| Unlockable ARG |
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| “ | I need you to get on my computer. Use this: 159.223.135.6. I had to bury everything. It might seem like it's not there, but it is. I know you can find it. Look deep. You're going to see things that will scare you, but you HAVE to look. | ” |
| — Rowan Stoll, Employee Confidentiality Agreement | ||
The Project: Playtime Unlockable ARG, otherwise referred to as Rowan Stoll's Computer Database, was an alternate reality game held by Mob Entertainment to tease their co-op horror game, PROJECT: PLAYTIME.
Situated within an FTP server, it would be the player's goal to dig through Rowan Stoll's heavily restricted server to reveal the dark revelations of Playtime Co. that the public were unaware of. The hunt began when Mob Entertainment revealed a code within the PROJECT: PLAYTIME announcement teaser image, which led to the discovery of multiple recordings, images and GIFs. According to developer Micah Preciado, it had taken three months to set up and create the entire hunt.[1]
The ARG centered around the narrative of Rowan Stoll, a staff member at Playtime Co. who worked in the computer department. After mistakenly believing that Bigger Body Huggy Wuggy's moving eyes resembled nanny cameras, he reported this to Leith Pierre. Upon discovering that Huggy Wuggy was a sentient figure and Playtime Co. utilized real humans as test subjects for their Bigger Bodies Initiative, Rowan vowed to leak all the confidential information to the authorities. However, this would never end up happening as Boxy Boo, the first successful Bigger Bodies experiment and the primary antagonist for PROJECT: PLAYTIME, would devour Rowan alive.
History
Prelude
On the one year anniversary of Poppy Playtime, Mob Entertainment posted a video on their YouTube channel thanking their fanbase for all of the support. However, in the second half of the video, fans noticed that some frames were very briefly shown. Analysing each individual frame revealed the numbers "10", "31" and "22", which were representing the date of that year's upcoming Halloween, hinting that there would be some sort of new content releasing on that day. However, there was more to the discovery than just that. Within the frames was also the text "non quid speres" which translates from Latin to "not what you expect". Additionally, a jack-in-the-box toy, which was also shown on a whiteboard earlier in the video, could be faintly seen in the background of the hidden frames.
Discovery
Once Halloween arrived, the developers posted an announcement for their upcoming spinoff game PROJECT: PLAYTIME. However, the teaser image posted with the announcement included a hidden message that could be seen when brightening the image. The hidden message in question was a series of numbers which went as the following: 159.223.135.6. - it was later realised that this was an I.P. address. Content creators were also sent a letter in real life on this same day which contained this very I.P. address. Fans believed that it was for a real location and coincidentally, the address signified a location near a graveyard, which led some fans to believe that they would have to dig up graves for lore secrets. Of course, this idea was quickly shut down by developers who clarified that the entire hunt would take place online. This new information helped fans to discover that the address was for an FTP server. Unfortunately, as of today, the address has been closed. However, during this time of discovery, theorists were still missing a username and a password for the FTP server.
The name of the character "Rowan Stoll" could be seen in the Employee Confidentiality Agreement letter sent to content creators, which was a name that was unheard of at the time. The name was repeated once again in a memorandum letter sent by the official Playtime Co. account on Twitter as a reply to the original PROJECT: PLAYTIME announcement post. So, fans were quick to realise that this was the username for the server. As for the password, the previously-mentioned memo showed a picture of Huggy Wuggy saying "Heads UP!", signifying to fans that they needed to pay attention to the capital letters. Taking every capital letter from the margin naturally revealed gibberish, but moving every letter back 11 letters in the alphabet, since the number "11" could be seen in the bottom corner of the memo, revealed the phrase "ALEA IACTA EST". This is a Latin phrase which translates to "the die is cast". Uncapitalizing this phrase and putting underscores in between the words would give fans a password which, when used with the username "Rowan Stoll", would grant them access to the FTP server created by Rowan.
When entering the FTP server, all the files were both locked and gated by a password. During this point, no more hints or teasers were released to assist the theorists in discovering the remaining files. During this time, fans were sceptical regarding who had written the Employee Confidentiality Agreement, as the story was just beginning to unfold. However, some fans theorized that Stella Greyber, Rowan Stoll, or even an experiment test subject such as Marie Payne were the author behind the letter. Other theorists believed that Rowan Stoll was actually far from good, and was yet another higher-up responsible for covering up any material that could result in a lawsuit to the Playtime Corporation name.
Recording 01 & Security Footage 01/02
A day after accessing Rowan Stoll's computer, a recording of him (listed as rec_01) and two extracted security system feeds (listed as sec_01 and sec_02) were unlocked, with these files not being password locked. When viewing the first recording, a series of letters could be seen behind the reflection of Rowan's glasses. Combining all the letters together into one entire word revealed the code, "acequias", which translates to "justice, equity" in Latin.
The previous theories that Rowan Stoll was a higher-up for Playtime Co. had been debunked due to this video. Fans compared this recording to the Marcas Brickley Reprimanding, speculating that it would later be revealed that Rowan Stoll was fired from Playtime Co. due to his discovery of the "nanny cameras" hidden within Huggy Wuggy's eyes. What Rowan Stoll didn't know was the fact that Huggy Wuggy was a living organism, and visitors' concerns of Huggy staring at them were indeed true.
Recording 02 & Security Footage 03
The initials and date featured after preforming each step.
A vintage image was later posted on the Playtime Co. Twitter account captioned with, "Throwback to the Swinging Sixties". The image showed a production line for a jack-in-the-box toy that was unknown of at the time. Within the Poppy Playtime Discord server, the word "right" was constantly teased. After rotating the image 90° counter clockwise (right) and shortening the height of the image, a secret message showcasing the first and last initials of each main higher-up alongside a date were revealed: "S.G. E.R. L.P. 05/28/91".
The Twitter accounts for the characters Stella Greyber, Eddie Ritterman, and Leith Pierre that were originally simply being followed by the Playtime Co. Twitter account had now been updated with brand new banners featuring a series of scattered numbers, apart from Stella's. Organizing these letters from left to right, based on their positions in the banners, would result in the following strings of numbers:
- 9-14-22-5-14-5-18-21-14-20
- 9-14-6-5-18-14-21-13
The final number could be found hidden on Stella Greyber's profile picture, as she was the only employee who didn't have a banner. The number in question was simply the number 1. The next step was to translate these numbers into letters based on their places in the alphabet, which would result in the words "a", "invenerunt" and "infernum". But fans still needed an order to put these words in, which is where the throwback image once again came in. The "S.G. E.R. L.P" initials signified that Stella's "a" should come first, Eddie's "invenerunt" should come second and Leith's "infernum" should come last, giving fans the phrase "A invenerunt infernum", which translates to "They found Hell" in Latin. Using the Latin phrase and the date seen on the throwback image while adding underscores would form the code, "A_invenerunt_infernum_05/28/91". which fans could use to unlock Recording 02.
As Rowan Stoll backtracks on his previous statements to Leith Pierre in this second recording, a text-to-speech voice can be heard distantly in the background. Upon close inspection, it was discovered that the text-to-speech bot had spelled out "Birth place 11/28/67". Adding underscores to this phrase would provide fans with the password to unlock security_camera_03.
At the time, it was unknown why Rowan Stoll had all-of-a-suddenly backtracked on his findings. However with the knowledge that fans had at the time, the leading theory was that Rowan simply didn't want to be fired due to accidentally looking at something he should not have seen.
Playtime Co. Employee Guidelines and Rowan Stoll Twitter
On November 15, the Playtime Co. Twitter account posted a video, showcasing the Playtime Co. Employee Safety Video recording. During the video, each listed rule was succeeded by a letter, and all of these letters put together would form the code "bcaebbefgd", Using this series of letters on a Twitter Link led to Rowan Stoll's official Twitter account. At the time, the account contained only one tweet with one image which dated back to 1988 regarding management having Rowan Stoll fix Puzzle Pillars, despite him working in the computer department.
![<<ARCHIVED POST 05-09-88>>[2]](/wiki/File:RowanStollTwitterLeak.jpg "RowanStollTwitterLeak.jpg (304 KB)")
Private Documents, Recording 04, and Security 04
On November 18th, Playtime Co.'s Twitter account posted an image of the Train, accompanied with the text "All aboard the Playtime Express!" Fans discovered a small piece of text at the bottom of the image reading "photo courtesy of playtime-co.com" This link led to an under-construction webpage which contained an e-mail address, "support@playtime-co.com". Fans attempted to contact Playtime Co. through this support email, who gave them an official phone number for the corporation. Upon calling the number, a text-to-speech voice would claim that the entire factory is unavailable, and to stay on hold. While on hold, a piano tune would play.
During the same time of these discoveries, Rowan Stoll tweeted a new post about fixing the phone line and adding a small tune at the end of it. This tweet was meant to subtly hint that fans had to use the piano tune for a password. Converting the piano chords played into textual form and only using the first letters of them provided fans with the following: "DEADFACEAFACADE". Forming the term into actual words, adding underscores, and capitalizing the first letters, which represented the major chords played, translated the term into "Dead_Face_a_Facade". This code, when entered, would allow access to the ZIP folder "priv_doc01", under "private_documents". Included within was an image named Equipment Requests, a disciplinary notice for Patty Hall and a poster for the teased jack-in-the-box character, with the file for this image being named "boxy_boo_poster", finally confirming the name of this entity.
The Boxy Boo poster appeared to hide a code scattered in a 5x5 grid pattern. So, fans separated the individual parts of the image and rotated them correctly, which revealed the term "Mortem_Oppetere_07/15/1991". (Mortem Oppetere translates to "Desire death" in Latin.) Using this phrase as a passcode for "Rec_3" opened Recording 03. At the beginning of this newly-found video could be heard a strange, ear-grading static sound. This audio clip could be decoded through a spectrogram (seen in the Equipment Requests image), and upon doing so, fans were greeted with the message: "diaboli_intra_buxum", not accompanied by any date. This translates to "devil inside the box" and would unlock the final security camera feed, along with a new image - Boxy Blueprints, which seems to have been torn so that the face was not visible. This final security feed camera depicts the Theater map.
Security 05 and Security 06
On November 22nd, Rowan Stoll's account in Playtime Co.'s FTP server went offline, leaving the "bigger_bodies_initiative" and "employee_database" folders inaccessible, forever lost. All the accounts related to the ARG were heavily altered, with all of their banners and profile pictures being replaced with some variation of an image reading "I SEE YOU". This was accompanied by the insignia of a flower with a singular eye that was also visible in the Project: Playtime Official Cinematic Trailer.
Letters were hidden within the banners and profile pictures of each account and overlapping all of the profile pictures together and lowering their opacity in an editing software revealed the text: "PLAY FAIR Row: <- Column: ^, Filler: X. I N N O V A T I O N I S K E Y", with "innovation is key" actually being a recurring quote from the main game. Doing the same process with the banners revealed the encrypted phrase: "OVHIPKNABALZQZ" which required a cipher to be decoded. As mentioned, the text revealed from the profile pictures contained the words "play fair" which is a type of cipher, so fans knew that they needed to input this phrase into a play fair cipher. However, they were missing an encryption key, that is until they realised that the "innovation is key" text was meant to be taken literally. Using the word "innovation" as a key revealed the text "NOFORGIVENESS".
Additionally, all of the ARG accounts had also tweeted "I SEE YOU" images, with each of them containing pieces of morse code. Doing the previously-mentioned process with these images revealed the full string of morse code which would translate to "caro est in aeternum", which in Latin, means "the flesh is eternal". With all of these new revelations, fans attempted to use the newly-found information to access a new FTP server, with this idea working. Using the username "no_forgiveness" and the password "caro_est_in_aeternum" granted fans access to a final server which contained one singular folder that read "THIS_IS_WHAT_HAPPENS". The two files within this folder were not password-locked and both revealed the shocking fate of Rowan Stoll.
