Despite giving his soul for the year to Plaze's Plaza, Fulil couldn't help but be disappointed at the much smaller stores that the Gaming Overlord set up after Sergeant Hammer's defeat.

Sure, logically, Fulil knew that because of Carmine withdrawing her support, he would be forced to downsize somewhat. But the Plaza shop he was in was really small in comparison to before.

Oh well, at least he could buy the new games he wanted.

Browsing the new section on January 31st, he quickly found the new flagship game that they were trying to promote with a slightly cheaper price tag than the others.

Clyde Bot. Some type of platformer, he could tell from the cover.

Assuming the figure on the cover was Clyde Bot, then he was an orange robot whose head was separated from its body, and the body was sort of just an oval with two blue arms similar to Plaze himself. Additionally, he had no legs, instead just floating. His face was a screen similar to Vox, but his head was sort of like Plaze, having ear muff things and a small button on the top of his head.

Personally, he liked Mario more than Clyde Bot, just purely based on looks. But he could get Plaze trying to branch out from what was apparently just copying Earth's characters.

Speaking of copying, Fulil decided he should pick up an Earth game as well. He didn't pick up Zelda last time, so he was going to do it today.

Taking his two games, the sheep sinner walked up to the counter.

"Hello…" The tired goat rang him up, "Do you have…"
Nodding, he took out his membership card, which entitled him to a 50% discount.

"That'll be $47.5…" The tired sinner said, holding his hand out.

Giving him his money, the tired cashier placed it into the register and went back to passing out.

Poor dude.

Fulil walked back home, only slightly concerned about being jumped on the way back home.

Booting up the game, Fulil is greeted by the title card and the avatar of Clyde Bot. The game had a sci-fi theme to it, somewhat similar to Herta's Space Station. But while he wasn't a fan of that style himself, he was largely fine with it.

The title screen is also pretty simple, there are three buttons. Start, Clyde Bot, and Quit.

He knew what start and quit did, he played through the Mario game that the Plaza put out earlier. But Clyde Bot was new, so he pressed that one.

He was greeted with a schematic of Clyde. There were little arrows pointing to certain sections of Clyde's body.

His thrusters, which is where his legs should be. His backpack, head, face, and arms all also had arrows pointing to them.

All of them were blacked out, however, and they were all listed as being unlocked in different levels.

Figuring that it was probably some type of game mechanic, he decided to ignore it for now and just start playing the game.

Clyde downloads itself into level 1, which again, looks suspiciously like Mario, and he starts playing the game.

Hell, even the controls are somewhat like mario. You still jump on enemies to kill them. The enemies were robots, so that made it a little original, but not by much.

If it wasn't Plaza branded, he would've just called it a ripoff, but oh well.

Playing through the game for 15 minutes and beating a few levels, he was just about to call it quits until the next level immediately had something new and shiny standing in front of Clyde.

Being the sheep that he is, he immediately drags Clyde over to pick it up.

The screen shifts over to the schematic of Clyde, and his head piece is lit up with the arrow illuminating in a green light. He had just unlocked the radar ability.

Reading the description, he could now press a button on his controller, and the button would reveal what is inside a block, and can even disperse illusion blocks. But he could only use it 3 times every level.

He was also reassured that it wasn't required to beat any level.

Excited for the shiny new toy, he immediately pressed the button to use it. It revealed that there was a silver cog, the equivalent of mushrooms in this game, in a block that he would've never bothered to break otherwise.

Feeling curious about the other parts of Clyde Bot, he starts playing through the game again, refreshed and having a much more enjoyable time.

"Say, Val…" Vox pointed towards Clyde, who was on the screen, "Don't you think Clyde looks a little like if Plaze and I fused together or something?"

Busy having his beauty nap, Valentino opened a singular eye towards the screen, then closed it again, "Vox, just because a character has a screen for a face doesn't mean it's trying to be like you, for Lucifer's sake."

Frowning, the TV Overlord grumbled, "Well geez, I'm just trying to start a conversation."

Continuing into the next level, Vox thinks about what he knows about the Plaza's current situation.

He knows that Carmilla and Plaze basically haven't spoken to each other since their alliance ended. That was good for him, as that was basically signaling to Vox that he could do what he wanted with Plaze. It just meant that she thought he had no chance.

More likely than not, the people around Plaze filled him with deceptive information about how he's an evil son of a bitch who would undercut his business.

To be fair, he was.

But he liked Plaze. He's a smart newcomer in a world where there weren't many of those. If Vox marketed it to him correctly, then he would be sure to join him.

It was just a matter of timing and location. He needed to find him alone, and right after something bad occurred to him that only he could solve.

Now, he really was considering manufacturing something bad to happen to Plaze. Really, he was.

But on second thought, he really would like to not have that conversation with him once he somehow finds out in the future. So he was going to be the bigger man and not blow up his stores.

As Vox reached the new added component of Clyde, the final one, he thought of what it could be.

So far, his thrusters helped him jump higher, his arms were able to grab items from far distances, his back allowed him to fly a bit, and his head found hidden treasures. With these extra schematics, he could even go back to previous levels and be able to clear them using new routes he couldn't explore before.

As a side note, he was slightly miffed about the scene changes throughout the different worlds. The first level was a sci-fi world, his favorite, but then it changed to western, fantasy, eastern, and all that other junk he didn't care about.

Really, Herta's Space Station got it right. Sci-fi rules.

As he reads the new component added to Clyde's face-

"CLYDE CAN SHOOT LASER EYES NOW?!" Vox shouted out in excitement, all on board for the new development.

"Shut the Hell up, Vox," Valentino grumbled as he shoved a pillow over his head.

Apologizing, Vox mentally checks the day that he's going to go to Plaze.

February 7th. That sounds good.

VPs, PVs… Ah, he'll figure it out later.

Plaze looked down at the 1st week reports on February 6th after releasing the new batch of games.

He was prepared for it not to be good. In fact, he was specifically warned that he was going to run out of stock most likely.

But this…

"So we only sold a small percentage on consoles, then we sold almost all of the new games, and we're STILL only barely breaking even?!"

His secretary was sweating like crazy as he tried to explain, "We sent out some surveys on why people were willing or not to buy our new games. There are several reasons why people didn't make new purchases this time around…"

His eyes glowed with an intimidating light as he demanded, "Tell me why."

Alha looked down at his report, listing off one reason, "Well, um… Due to the ability to completely reset your data in almost all of the games, oftentimes our customers would finish the game and hand it to someone else so they could play, diminishing our sales."

Seriously? But that was a good feature for replayability… Shit, is he going to have to remove that so people would actually keep buying the new games? Or maybe he has to figure out a different means of getting people to stop sharing their games with each other.

His mouth thins as he begrudgingly gets that reason, "Well, alright, I'll figure out how to stop that from happening… Are there other explanations?"

He nodded, flipping to another page, "There is also the fact that most of the customers who bought our new games already bought the console last time around, so there's naturally less sales from that. Plus, if you know someone with the console, you can just buy the game and play it on their console."

God, Satan, Lucifer damn it. Of course that was something that would happen. He just didn't expect it to fuck up his sales by that much.

Hell, last time, they made a million dollars. Most of that went to Carmilla, but they still made a million.

Now they were barely making a hundred thousand. Oh, how the mighty falls.

Still, at least the only way to go was up…

"There's also, um… One last reason that you might not like to hear," Alha slowly said, as though he regretted telling him that.

Rolling his head, Plaze told his secretary, "If I can't handle hearing something stupid, I shouldn't be an Overlord. Hit me."

"People believe that you don't have much of a future as an Overlord due to Carmilla Carmine seemingly withdrawing her support away from you," He said, taking a step back.

He was right to take a step back as Plaze slammed his fist into his desk, putting a hole in it as he shouted out, "ARE PEOPLE STUPID?! HOW IS MY SUCCESS TIED TO HER?!"

His body grows as his rage does, which gets his head to touch the ceiling. A sign that he should back down before he causes too much damage to his HQ.

The leopard-human sinner nervously explained, "Ah, well… We didn't spend much on advertising ourselves, so a lot of our customers' knowledge of us came from the early days where we were very tied to her brand. Now that we've split up, we didn't create an image that made us separate from her, which hurt our standing."

Goddamn, that was stupid. No wonder why they were sinners, they were all stupid.

"Advertising…" Plaze tested the word on his tongue before nodding, "Fine, I forgot about the advertising. Alha, go prepare the documents necessary to hire a proper advertising department."

He quickly makes a note of it on his arm, "Anything else, sir?"

Plaze quickly thinks it over for a second before shaking his head, "No, you're free to go."

Heaving a relieved sigh, Alha quickly vacates himself from his office.

Crossing his arms, Plaze was left alone to brainstorm ways to incentivize people from not sharing their games or consoles. Hell, even incentivize them to buy more.

He could remove the ability to reset game progress, but that seems like it'll tank the quality of the game. While Plaze was willing to lower quality for money, it seemed like too much for too little. After all, he himself liked being able to play the game again.

Maybe he could tie a game to being only able to be used in one console… But then that doesn't really solve the issue.

If only there was some way to easily get people to want to buy more than 1 console… Or maybe more than 1 game…

…If they could play the game together?

He was thinking of ways to dissuade sharing, but what if the key was the opposite? To encourage cooperation?

Thinking it over, it would be nice if he could play a game together with Mehira instead of one of each other watching as the other plays.

Like, some type of… multi-player game.

Smiling, he immediately took out a pen and paper and got to work trying to figure out how to make that work.

Yes, now this was the future of his industry!

Mehira's phone rings, quickly being picked up by the succubus.

"My lady, Vox was seen being driven to Plaze's territory 2 minutes ago."

Frowning, she said, "Thank you. Keep an eye on the situation if anything changes there."

Hanging up, she immediately makes a call to the two people she needed to keep for herself. She needed to ensure that they weren't with Plaze when that disaster unfolded.

It would be a shame. Plaze had gotten much further than anyone else she has ever supported.

But you simply could not infringe on another Overlord's future like that and not expect to be killed for it.

AN:

Written December 25th.

Clyde Bot is from the Discord sticker pack, by the way. My favorite Discord mascot.