Hearing the young lady's voice, Little Li felt like a drowning man seeing a glimmer of hope and hurriedly said, "I'm a player of Legend. My account was hacked, and I need to reset my account password."
"Please enter your national identification number used for registration!" the customer service lady said gently.
"Uh, sister, I just filled it in randomly..." Little Li was on the verge of tears. What should he do!
"You can also use the phone number used for registration," the customer service lady patiently prompted.
"Miss, I also made up the phone number, and I filled in the email randomly. But I can tell you what equipment I have on my account and when I got it. Can this information suffice? I promise you, this account is definitely mine. Please help me get it back." Little Li was almost in tears.
At this moment, Little Li was extremely anxious, desperately trying to recover his account.
"I'm sorry, sir. Based on this information alone, we cannot recover your password. Is there anything else I can help you with?" the customer service lady politely rejected Little Li's request.
The internet cafe owner nudged Little Li from behind. Little Li shuddered and quickly said, "Wait a minute, I have more evidence. I still have the pre-paid game cards I used to top up. Can I provide these card numbers?"
The customer service lady paused. "How about this, sir? Please don't hang up. This is the first time I've encountered such a situation. I need to ask my manager."
Everyone's eyes lit up for a moment, then dimmed again. They were all familiar with this routine.
They would say they needed to consult their manager, and after three minutes, they would smile and say, "I'm sorry, our manager has rejected your request. This does not comply with regulations, and our company's rules and regulations explicitly prohibit it. Thank you for calling."
They had all suffered this kind of loss before. They patted Little Li on the shoulder, offering condolences, and said they could do nothing to help.
However, they wondered why his account was hacked in the first place. It shouldn't normally happen.
Everyone's gaze turned to the internet cafe owner. Seeing their expressions, the owner quickly said,
"Brothers, the computers here are secure. We have installed the Tianxing Internet Cafe Assistant, which automatically shuts down every morning and clears any installed programs. There are absolutely no problems here."
Everyone also saw the internet cafe assistant running on the desktop. They had all heard of this assistant. The Tianxing Network Company had made its fortune with this, earning its first pot of gold.
"Hello, sir. We have consulted our manager about your issue, and the manager has agreed to help you recover your account. Please provide your pre-paid game card numbers. You need at least three cards, and they must have been topped up within the last week." The customer service lady gently stated the requirements.
Little Li's face turned red. That was a close call. Fortunately, he met the conditions.
"Hello, my card numbers are..."
Little Li recited the pre-paid card numbers one by one. After three minutes, a sweet voice came from the other end of the phone, "Hello, sir. Your account password has been reset. Please log into the game promptly."
Little Li hung up the phone, a smile on his face. Seeing that his account was recovered, everyone couldn't help but feel happy for him.
Little Li quickly logged into his account and entered the game, only to feel utterly dismayed.
What was going on? Where were his equipment? Where was his gold? Why was he completely broke? Was he standing alone in Tucheng with nothing?
Damn it, the hacker was inhuman! In just over ten minutes, they had plundered Little Li's account completely.
His equipment had been stripped, the items in his inventory were gone, his gold had vanished, and everything in his warehouse was gone.
What kind of speed did the other party have? Little Li looked at the game assist he had downloaded an hour ago.
The internet cafe owner walked over and asked upon seeing the game assist, "Brother, where did you get this game assist from?"
"I downloaded it from the internet," Little Li said weakly. He felt like dying now. Two months of hard work had turned into nothing.
If he had sold his top-tier equipment, the money would have been equivalent to three or four years of his salary. It was all gone now, vanished into thin air.
"Brother, you were foolish! The internet viruses are so rampant nowadays, why would you download from the internet? I can assure you, if you download ten programs from the internet, all ten will have viruses or Trojans. You don't want your game account anymore!" The internet cafe owner sighed, "Learn from your mistakes. Just consider it a lesson learned."
Little Li was dumbfounded. He had only tried to save a little money and ended up having his account hacked.
At this moment, another person wailed, "Why is my account banned? Damn it, what's going on?"
"Mine is banned too, what's going on?"
A wave of wailing spread through the internet cafe. It seemed that more than one person had been banned.
The internet cafe owner's face changed drastically. What had happened? He relied on these Legend players. After all, nine and a half out of ten people who came here played Legend.
If Legend players stopped coming, his internet cafe would be ruined. With such high internet cafe fees, people playing casual games or single-player games wouldn't come here.
"Damn it, it turns out Legend is cracking down on third-party programs! They said it disrupts the game balance. For fairness, they have decided to remove some features from the market and will sell them through the in-game shop. For third-party programs, if discovered without our company's permission, the account will be immediately banned!!"
"What does this mean? Can someone explain?"
"Yes, yes, please explain this ban too."
"It seems Legend is making a big move, aiming to kill off bot programs."
The internet cafe owner's face darkened. His small profits were about to disappear. The Legend company was quite quick to react; the third-party programs hadn't been circulating for long.
This Tianxing Network Company had already started a wave of cleanup and bans. Judging from this internet cafe, the ban was quite severe.
"Holy crap, Legend company is truly black-hearted! Banning accounts is one thing, but now they're asking for a deposit to play normally? Damn, this deposit is too much!"
Everyone crowded around and saw the amount of the deposit, collectively sighing. My goodness, this one payment was equivalent to a week's salary for an ordinary person.
Paying this deposit was heartbreaking. But if they didn't pay, their game accounts, which represented their hard work, were lost, leaving them in a dilemma.
And these third-party programs, it seemed they couldn't be used anymore. However, fortunately, the Legend company had a conscience and allowed auto-loot and auto-pickup to be purchased in the in-game shop.
It seemed they were still somewhat conscientious. But this move had directly wiped out the market for third-party programs.
At this moment, no one had the mood to play games. Those who were banned were contemplating whether to pay the deposit.
Those who weren't banned were quickly logging off, fearing they might be mistakenly banned. Nowadays, a saying was widely heard: "It's better to kill three hundred by mistake than to let one go."