CHICAGO — Local man Todd Thompson found relief today from his grueling 12-hour day of playing Diablo IV and can now look forward to unwinding at his office job.
“Only one more hour of grinding Ruins of Eridu and then I can finally relax and finish those QC reports for Jim, It’s great to get away from the old 12-to-12 and finally be back at the old 9-to-5,” said a bleary-eyed Thompson as he disposed of his 5th red bull can. “What can I do, though? I mean, someone has to put platinum on the table for me and my barbarian alt.”
Thompson’s manager, Jim Humphries, said he has definitely noticed a change in Todd’s behavior as of late.
“He is usually one of our top guys, so I’m not really sure what is up with him; he looks like he hasn’t bathed in weeks and keeps muttering, ‘D4 is just as good as D2 if you think about it’ which I can only assume is some kind of millennial talk for buying drugs on the dark web,” said Humphries as he Googled “how to tell if your employee is smoking D4.” “I’ll be honest though, he seems more committed than ever; the other day I caught him crying what seemed like tears of joy at his desk after he clocked in, a side effect of smoking this mysterious D4, no doubt.”
Thompson isn’t the only one putting in long Diablo IV hours deep into the night in dangerous working conditions, which include windowless, poorly ventilated rooms and on-the-job injuries ranging all the way from blistered mouse clicking fingers to gaming chair ball stickage, all while feeling improperly compensated. The worsening gaming conditions have caused some players to unionize and go on strike.
“We are all putting in good, honest work, and we will not rest until our demands for better updates and more DLC are met,” said Martha Potski, the head of the Illinois chapter of the union, in a speech given at the Deckard Cain Memorial GameStop. “While we’re at it, maybe rebalance the classes even more so that they suck shit so maybe we can log off and see our families. I heard my daughter just had a baby, apparently, but I didn’t really have time to glance too much at the discord message before I had to get back to farming gold.”
At press time, announced plans to potentially start live streaming his Excel spreadsheets on Twitch.
