sugarvalves [1963573] —
Original article
Insider at mass bounty service reveals $1bn payment received for JFK bounty immunity. BD owner confirms agreement, denies receiving payment. Z_junior rejects entire premise of interview.
The Torn City Times has been informed that the JFK faction has paid $1 billion to Bounty Depot in return for a lifetime moratorium on contracted bounties against them.
Pictured: The payoff may have also been accompanied by a cute, hand-written note, like this.
Bounty Depot is a privately run outfit that offers Torn citizens the chance to place hundreds of anonymous bounties on their opponents via third-party players. BD is not the only such service available - as many pedants have pointed out to me in recent months - but they are the most well-known, having placed over 60,000 bounties since their creation in 2020.
Run by LarryStooge, Bounty Depot describes itself as "the greatest stealth weapon in the game", but is this claim now questionable with news of their supposed allegiance towards JFK? Rumours of a Bounty Depot payoff reached me via the Torn City Times' Tell Your Story section last week. In this secret vault of public commentary, to which anyone in Torn can contribute anonymously, I received the following message:
"Bounty Depot was paid off by Z_junior for an undisclosed amount of cash in order to protect his factions from the bounties and mercenaries, only to later have some of his players join the ranks of mercenaries in Mercenary Depot."
This information was leaked to me by a member of Bounty Depot's management who wishes to remain anonymous. This person, who we will refer to as Milky Sue, told The Times that one player at the top of Bounty Depot was responsible for the incident that led to JFK paying them off, and it wasn't LarryStooge.
"So the reason they paid REDACTED off came straight from Z himself... REDACTED and Zeke were having a pissing contest over some bounties paid to be on him... After about an hour of back and forth, Z finally made contact with REDACTED and asked what was going on."
"Things shifted from trolling to actual respect, which is where Z decided that in the long run, paying us off is less expensive than the constant fight it would be getting revives during chains over bounties and the headache of how many we can place at any one time, currently just over 2k bounties in one go."
Milky Sue says that talks with Z_junior led to a $1 billion payoff to Bounty Depot in return for a lifetime of protection from contracts. If this is true, then the neutral nature of Bounty Depot is now in question, as it appears their deference, and perhaps their loyalty, has been bought and paid for by the JFK family. JFK leader Z_junior responded to our questions on this matter with the following comment.
Pictured: The opposite of yes.
When the Torn City Times interviewed Bounty Depot head LarryStooge about this accusation, he initially appeared to be in the dark regarding any form of payoff. At this point, the story appeared to be false. Perhaps it was simply a plant sent in by a rival faction member. Or maybe a disgruntled client of Bounty Depot was just trying to stir s**t, which is mean, because that's my job.
"This is the first I'm hearing that I was paid 1b to stop bountying on a person/faction O_o. Would be pretty nice to get 1b to stop bountying them though xD." - LarryStooge
But then, like Fred West trying to level off his patio, I did a little more digging. LarryStooge admitted that it was possible some kind of deal had been negotiated without his knowledge by one of his co-leaders, and he promised to look into it. I have been told that Bounty Depot management operates on a council-style setup, with each of them acting independently and trusting each other's judgement.
Indeed, the information regarding the payoff itself was leaked without LarryStooge's knowledge, with my informant Milky Sue later attempting to retract this story. Sadly, I suffer from journalistic phimosis, meaning that I was compelled to allow the story to run.
"Yo I dropped a news ticket about bounty depot getting paid off by jfk, can we not have that become anything for now. Discussions happen and we don't want those issues lol... we decided it was for the better not to have some info like that sent out."
While LarryStooge may not have been aware of the $1 billion payout initially, he was later able to confirm that some form of agreement existed after speaking with his colleagues. Larry told The Times that Bounty Depot is no longer able to accept payments for attacks upon JFK, JFK 2.1, and JFR - a fact he laments due to the "good money" these jobs brought in - but stopped short of confirming any financial exchange took place. Bounty Depot is, however, still free to coordinate attacks against his own faction, Monarch, and his teammates aren't too happy about that.
"Maybe JFK will accept Larry when Monarch finally has enough of him bountying his own factionmates." - SpeedSkateR
LarryStooge is currently a member of Monarch Research, formerly known as Helvete, and he told The Times that officers in the faction had put pressure on him to stop bountying JFK some time ago. This took place before the fee from JFK was paid, as they were retaliating against Helvete with bonus hits - the payment from JFK to Bounty Depot must therefore have been made before Monarch was formed.
And that's not all. If you re-read the initial comment from Milky Sue, you'll see they mention something about JFK mercenaries. The service to which MS is referring is Mercenary Depot, a hitman-for-hire outfit to be "used at your will we can target entire factions, break chains, or just make individual players cry." When pressed on the allegiances of those involved in their new Merc business, LarryStooge confirmed that a large proportion of Bounty Depot's mercenary ranks come from one particular faction.
"We started a merc business and a good chunk are from a lot of the HoF factions including the JFK fam."
If you are a member of a JFK rival, would you be happy spending yourhard-earned stolen cash down at Bounty Depot? Would your safety and security be under threat now that BD seemingly answers to JFK? If you work for Bounty Depot, and you are in a rival faction, are you aiding and abetting the enemy? Accepting payment from JFK and hiring their members en masse is a controversial move for a service that prides itself on anonymity and being able to bounty anyone in Torn.
Of course, Bounty Depot is no stranger to controversy. Earlier this year, LarryStooge's article on his firm's activities was published in the Torn City Times. Some of our more tantrum-prone readers got their knickers in a twist over this piece - a piece I stand by absolutely - claiming that the Torn City Times was promoting one service over every other and that its staff had received some kind of benefit in return for its publication.
The Torn City Times is an entirely not-for-profit organisation that has no use for money or items. This article was published solely due to our interest in the unique nature of the service offered. And furthermore, I can assure you that I have not exchanged favourable reporting for feet pictures in seven months, four days, three hours, and twenty-one minutes. And nor shall I do so for the foreseeable future..
We are unsure whether the reported $1 billion price JFK negotiated for bounty immunity has been offered towards other factions. What we do know, thanks to BD co-chief dARkasHELz, is that such deals could be made with other factions, if the price is right. This opens up an interesting can of worms - as if a can of worms isn't interesting enough by itself - because this deal covers every aspect of Bounty Depot's services, including mercenary action.
"Payoffs are accepted if the money is right... the deal covers all bounty depot & Co. services now and future unless something changes."
Once you've crunched the numbers, the $1 billion fee seems pretty cheap for a lifetime's guarantee of not being f**ked with - if the guarantee holds out. Bounty Depot has placed roughly 60,000 bounties thus far, and their forum thread advertises that a $350k bounty will cost you $825k to place with full anonymity. That's at the higher end of a typical bounty price, but let's say for argument's sake that most bounties hit that figure on average.
JFK's $1 billion one-off payment is the equivalent of 1,212 bounties of $350k if they cost $825k each to place via BD. For a hundred man faction, that's 12 bounties per person. For all three JFK factions, that's 4 bounties per person. In the context of these numbers, I'd say that JFK got a damn good deal out of this, and Bounty Depot are probably kicking themselves that they didn't ask for more.
But the question is will Bounty Depot reevaluate this deal later down the line? What is stopping other bounty services from setting up and extorting huge sums from major factions? Could masses of new, weak players be used to restore some semblance of balance back to Torn City by taking power away from the top factions through mass bountying? Or are moratorium contracts between bounty services, mercenaries, and factions now set to become commonplace?
And if so, how much will others have to pay for the same protection?
Pictured: The payoff may have also been accompanied by a cute, hand-written note, like this.
Bounty Depot is a privately run outfit that offers Torn citizens the chance to place hundreds of anonymous bounties on their opponents via third-party players. BD is not the only such service available - as many pedants have pointed out to me in recent months - but they are the most well-known, having placed over 60,000 bounties since their creation in 2020.
Run by LarryStooge, Bounty Depot describes itself as "the greatest stealth weapon in the game", but is this claim now questionable with news of their supposed allegiance towards JFK? Rumours of a Bounty Depot payoff reached me via the Torn City Times' Tell Your Story section last week. In this secret vault of public commentary, to which anyone in Torn can contribute anonymously, I received the following message:
"Bounty Depot was paid off by Z_junior for an undisclosed amount of cash in order to protect his factions from the bounties and mercenaries, only to later have some of his players join the ranks of mercenaries in Mercenary Depot."
This information was leaked to me by a member of Bounty Depot's management who wishes to remain anonymous. This person, who we will refer to as Milky Sue, told The Times that one player at the top of Bounty Depot was responsible for the incident that led to JFK paying them off, and it wasn't LarryStooge.
"So the reason they paid REDACTED off came straight from Z himself... REDACTED and Zeke were having a pissing contest over some bounties paid to be on him... After about an hour of back and forth, Z finally made contact with REDACTED and asked what was going on."
"Things shifted from trolling to actual respect, which is where Z decided that in the long run, paying us off is less expensive than the constant fight it would be getting revives during chains over bounties and the headache of how many we can place at any one time, currently just over 2k bounties in one go."
Milky Sue says that talks with Z_junior led to a $1 billion payoff to Bounty Depot in return for a lifetime of protection from contracts. If this is true, then the neutral nature of Bounty Depot is now in question, as it appears their deference, and perhaps their loyalty, has been bought and paid for by the JFK family. JFK leader Z_junior responded to our questions on this matter with the following comment.
Pictured: The opposite of yes.
When the Torn City Times interviewed Bounty Depot head LarryStooge about this accusation, he initially appeared to be in the dark regarding any form of payoff. At this point, the story appeared to be false. Perhaps it was simply a plant sent in by a rival faction member. Or maybe a disgruntled client of Bounty Depot was just trying to stir s**t, which is mean, because that's my job.
"This is the first I'm hearing that I was paid 1b to stop bountying on a person/faction O_o. Would be pretty nice to get 1b to stop bountying them though xD." - LarryStooge
But then, like Fred West trying to level off his patio, I did a little more digging. LarryStooge admitted that it was possible some kind of deal had been negotiated without his knowledge by one of his co-leaders, and he promised to look into it. I have been told that Bounty Depot management operates on a council-style setup, with each of them acting independently and trusting each other's judgement.
Indeed, the information regarding the payoff itself was leaked without LarryStooge's knowledge, with my informant Milky Sue later attempting to retract this story. Sadly, I suffer from journalistic phimosis, meaning that I was compelled to allow the story to run.
"Yo I dropped a news ticket about bounty depot getting paid off by jfk, can we not have that become anything for now. Discussions happen and we don't want those issues lol... we decided it was for the better not to have some info like that sent out."
While LarryStooge may not have been aware of the $1 billion payout initially, he was later able to confirm that some form of agreement existed after speaking with his colleagues. Larry told The Times that Bounty Depot is no longer able to accept payments for attacks upon JFK, JFK 2.1, and JFR - a fact he laments due to the "good money" these jobs brought in - but stopped short of confirming any financial exchange took place. Bounty Depot is, however, still free to coordinate attacks against his own faction, Monarch, and his teammates aren't too happy about that.
"Maybe JFK will accept Larry when Monarch finally has enough of him bountying his own factionmates." - SpeedSkateR
LarryStooge is currently a member of Monarch Research, formerly known as Helvete, and he told The Times that officers in the faction had put pressure on him to stop bountying JFK some time ago. This took place before the fee from JFK was paid, as they were retaliating against Helvete with bonus hits - the payment from JFK to Bounty Depot must therefore have been made before Monarch was formed.
And that's not all. If you re-read the initial comment from Milky Sue, you'll see they mention something about JFK mercenaries. The service to which MS is referring is Mercenary Depot, a hitman-for-hire outfit to be "used at your will we can target entire factions, break chains, or just make individual players cry." When pressed on the allegiances of those involved in their new Merc business, LarryStooge confirmed that a large proportion of Bounty Depot's mercenary ranks come from one particular faction.
"We started a merc business and a good chunk are from a lot of the HoF factions including the JFK fam."
If you are a member of a JFK rival, would you be happy spending your
Of course, Bounty Depot is no stranger to controversy. Earlier this year, LarryStooge's article on his firm's activities was published in the Torn City Times. Some of our more tantrum-prone readers got their knickers in a twist over this piece - a piece I stand by absolutely - claiming that the Torn City Times was promoting one service over every other and that its staff had received some kind of benefit in return for its publication.
The Torn City Times is an entirely not-for-profit organisation that has no use for money or items. This article was published solely due to our interest in the unique nature of the service offered. And furthermore, I can assure you that I have not exchanged favourable reporting for feet pictures in seven months, four days, three hours, and twenty-one minutes. And nor shall I do so for the foreseeable future..
We are unsure whether the reported $1 billion price JFK negotiated for bounty immunity has been offered towards other factions. What we do know, thanks to BD co-chief dARkasHELz, is that such deals could be made with other factions, if the price is right. This opens up an interesting can of worms - as if a can of worms isn't interesting enough by itself - because this deal covers every aspect of Bounty Depot's services, including mercenary action.
"Payoffs are accepted if the money is right... the deal covers all bounty depot & Co. services now and future unless something changes."
Once you've crunched the numbers, the $1 billion fee seems pretty cheap for a lifetime's guarantee of not being f**ked with - if the guarantee holds out. Bounty Depot has placed roughly 60,000 bounties thus far, and their forum thread advertises that a $350k bounty will cost you $825k to place with full anonymity. That's at the higher end of a typical bounty price, but let's say for argument's sake that most bounties hit that figure on average.
JFK's $1 billion one-off payment is the equivalent of 1,212 bounties of $350k if they cost $825k each to place via BD. For a hundred man faction, that's 12 bounties per person. For all three JFK factions, that's 4 bounties per person. In the context of these numbers, I'd say that JFK got a damn good deal out of this, and Bounty Depot are probably kicking themselves that they didn't ask for more.
But the question is will Bounty Depot reevaluate this deal later down the line? What is stopping other bounty services from setting up and extorting huge sums from major factions? Could masses of new, weak players be used to restore some semblance of balance back to Torn City by taking power away from the top factions through mass bountying? Or are moratorium contracts between bounty services, mercenaries, and factions now set to become commonplace?
And if so, how much will others have to pay for the same protection?
Original article
Comments
Post a Comment