In 2016, “QQ Speed” finally reached its endgame, but that match was lost to reality

200 hours in, a racing MMO like “QQ Speed” is basically a “side story” for a JRPG faithful like me, but after watching that episode of “Uncle Yixiu is Really Fun,” I still sat frozen in front of the screen for a long time. As someone used to grinding tactics in turn-based battles and filling out compendiums, it was the first time I realized that those virtual collections on an account can sometimes feel even more like a “life save file” than hidden weapons in a JRPG.

This time, the protagonist isn’t the uploader (UP), but a 20-year-old female college student from Guizhou. She passed away from breast cancer, leaving behind only a “QQ Speed” account and her family’s grief. Her younger brother reached out to the UP and entrusted him with his sister’s beloved account, with just one request: help her run one last race on the track she knew best. This setup is more restrained than many farewell side quests in JRPGs, yet reality hits far harder than any scripted performance.

On top of that, from the UP’s narration you can feel that although this account doesn’t have many cars, it does own a permanent S-class car, “Lightning Storm,” and the gameplay footage shows very solid skills. She’s more like a veteran who treats one game as a long-term “main title,” not a passing whale who only spends for cosmetics. She clearly cared about her garage and stats; those items she painstakingly saved up for are just like how I line up every limited piece of gear by rarity in a Japanese RPG—a kind of obsessive “life-organizing technique.”

It’s worth noting that “QQ Speed” itself is already an old friend with nearly 20 years of history. From its open beta on January 23, 2008, to quickly hitting 3 million concurrent users and becoming a “million-level racing MMO,” and later being handed over to TiMi Studio for maintenance, it has grown up alongside batches of post-80s and post-90s players. For many people, it’s not just “the MMO I’m currently playing”; it’s more like “Dragon Quest” in Japan—a generational memory checkpoint. Even if you’ve been AFK for years, the moment you hear the BGM, you can instantly recall the keybinds and corners from back then.

What really tightens your chest in this episode, though, is when the UP talks about the sudden passing of Zhang Xuefeng and mentions that powerless feeling of “you never know whether tomorrow or accidents will arrive first.” Unfortunately, reality isn’t like a JRPG: there’s no save/load magic, no hidden resurrection items. Faced with birth, aging, sickness, and death, even “millionaires and multimillionaires” all end up at the same save point. Coming from a gaming UP, this line doesn’t sound like chicken soup at all; it’s more like that hollow aftertaste you feel when the credits roll after you’ve finished a game.

From a die-hard JRPG fan’s perspective, I care more about what this says about “playing games” itself. We often obsess over whether the battle system is complex enough, whether the character art is polished enough, whether we have to clear every single event flawlessly. But when you realize someone may never again open their own character screen, all those so-called “perfect progress bars” suddenly stop mattering so much. Instead of beating yourself up over missing a few logins, it’s better to, while you can still log in, open a few more rooms with friends, take a few more screenshots with your guild—like remembering to look up at a clear in-game sky after finishing the main story of an FF.

If you’re still playing “QQ Speed” now, or any long-running online game, my “purchase advice” is actually very simple: stop viewing every top-up and every disconnect in such a utilitarian way. If you feel like spending, spend a bit; if you don’t, just treat it as a slow-paced retirement game. As long as you genuinely like this virtual track, it’s worth coming back to run a lap every now and then. Be it accounts or collections, at some point they become what your friends and family call “the thing they used to love most.” Like the ever-changing crystal theme in the FF series, they add a highly recognizable melody to your life.

Lastly, the UP says in the video, “I hope everyone won’t be too hard on themselves, just face every day positively and optimistically.” I’d like to tack on a small personal note: don’t just be kinder to yourself—try to be gentler to others in the game too. Maybe that rookie racer you pass by is logging in for the first time on an account that belonged to someone who’s no longer here. Maybe that casual “one more game” you click on has already become the final boss battle of someone’s life. On this track that stretches from 2008 to today, each of us is running our own personal main playthrough. All we can really do is press every boost key well before we reach the finish line.