I first played Icons: Combat Area in the closed developer's beta; I exchanged emails with a top 100 Super Smash Bros Melee player for access. I thought to myself "Pierre, what is a game with limited access? What use is a fighting game without any players?" I still have the beta files on my PC. They are useless, locked away, Ozymandias's foot and a pile of sand.

As I comb passively through the files on my computer, maybe searching for a game downloaded from 4chan years ago that may or may not turn out to be a virus, and I stumble upon this useless collection of folders, I wonder if Icons ever really existed at all. If you can't play it now, and you couldn't then, could you ever, really? For whom was this game made? Was it always a scam, to kill Project M, rip off a bunch of venture capitalists? Or is there something more sinister at work here, maybe something to do with collusion between Wavedash Game's infamously rowdy, even bankrupting post-tournament parties and the notorious commentator/top player alcohol\minor abuse situation?

A playable copy of Icons: Combat Evolved would be highly valuable: as access to the game is restricted, anyone who can play is by default "the best player in the world."