Leo, a man whose sleep schedule had been ruined by this game since 2015, stared at the patch notes. Most of the community scrolled past, grumbling about hitboxes and sticker placements. But Leo read the fine print.

"They clipped the soul out of it," she said after analyzing a recording. "Leo, this isn't audio balancing. This is compression . They're not reducing volume. They're reducing the time the sound exists in the world."

The update dropped at 2:13 AM on a Tuesday. No warning. No teaser. Just a 12.7 GB download bar that crept across the screen like a surgical knife.