Delta: The First Person at the Peak

Chapter 270 The Scapegoat

In Conference Room No. 3, there was no tense standoff, only a pre-prepared agreement and a negotiation with no suspense whatsoever.

A full hour.

Finally, Yifeng picked up the pen.

His fingertips trembled uncontrollably, leaving fine ink marks on the paper with the pen tip, but he still signed his name carefully, stroke by stroke, at the end of the agreement.

The core of the agreement is simple yet brutal:

He needs to proactively submit his resignation and acknowledge in the official announcement that he bears full responsibility for the accident due to "management negligence and major oversights in technical review," and fully cooperate with the group to complete the subsequent handover of work and handling of public opinion.

In exchange, the group waived all responsibility for him, did not file any civil claims, and did not disclose any information that would be detrimental to his career development. It not only retained the equity incentives that had already vested, but also paid the full amount of the statutory N+1 severance pay, leaving him with a last shred of dignity.

This swiftly finalized decision was not only driven by Su Ming and Zi Ying behind the scenes, but also a tacit choice by the group's top management—they needed someone to quickly quell the storm.

The moment he signed the document, Yi Feng felt as if all the strength had been drained from his body.

He's out.

He had no other choice.

He knew better than anyone else that this was a dead end for Su Ming and Zi Yingbu.

But he had no evidence to prove his innocence.

All the paths were blocked by Su Ming and Zi Ying.

What chilled him to the bone was that he could see perfectly clearly that the group didn't care about the truth at all.

All they need is a scapegoat, an outlet for the players' overwhelming grievances, and a pawn to be discarded and accounted for to the board of directors.

And he was the perfect candidate.

He persevered for five whole years, starting from the bottom, and transformed the Fire Mode from an unpromising project into a flagship project, a world-class game that could rival League of Legends.

But overnight, he lost everything.

All those lofty ideals, those initial aspirations "for the players," and all those hard-won achievements have become a joke.

A small cardboard box contained five years of his youth and hard work.

The morning sun in Shenzhen was blinding. He stood downstairs, holding a cardboard box, looking up at the towering building that reached into the clouds, at the floor where he had toiled for countless days and nights. The blinding sunlight made his eyes sting, but he couldn't shed a single tear.

In the end, he simply sighed softly, turned around, lowered his head, and merged into the morning rush hour crowd. His figure was quickly swallowed up by the bustling crowd.

He finally found a moment to take out his phone, which had been vibrating all morning. Among the densely packed unread messages, Jiang Feng's dozen or so messages were at the top—from the initial report of the incident last night, to the continuous inquiries in the early hours of the morning, and now to the anxious questions this morning.

His fingertip hovered over the screen for a long time, and finally he only typed one sentence and clicked send:

I'm sorry, I didn't do it.

Five minutes before this message was sent, the Delta Project team's official announcement had already been released across all platforms:

We apologize to all players for the system vulnerability incident.

Effective immediately, we have accepted the resignation of Yifeng, the person in charge of the Firefight Mode. Ziying, the former person in charge of the All-Out Battlefield, will take over as the person in charge of the Firefight Mode and will be in full charge of all subsequent player appeals, account unbanning, and compensation and appeasement work.

The moment the announcement was released, the entire internet erupted in uproar.

Yi Feng's social media comment section was already filled with angry players' insults, and the overwhelming accusations and curses completely swallowed him up like a tidal wave.

…………

Meanwhile, in dormitory 214.

Jiang Feng was also extremely busy.

Because of a large-scale, indiscriminate ban across the entire server.

Overnight, his Zhengfeng Esports Club had over a hundred accounts banned, all of them receiving ten-year bans.

Among the business owners who came to us, some had their accounts banned, and even those whose accounts weren't banned had their accounts largely confiscated.

Fortunately, this large-scale system vulnerability across the entire server had nothing to do with the clubs, and most owners understood and didn't hold the clubs responsible.

But we still need to appease the boss.

Even the club's thugs kept surrounding him, asking questions. After all, everyone in the industry knew that Jiang Feng and An Ke had close ties with the Delta Force team. With such a big incident, everyone thought Jiang Feng would know the inside story.

Everyone was in a state of panic. This was one of the most serious incidents in the history of online games, and it happened to the world's number one online game.

This absolutely has to be included in the game's chronicle!

Jiang Feng gave a few perfunctory replies, then sat down in a chair, his brows furrowed as he fell into deep thought.

He'd seen this kind of mistaken banning and anti-cheat programs damaging players' hard drives before.

But it was definitely not on such a terrifying scale.

Just looking at the ban ratio of the thugs around him, it has reached an astonishing 2:1.

Even the ban rate for cheaters wouldn't reach that number.

This is definitely a problem.

He swiped his phone and scrolled through Douyin and Weibo, only to be met with a cacophony of angry comments.

#DeltaCryptoBanTenYears##YiFengApologizes##DeltaCryptoBanIsAVirus# These hashtags dominated the top of the trending topics list, and every click on one of them revealed players' complaints and insults.

The comment section of Delta's official account and Yifeng's personal social media page have been completely flooded with vile and offensive insults.

Jiang Feng's uneasy feeling grew stronger and stronger.

Just then, Chen Yulin rushed over, shouting, and shoved her phone directly in front of Jiang Feng's face:

"Fengzi! Stop thinking about it! The official announcement is out! Something big has happened!"

Jiang Feng stared at Chen Yulin's phone in disbelief.

"Yifeng... resigned?"

He swiped his finger across the screen quickly, reading the short announcement over and over again three times.

Besides officially announcing Yifeng's departure, the announcement only offered a perfunctory apology for the system vulnerability and hastily acknowledged the recent large-scale wrongful account blocking issue.

Then, the second announcement promised that all account ban records would be retroactively updated to before the "Clean Up Operation".

It's equivalent to a general amnesty.

Even if yesterday's server-wide wrongful ban was indeed outrageous, the accounts found to be cheating during the recent "Clean Up" operation were definitely banned without any problem.

This complete reversal means that all of Yifeng's efforts to eliminate the cheating environment under pressure and with all his might have been in vain overnight.

What's even more frightening is that once this loophole is opened, cheating will only become more rampant and outrageous in the future.

At that time, those cheating players can brazenly claim: "The official has already unbanned them, so it must have been a wrongful ban!"

He pooped right on Green Play's head.

The entire announcement downplayed the serious incidents, making no mention whatsoever of the most egregious issue: the malicious damage to players' hard drives.

The Delta project team has undergone a complete transformation.

What on earth happened?!

Just then, my phone vibrated; it was a message from Yifeng.

It only takes eight words: I'm sorry, I failed.