#zettel #third-space # The Grincher Ruined [[webfishing]]  webfishing is a 3rd-space kind of cozy video game that was released in October 2024. The whole gist of the game is that you and your friends join a shared lobby and just sort of hang out in there. You can fish! Or draw little shapes, or whatever. A lot of people streamed the game in the same way that one might stream [[VR Chat]], example. The Grincher was a griefing hacker (hackers?) that would isolate these servers that were being streamed, join them, and then proceed to evade bans using a system that would randomize the account's I.P. address. This means that with the only controls on the system being I.P. bans, these people could exist in the minds of people playing, with the fear that this user would join their server, steal their data, and delete their save file (the last of these wasn't actually possible [^1] ). This created a MASSIVE drop off in players: | Month | Avg. Players | Gain | % Gain | Peak Players | | ------------- | ------------ | -------- | ------- | ------------ | | Last 30 Days | 723.95 | -2.3 | -0.32% | 1195 | | April 2025 | 726.26 | -165.50 | -18.56% | 1195 | | March 2025 | 891.76 | -537.06 | -37.59% | 1725 | | February 2025 | 1428.82 | -1137.22 | -44.32% | 2761 | | January 2025 | 2566.03 | -894.45 | -25.85% | 5529 | | December 2024 | 3460.49 | -6623.27 | -65.68% | 10499 | | November 2024 | 10083.75 | 246.63 | +2.51% | 23966 | | October 2024 | 9837.12 | - | - | 22675 | ![[webfishingPlayers.png]] Right when the game peaked, a bad faith griefer team join ed the game and ruined it for everyone. ## Related Thoughts: - It's interesting to consider the "urban legend"-ness of this kind of thing. I think you could totally make up a scenario like this and pass it off as a creepypasta like 8 years ago. ## Sources [^1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/webfishing-has-an-urban-legend-how-grincher-instills-fear-into-the-hearts-of-many/