game bad reviews and low ratings, outright saying, "I’m an idiot," and criticized Tianba Studio for not being decent—giving games away for free without a heads-up.

But it’s not a big deal...

When making this decision, Chen Ba had already anticipated the players’ reactions. A few curses and complaints? He didn’t care at all.

Compared to the complaints and negative reviews from this event, the chaos caused by the launch of a new version of "Cultivation Fantasy" was more severe.

"Cultivation Fantasy" had been in public testing for more than a month, and besides the routine maintenance every Wednesday, it underwent a significant version update.

This update added a lot of new content.

The main objective of the update was to "reduce workload" for players, so they wouldn’t need to spend too much time cleaning up daily chores; just logging in daily and collecting their rewards would suffice.

The intentions were good.

After all, "Cultivation Fantasy" is different from other MMO games. Players don’t need to spend huge amounts of time on development, just need to idle in the background.

Players also supported this update because no one wants to be as exhausted with a game as they are with a job, completing endless daily tasks.

But this version, which satisfied both players and game planners, caused unexpected chaos just a few hours after the update.

Reducing workload was the right move.

But as the saying goes, different strokes for different folks—not every player of "Cultivation Fantasy" feels like playing the game is akin to working.

Uh... let’s put it another way!

Not every player hates this work-mode gaming; some actually enjoy the grind and heavy labor in games.

This update, claiming to reduce workload, in truth, wasn’t welcomed by some who didn’t want to accept Chen Ba’s goodwill. They preferred the game to require more effort.

Thus, conflicts arose.

After the version update, the content requiring grind was greatly reduced, with only daily check-ins and bounty tasks remaining—most of the time is spent idling.

But some players don’t want to idle; they love playing "Cultivation Fantasy" and don’t enjoy other games...

What should they do?

With nothing better to do, they ran off to kill those idling players, gathering rewards or karmic force that way.

Did you know?

The game backdrop of "Cultivation Fantasy" is an expansive continent, named the Immortal Spirit Realm.

The areas where players can safely idle are minimal; only a few zones offer this safety.

And are these so-called safe zones truly safe?

Not at all!

Take the "Seven Great Immortal Sects" in the game as examples—the sect territories openly forbid fights. Once discovered, they’d be expelled and punished by the sect’s law enforcement disciples.

"A group of Evil Cultivators guessed that players were keeping the game in the background while playing other titles! So they formed a large team, uniting to slaughter the safe zones..."

"Slaughter the safe zones?"

Chen Ba was a bit surprised; can safe zones be attacked? What were those law enforcement disciples doing, and why didn’t they stop these guys?

"They exploited a loophole!"

Yang Dong explained, "The number of law enforcement disciples in each sect is limited, around a hundred."

A limited number of law enforcement disciples policing tens of thousands of players—errors are inevitable, and they can’t keep track of everything.

Additionally, these karmic force-driven Evil Cultivators have formidable combat prowess. Even if their Cultivation Realm is not high, it’s not hard for them to delay the law enforcement for a while.

Once they outnumber the law enforcement disciples heavily, they can’t handle the situation, giving karmic force players the chance to slaughter "helpless" players.

Massacre!

Do you know how many players are idling at a single sect’s location?

At least a few thousand, as many as tens of thousands!

When those idling players switch back to the game intending to claim their rewards, they found their screen turned black and white, their corpse lying on the ground—how pissed do you think they get?

WTF?

Weren’t we idling in a safe zone? How could we still get killed? How did they do it?

The players were stunned.

As for getting killed while idling in a safe zone, the culprits are easy to spot because they didn’t hide, even posting battle reports in the community.

But this does not really concern the culprits...

The Evil Cultivators taking advantage of them idling are indeed vile, but isn’t the root of this problem the loophole in the game’s safe zones?

"Ba announces he is responsible for this attack!"

"Are you Ba himself? The person in question hasn’t said anything, and you declare it for him?"

"Can other players ambush us in a safe zone—how is this not Ba’s fault? If he hadn’t said this was a safe zone, would I idle here?"

"Still calling him Ba? More like ’Ba the parasite!’"

The community was in an uproar, with players clamoring for Ba to take responsibility and explain why idling in a safe zone could result in attacks.

Some even suggested that now that the safe zones’ flaw has been exposed, it’s unsafe to idle. Tianba Studio should fix this gap so everyone can play with peace of mind.