Roll the Bones (LRG ENTRY)

K.E. Schierke

Roll the Bones

It’s the small mistakes that haunt you. The words spoken behind backs, the little debts left unpaid, the money that you ‘forget’ to get taxed. Those innocuous little actions that you would have forgotten even doing if they hadn’t come round to bite you in the arse. That’s where this nightmare began. One small error of judgement and… even I don’t know how much damage it’s done.

If anyone reads this letter, take this as my last will and testament - burn the whole house down. Whatever you do, don’t turn on the PC. Don’t even dare. You have no idea how much damage it’s caused. I can’t quite bring myself to do it, part of me can’t. Just - before you read the rest of this, make sure that bastard machine and everything in it is dust. Don’t let curiosity get the better of you. The reason I speak to you from beyond the grave is because I got taught that lesson by force.

So, here goes.

This horror started only a few weeks ago. A normal Saturday at the market in Stockport, a good place to loiter, kill a few hours and find the occasional bargain. It was never the most high-class market - close your eyes and pick up an item randomly and there was 50% chance it was either pirated or counterfeit, but anyone actually buying anything from there knew that, it was accepted. In a low-income neighbourhood of Manchester that’s the price you paid for a bit of luxury.

This time, though - there was a stall I hadn’t seen before. Nothing suspicious (by the standards of the place). Your average media stall, full of countless pirated copies of last years blockbusters and a bunch of 360, PS3 and the occasional PC game. I’m sure you’ve seen the sort. Where the games are sold in little plastic sleeves with a poor quality scan of the cover art put behind it. It wouldn’t fool your grandma.

I gave it a quick look. I wasn’t one for buying fake games - more often than not they wouldn’t even work - but a new stall was a rare sight, and quite frankly, the girl doing the selling was pretty cute. I skimmed through the items for a few seconds before one game caught my eye. It was one of the only properly boxed releases she had - a complete in box copy of Counter Strike: Global Offensive for PC.

“Anything take your fancy?” She smiled kindly at me.

I stuttered for a moment, thinking of some small talk but only coming out with;

“Yeah, hi! Uh, you do know CS:GO went free to play about a year ago, right?” I gestured towards the box. “I, uh, just don’t think you’re going to sell that.”

“Aye, I know.” She answered. “But you still have to pay, don’t you? That game is full of those Lootbox things, and if you want any of those nice guns and knives and skins and stuff - you’ve got to pay for the keys.”

“I don’t think I follow.”

“This is a special… collector’s edition, so to speak. Of my own making of course.” She chuckled lightly. “Buy it once, and you’ll be able to open those Lootboxes to your heart’s desire. At no cost to yourself.”

“Bullshit.”

That couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t. The rewards from Lootboxes were often valuable, sometimes to an absurd degree, and the Lootboxes themselves went on the steam marketplace for practically nothing. What she was offering sounded ostensibly like free money.

“Please, I sell counterfeits, not lies.” She kept up her cheery tone. “Tell you what, £10, and I’ll throw in Gears of War Judgement.”

This was the exact point where curiosity got the better of me. What was the worst that could happen? Worst comes to worst, It would look nice on the shelf.

“Deal - but hold the garbage.” I said, taking only CSGO and sliding over a tenner.

“Oh, fantastic.” She nodded slightly. “Just one thing, friend - just because you aren’t spending the money, doesn’t mean the price isn’t being paid.”

“Uh-huh” I said, half-listening, looking at the back of the box. “Take care now.”

If it had been another day, another game, the only thing I might have remembered from that whole trip was her smile. But there’s a reason I remember every word.

It took me a few days to get round to actually installing the game. By the time I got home I was definitely feeling more on the side of being £10 lighter than the side of being in ownership of some mystical copy of CSGO. It took me running it on my laptop from 2008 to make sure it wasn’t a virus before I actually put it in my gaming desktop.

On initial inspection there was nothing suspicious about it. If anything, it seemed too professional a product to be sold at the market. Putting it in booted up steam and after a short initialisation, it even appeared in the library, as it’s very own, seemingly official game.

[Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (Lucy’s dev branch)]

[Dev Branch for monetisation engineers/developers. Consequences for Misuse.]

L.

Well, that explained some things. It also eased some of my fears. It made some sense that the developers had some branch or something to test out their loot boxes without putting their own money on the line - though looking back now I can see that my mind had jumped forward to the prospect of riches and Legendary skins the moment it seemed 5% legit. The questions of “how did this branch leak” and “how am I the only one to get this ever?” never crossed my mind for too long after that moment. Honestly, by the time I clicked [Play] it might have been game over already.

It loaded like normal. The stupid-loud Valve logo, that weird lag the User Interface has on boot up, the generic main menu music - all there, all fine. For all intents and purposes, I had basically logged into my own account. One of a player who used to be addicted to the game but now only played it on special, typically alcohol-induced occasions. I couldn’t resist going straight for the jugular, checking my inventory and clicking on the first crate I found - some low tier crate from an Event in 2015 no one liked - and clicked open.

The same UI came up as usual, but instead of insisting i purchase a single-use key from Valve’s storefront, it instantly loaded an item in the slot it would have taken up - an item i had never seen before.

[##SKELETON KEY!]

It didn’t have an icon, and it looked exactly like the sort of thing that happened when your inventory bugged out, but lo and behold, when I pressed that [Open] key, it ran through the same ticking roulette wheel of guns, past the rares, uncommons, very occasional epic or legendary, and landing, inevitably, on the cheapest skin in the entire set. Some bright green MAC-10 skin that sold on the market for quite literally 20p.

But it would sell.

And I had gotten it for squat.

“Fuck me...”

I checked my steam balance, just to make sure, I even logged into online banking - no change. Sure, I’d need to get round to selling it, but I had actually just made money for nothing. Gambling without putting down a stake. And my account was loaded with these crates.

I closed the game. The possibilities at hand had me shaking. In an instant I knew all I needed was some time and patience, and I essentially had free money. The most expensive items I could get would sell on external sites for thousands of pounds. I might never need to work again.

That was, if I wasn't called into work the next morning. My co-worker had fallen ill, and that meant I had to fill in at the plant. It was no big deal. All that was on my mind was that it would be one of the last days I would ever have to work there.

Once I got home, I booted the game back up almost instantly - no scepticism this time. The Skeleton key was still there, and it still worked. I spent the rest of the night working out the most valuable crates I could open, thinking that if I opened too many, the Devs may have been flagged or something - I don’t know. In the end, I found some [Operation Bravo] boxes from years bygone to open;

[Rare-Common-Common-Common-Uncommon.]

“Can’t win them all” I thought to myself, as I checked the value of the items on the steam market, and sold them to people with buy orders. It wasn’t an amazing haul - after all was said and done I’d made £50 - but it was just the beginning, and I knew it.

I called my girlfriend, told her we could go to Agnelli’s - a high class italian restaurant - the next day. It was the first time in my life I could ever afford it. I could hear the happiness in her voice as I told her. Now, I wouldn’t have to work weekends, I could travel to see her - we could hang out more -

Or that was the plan.

I never expected to be crying in a bus shelter that night. It didn’t make any sense. She didn’t show up. When I tried to call her it went straight to answer mail. I heard but a single thing from her that evening. A lone whatsapp message.

[We’re through. Don’t try to talk to me.]

I never got another response. I haven't been able to get through to her since.

I got home. In my despair I went straight back to the crates. 10 Operation Vanguard crates - cheaper than the Bravo boxes but still worth a pretty penny;

[Rare-Epic-Epic-Uncommon-Common-Common-Rare-Common-Common-Uncommon]

The next day, things weren’t any better. I was called into work again - my coworker had apparently been sent to hospital now, and any attempt I made to contact my now-ex was in vain. The previous night’s haul had left me a few hundred pounds richer but aside from that, it was one hell of a shit day.

Oh well. Soon enough, I would have made enough money to leave the job for good. Even whilst I was there, I was buying all the crates I could off the market whilst the manager was looking the other way. When I got home I had now gotten to the point of skipping the unboxing animations and clicking crate after crate, focusing less on the individual ones and more on my haul as a whole. That night, half-drunk and half in despair, I must have opened about 50 of the damn things. And whilst my luck had gotten worse, when you play the game so many times, the odds eventually fall in your favour. I must have had 5 Epics and 7 Rares by the end - and it was now making me more in an hour than I did in a day at work.

But that’s when things started getting bad. My coworker wasn’t turning up again, and this time he hadn’t called in.

It was about two hours into work when I heard he’d died.

Apparently he died during surgery complications after inhaling fumes at the plant. I didn’t even make it to lunch before the police arrived and kicked us all out for ‘as long as it takes’. And considering that my boss was found to be storing about 2kg of Heroin in his safe the moment they searched the place - safe to say I wasn't going back to work anytime soon.

At this point, I was really into it, and as sad as Jim’s death was, now I had even more time to open boxes. It was like a drug at this point, every rare and epic pouring dopamine into my brain, without that guilt of laying down the stake.

But still, no matter how many boxes I opened, I still hadn’t hit the Jackpot - a Knife. A super rare item that you would maybe get after opening hundreds, if not thousands of boxes. Their prices could go way into the thousands - and they were arguably where a lot of the value was, at least for someone that didn’t have to stake their own money for it.

Still, I could probably have made a living opening 20 boxes and getting a few uncommons a day. Of course, you wouldn’t be reading this if that’s what I did. By this point, I don’t think I had a choice. The thrill, the rush of those Rares and Epics - its too much.

The next day, Environmental protection visited my house. Told me that after preliminary investigations, it was possible everyone at the plant had been exposed to the substance that killed Jim. Said that I was probably ok but I should stay inside as to avoid further exposure - because now there had been a chemical leak at the factory.

This was turning insane. But somehow, I still hadn’t made the connection. Of when this whole mess started.

I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed up, opening crate after crate, making bank and willing for the madness outside to blow over, knowing that I could live without the job whilst something at the back of my mind gnawed at me. A fear that was growing and growing after every crate I opened, every time I rolled the dice.

I decided that day to try and see my Ex. As happy as I was about the money, everything else was going to shit, and the balance was firmly in the shit’s favour now. Was I going to die like Jim? Who else was exposed? My Ex? My Boss? The whole town, maybe?

I had to pull over to cry. I was sleep deprived, exhausted, possibly poisoned - and the person that used to comfort me in these times was gone, whilst a friend lay dead. What did I do to deserve this?

I think that’s the first time I remembered the stall clerk’s words. That the price is always being paid. Is this what that meant? No, that was insane, it couldn’t be.

But the doubts didn’t matter. Arriving back at my flat after a trip that was ultimately unsuccessful, I loaded the dev build same as ever, opening box after box in one hand whilst downing vodka in the other. It went “well” that night. Of the hundred boxes i opened, a good twelve of them were high value rares. I made maybe £500 that night.

I was naive. Or maybe just addicted. Either way, part of me wouldn’t let me stop.

I tried reaching my Ex again the next day. Still without sleep.

Still fruitless. She might have not even been there for the amount of response I got after knocking on the door for what felt like hours and might have been days. It was all blurring together at this point - maybe a symptom of whatever I had been exposed to, maybe sleep deprivation, maybe both. All I remember of that day is a smudge of lootboxes, door knocking, selling and driving.

It wasn’t until I got home that I realised I had killed someone.

Blood dripped from the hood of my VW Golf, the radiator grill still clutching onto the viscera that some poor soul had left behind who knows when and where - but one thing was certain - I had run someone over, and they didn’t stand a chance.

I finally caught on. It was the game. It was the addiction. The price always has to be paid. And it was being paid in pain. I don’t know how I didn’t work it out sooner - My Girlfriend, Jim, the crash, maybe even the leak - it's the price being paid.

But… it was too late. My mind gnawed for it. Even watching the gore still drip from my car’s bonnet, a part of my brain begged for nourishment, begged for the dopamine drip of the stake-free gambling I had drifted so deep into.

That was last night.

This morning, I woke up at my desk, sleep finally having wrestled it’s control for a scant few hours, and that’s when I started writing this.

Lucy’s dev build was still open. And as I rose up from my sleep I saw the inventory tab, lit up in bright yellow.

[300 NEW ITEMS!]

Hundreds of commons, dozens of rares and epics. Thousands of dollars worth of skins on the marketplace, enough to live on for months.

And that’s before I got to the last page.

[Butterfly Knife: Doppler]

The rarest loot in the game. A knife, and a legendary one even amongst the hyper-rare category it sat in. Worth thousands upon thousands on it’s own.

I’m so sorry for what it costs. But my apology can never be enough, can it?

The game won’t uninstall. The disc tray won’t open. Even steam isn’t closing now, it just stays minimised, taunting me to reenter. I have to get out of here. I daren’t even think of the consequences of wha

This is a warning to whoever finds this message - Destroy it. Burn everything to the ground lest this get into the hands of someone else. It will wrap them around it’s little finger like it did me. Don’t be tempted by the riches.

They aren’t worth it.

Maybe I’m going mad, maybe it’s all a big coincidence - but this thing, it’s made me a killer. And I might not even know everything I’ve done. I have to run now. I beg that the person that finds this is a kind soul.

I have learned the price is always paid.

(POLICE NOTE: THIS EVIDENCE WAS FOUND IN THE INVESTIGATION OF THE STOCKPORT INCIDENT. FURTHER EVIDENCE HAS BEEN OBTAINED FOR TESTING PURPOSES).