Instatainment Ltd.
| This article contains SPOILERS for the main story of CrossCode. Proceed at your own risk! |
Instatainment Ltd. is the company that owns both CrossWorlds and Shadoon.
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Instatainment is a galaxy wide company focused on providing entertainment via Instant Matter technology. One of their biggest products is CrossWorlds, a Massively Multiplayer Online Game which takes place on an actual moon in the galaxy. |
| -Encyclopedia general entry |
History and Reputation
Based on their galactic presence and the involvement of several investors, Instatainment can be assumed to be a fairly substantial company.
At some point prior to the events of the game, the company purchased the moon Raritan Gem and terraformed it to act as the physical location of their game CrossWorlds, which is shown to have become quite popular.
Instatainment has been shown to be rather closed-minded when it comes to the development of CrossWorlds, as evidenced by their lack of interest in Satoshi's Evotar research, as well as Gautham's disenchantment with not being allowed to create the 'ultimate experience' he aspires to. The company seems to be more concerned with keeping its shareholders interested rather than advancing technology.
Reputation Among Players
Players of CrossWorlds seem to have split opinions on Instatainment. Several NPCs can be found talking about unpopular decisions the game has made, such as removing credit trading and including microtransactions for cosmetic items that cannot be traded away. There is also high demand among the playerbase for Instatainment to add what the players feel is long-overdue endgame content, with "Final dungeon when?" being a common complaint. These and other complaints seem to mimic the real-life complaints many gamers have about the companies behind the games they play. However, it is clear that the game has a large fanbase, and in general it appears to be received favorably.
In CrossCode
Five years prior to the events of CrossCode, Satoshi Sakai, his sister Shizuka, Gautham Ranganathan and Sergey Asimov were all developers working for Instatainment, and in particular, on CrossWorlds. After a breakthrough in Satoshi's work developing the CrossCode technology that allows players to control their avatars, the team of friends present their idea to the company, but are told that their request to pursue the research further is denied and that they must remove any aspects of it from the game. This rejection causes Satoshi, Shizuka, and Gautham to leave the company after an investor offers to secretly fund their research into the so-called Evotars, although Sergey remains with the company.
One year after their separation from the company, Sergey's former coworkers and friends have disappeared. Because Sergey is still employed with Instatainment and is one of their best programmers, he is tasked with debugging a complicated corruption in the game code. Hidden inside this corruption he finds Lea, which sparks the events of CrossCode. His familiarity with the game puts him in the best position to help Lea and leverage her knowledge to try to track down his missing friends, but as he is still an Instatainment employee, he also notes that he is jeopardizing his job to do so.
When Lea is first logged back into the game aboard the cargo ship M.S. Solar, she is also introduced to the maintenance crew for CrossWorlds, who provide support for the physical and Instant Matter aspects of the game. While it is not explicitly stated, it is likely that this crew is also made up of Instatainment employees.
In A New Home
| This section contains SPOILERS for the A New Home DLC of CrossCode. Proceed at your own risk! |
Negotiations with Instatainment to reinstate Evotars proved successful, and in A New Home Evotars are given their own quarters in the game within an area called Homestedt. In an attempt to distance themselves from the events that took place within Vermillion Wasteland, Instatainment stated they had no plans to reinstate the Evotars retrieved from the Evotar Server, except for the limited few who are returned at the beginning of the DLC story. They are accepting applications from users to be cloned into Evotars who will then live inside Homestedt, however. Instatainment is providing for the wellbeing of the Evotars by giving them the opportunity to work within the game. For example, in the epilogue, it is shown that Lea works alongside Shizuka playtesting content, while Luke gives tours to new players much as Lukas did.
New Game Development
At the end of the Ku'lero Temple there is an announcement that Instatainment is developing a sequel to CrossWorlds under the title New Horizons. While not much is revealed about the new game, it is assumed that Instatainment will be following much of the same model with the sequel, including the use of instant matter. This is further confirmed by the fact that, when talking to Carla and Jet aboard the Cargo Ship during the events of the DLC, they state that they will have to remain on the planet to help build the new content.