A Hacker Forced Thousands To Play An Impossible Game

“Ransomware” is the name given to a type of malicious software that locks away a person's files until they pay off the asshole who created the program and infected their computer. A fan of space shooter Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object decided to make a cool wordplay between the words "seirensen" and "ransom" and created a program called "Rensenware". Unlike actual ransomware, "rensenware" didn't ask players for money to get their computer back -- but probably made many players wish it did as it forced the infected to get a completely impossible score of 200,000,000,000 points in Touhou Sweirensen – UFO instead.

For those who are unaware, Touhousen Seirensen is a "bullet hell" game. That's not more clever wordplay – that's the name given to one of the most difficult types of games in the world, one that consists of dodging a ridiculous number of projectiles thrown at the player's ship at incredibly high speed.

The only reason the entire Internet didn't instantly blow up on the face of the guy who created "Rensenware" is that most people probably no longer had a functioning computer nearby. It would be no use, anyway, because it didn't take long for even the creator of “rensenware” to get infected. And guess what, he was just as incapable of reaching the 200,000 bajillion points as everyone else. He then also had to get to another computer to write a patch to fix the issue, and hopefully learned the most important lesson of all: puns = bad.

Top Image: Nanami Shindi