A brand-new gacha banner goes live — supposed to be the day revenue takes off — yet Girls' Frontline 2's chart ranking doesn't budge an inch, and keeps sinking deeper. This might be the most surreal 'documentary' of Christmas 2023.
December 25th, just 15 days after launch, Girls' Frontline 2 (少前2: 追放) had already vanished from the top-grossing charts. That afternoon at 5pm, a new character banner codenamed 'Secondhand Smoke' (二手烟) was set to go live. In gacha game culture, the hours before and after a new banner typically see a revenue spike as players top up. So one dedicated player decided to document the entire day — screenshotting the QiMai (七麦) chart rankings every hour or two in a mock 'epic documentary' format.
10am — 'Chapter 1: The Storm Approaches' — ranking already looking dire.
12pm — 'Chapter 2: Steadfast as a Mountain' — not a single pixel of movement.
1pm — 'Chapter 3: Wait, Why Is It Dropping?' — the OP's confusion is palpable: 'Aren't you people supposed to pre-charge before the banner?'
3pm — 'Chapter 4: Freefall Continues' — doesn't look like a banner launch day at all.
5pm — banner officially launches. 'Chapter 5: CHARGE!'
6pm — 'Chapter 6: It... Didn't Move?' — one full hour after the banner went live, zero chart response.
6:30pm update — not only did the expected post-holiday surge never materialize, it actually dropped further.
7:30pm — 'Chapter 7' — the OP is now desperately asking: 'Has anyone ever seen a game rocket into the top 30 at 9pm?' Pure copium at this point.
9pm — 'Chapter 8: Don't Panic, the Data Just Hasn't Updated Yet, See You at 9:30' — the last stand of hopium.
9:30pm — 'Chapter 9: It... It Still Didn't Move. Why?' — the documentary concludes. A full 12 hours, and the ranking only went one direction: down.
The 'documentary' thread exploded in the comments. One player nailed it: 'This was THE season for a post-holiday bounce. If it can't even climb now, just pull the plug.' Another dropped the classic meme: 'Don't bully the young for being poor, don't bully the middle-aged for being poor, don't bully the elderly for being poor, the dead deserve respect' — a one-liner summing up the gulf between GF2's hype and its reality.
An interesting side debate erupted over whether QiMai data is even reliable, since it doesn't track PC revenue. Some argued the ranking was meaningless; others countered that GF2's mobile optimization is actually decent — unlike certain games where mobile is basically unplayable without a PC port.
One player pointed out the absurdity of GF2's PC launcher: 'First online game I've ever played where you have to manually close the game after an update, then relaunch through the launcher. Launcher updates, game updates, you close the game yourself, launcher re-opens it. Is this really that hard to program?' The technical jank was on full display.
Beyond the game itself, forum moderation became a hot topic. Players revealed that both the general discussion board and the GF2 subforum now ban all revenue-related posts. The dedicated GF2 subforum was called out for mass-banning anyone who criticized the game during the beta — 'the gold standard of astroturfing,' as one commenter put it. Someone tried to defend GF2, saying it's rude to trash a game in its own community, but got immediately shut down: 'During the third beta, people who gave normal story feedback got banned. Of course no sane person would go there.'
Meanwhile, another comment zeroed in on the deeper narrative controversy — the relationship between GF2's main character Daiyan (黛烟) and an NPC named Raymond (雷蒙) has been a powder keg in the community. The quip 'As long as Raymond has Daiyan launch her offensive, everything will be fine' sounds like a joke, but it's actually pointing at the storyline that many believe triggered GF2's reputation collapse.
As of this writing, the chart ranking has yet to recover. One 'epic documentary,' 12 hours of live-tracking, and the only conclusion it documented: this Christmas, Yu Zhong (the game director) is definitely not satisfied.
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