A small-time indie gacha game boss literally told players they 'don't deserve to play without spending 100K RMB' — and he wasn't even joking. He doubled down for days, mass-banned hundreds of players, and triggered one of the most spectacular rating collapses in recent mobile gaming history. Welcome to the disaster that is 'Encounter in the Maze' (邂逅在迷宫).
It all started with a routine thing: a major version update dropped, test server players found a bunch of bugs and number balance issues, and did what any tester would do — reported them to the dev team. But instead of fixing the bugs, the studio owner decided the players were just trying to scam compensation rewards, and went full passive-aggressive mode.
The owner, who goes by 'CaiCai' (菜菜), isn't just some CM — he's the actual boss of the company. And he personally got into arguments with players. Here are some highlights from the chat logs:
The original poster summed it up perfectly: 'With the way he talks, I genuinely can't figure out how this guy ever became a boss.'
What happened next was even more absurd. When the player posted the chat logs on TapTap (China's biggest mobile game review platform), the official response wasn't an apology — it was: ① Remove all of that player's posts from the forum; ② Mute them in-game; ③ Kick them from the official Discord-equivalent group chat; ④ Kick anyone who voiced support. When players confronted the mods about the mass kick, the excuse was 'my hand slipped.'
The OP fired back with a perfect retort: 'How exactly does your hand slip and accidentally eject a whole group of people?'
But it got worse. The OP himself got banned the next day (Feb 24), along with dozens of other players who complained in the in-game public chat. Even more creepily, muted players discovered their messages became invisible to others — switch channels and come back, and your messages simply vanished.
During a maintenance update, the devs also split the global world chat channel — separating new server players from the old guard. The message was clear: dump the veterans, protect the fresh whales.
Around a few hundred players got muted or kicked — and the game's actual active player base was only around a thousand. Among the casualties were multiple whales who had spent tens of thousands of RMB. Furious players mass-1-starred the game on TapTap, dragging the rating from 8.9 to 6.5 in a single day. By the time the post went up, it had hit 6.3.
One top comment nailed the dark truth: 'Because some players are just masochists — they get treated like dirt by the devs and still keep spending, keeping this game alive.' Another added bluntly: 'Whale simps aren't called that for nothing.' Harsh words, but they reflect the uncomfortable reality of some server-merge gacha ecosystems.
Now here's where it gets spicy. This game had a system where players could transfer money directly to the studio boss's personal account via group chat for premium packages — packages that weren't available through normal in-game purchases. We're talking exclusive high-value bundles, pre-deposit bonuses with absurd value, experience boosts, and even server transfer privileges. For a server-hopping grinder game, this gave off-platform spenders a massive, undisclosed advantage over regular players.
One of the kicked whales — nicknamed 'Kong Lao' (空佬, 'Boss Kong') — noticed the transfer destination looked like a personal bank account, not a business one. So he filed a report with the tax bureau for suspected tax evasion.
One commenter explained the obvious motive: 'Private payments through group chat let them dodge taxes and skip the platform's cut — it's the same trick as streamers funneling iOS payments through WeChat to avoid Apple's 30% tax.'
Realizing the situation was spiraling out of control, the devs finally posted an official response on TapTap — which was still dripping with passive-aggression. Because so many players had been muted or had their reviews deleted by then, the response section was eerily empty. The OP's reaction: 'They accuse players of taking things out of context, yet can't produce a single complete chat log themselves.'
CaiCai then slid into Kong Lao's DMs trying to negotiate. Banned players spontaneously organized a group, compiled their demands, and had Kong Lao deliver them — demands including account unbans, post restoration, and a public apology.
The demands also highlighted another shady move: during Chinese New Year, the studio gave out 888 'Heng Gold' (premium currency), marketing it as a festive gift — when it was actually just compensation for the new version's bugs. Classic rebranding a fix as generosity.
That evening, CaiCai and Kong Lao had a phone call. Kong Lao reported back that all demands had been agreed to. Everyone thought it was over — just wait for the apology the next day.
Except the 'apology' that came the next day was anything but. According to an insider (内鬼), the statement went through multiple revisions. The original draft was even worse:
The player community's response was devastating:
And to add insult to injury, players who were muted in-game still hadn't been unbanned. Not a single promise had been kept.
One commenter delivered the ultimate burn: 'These gacha game bosses want to reach into your wallet AND act like they're your dad — zero awareness that this is a service industry. Absolutely unreal.' Another pointed out: 'The fact that people still dump money into a game run by such a clown-show operation is exactly why this company feels untouchable.'
As of the original post, the studio had gone silent. For a game with barely a thousand active players, watching the boss personally torch his own community, mass-ban hundreds including big spenders, dodge taxes, fake an apology, and break every promise — it's a textbook case of indie gacha self-destruction.
One commenter noted: 'This game has been around since 2017-2018 with the whole server-reborn mechanic, right? That's why they have the nerve to act like this — the game just won't die.' Maybe that's the real source of their arrogance: the whales will keep spending, the ratings can be slowly astroturfed back, and players have the memory of goldfish. But this time, at least a few hundred people who got kicked out of that group chat won't forget.
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