Players began to form rituals. Some treated midnight as a sacraments hour: lights off, headphones in, a cup of tea cooling. Others scripted safeties—hashing folders, isolating drives, creating throwaway accounts to shield themselves. A subculture of "keepers" compiled lists: what to feed the mod to get the gentlest returns, how to scrub results you didn't want. There were horror stories too. A streamer broadcast a session where the game populated an entire level with images of a child who hadn't existed; months later, the broadcaster found a shoebox of baby clothes in a thrift store with a note in the pocket: "For D." He stopped streaming and moved cities.