This picture holds my feelings for today. Jero has been hiding a dark past from me, and it was yesterday where it seemed he was almost forced to reveal it. And the only reason why he did, was to help a friend of not only his, but of mine.
Yesterday was supposed to be a good evening with him. Played a free VR game with a random earlier (called Sam & Dan: Floaty Flatmates). It’s a co-op puzzle solving game where you’re on one end of this gap and your co-op partner is on the other, and you two must work together to literally bridge the gap using scrap metal left over from the world
flooding.
You can play this game with a friend from your Steam friends list, and I was waiting for him to launch it. But I started getting impatient and got on VRChat to see if I can track him down, and he was online in in public instance.
He apologized for keeping me hanging, saying his Oculus (in SteamVR) was giving him issues. Sounds similar to the issues Ren was having with his headset. After doing a few runs in this world, I pulled him away from the crowds after he was asking about friends being online.. telling him about what Frost said in the group chat he created for the Unity teaching I was giving them (but said “I can’t tell you here”). He then said he was working on an idea, but also said he couldn’t tell me here.
We went to my private instance and then discussed, first myself sending him what Frost said about possibly not coming back on until a later date (due to financial issues with his family); how his mother is in prison for some reason (the reason was never given). Frost mentioned a form of financial aid (possibly similar to me), but said that since she’s in jail “again”, they took away this aid (and the bills are piling up).
Looked at Jero and said “I really want to help him, and clearly he needs financial
help, but there’s not really much I can do besides support.”
–
Then he asked me if I was ‘good’ at knowing how a ‘Winsock 6 server’
works, adding “you’re probably going to look at me differently after this”, then revealing his dark side: he is someone that will buy a bunch of Steam gift cards, convert them to
Bitcoin, and then sell them at a much higher price. In other words, doing similar to what was a bane last year with graphic card shortages of Crypominers buying them.
The reason why he was asking if I knew about this Winsock 6 thing (which I think is a bunch of proxy servers) and with how he has a VPN, he said he would be
“untouchable”.
And with Frost in a tough bind like this, he has made it a mission to try to help him (saying he can “make it all go away”), but he needs this Winsock 6 thing to proceed. Then looks at me, knowing I’m not really fan of this illegitimate practice, and said “if it works well, I just might.. make it my new job if it pays well.” It was almost as if he was saying “this could be our future as a couple. You’ll never have to worry about survival ever again.”
Said he was going to tell me this on Discord (even before I told him about Frost), then stopped himself knowing there could be admins watching what we say in it.
I really wanted to say “Jero, I know you want to help Frost. So do I! But.. this. This just isn’t something I can really support.”
And… I couldn’t. And honestly, as long as it’s not hurting anyone, why not just let him do what he needs to do? It just makes you think, what really is ‘legal’ at this day and age (? Hell, what I’m doing could be considered illegal if the government ever found out my mother’s been giving the check to me instead of her managing it.
And so, Jero’s starting to look and ask around for anyone that might hopefully know about how to get this Winsock 6 thing to work. Wished him luck, and also suggested he contact Zagro (as he might know, or know someone that does).
.
I still love Jero so very much, even when knowing this. As I said before, he’s not really hurting anyone by doing this. Steam gift cards aren’t exactly like graphics cards.