@Mangalover9000
: edit added fat text to the more important bits
it goes back 3 chapters if you want an explanation for the game.
To make it simple the rules are like this:
People can vote/invest for the most valuable item, and the winning side splits the pot OF THE LOSING SIDES INVESTMENT. ( the winning pot goes to the auction house I guess )
Every time somebody vote/invest they put in exactly 10 credits, no more or less.
And every time they vote/invest the cost of voting/investing increases by 10 credits. (the first vote is 10 credits, 2nd vote is 20, and the third one is 30 and so on...)
What basically happened was that because nobody voted for the soap, so the pot was only a pot of 250 credits that was to be split on .... let's say 10.000 people to pull a big number out of my ass.
This made it so nobody wanted to stay invested on the girl's item and everybody withdrew their investments because they did not want to lose money on this competition.
The voters/investors would gain nothing from it because the investments were so one-sided even if they won, they would gain less then one credit after spending much more.
On the other hand, if 25 people invested 10 credits ( probably isn't all that much ) they stand a chance of winning everything from the other pot if people withdraw the investments.
They only risk losing 10 credits, so it becomes a Risk vs Reward calculation.
If the girl wins, you win basically a dept as they invested more then they got out of it.
And if the soap wins,
you win nothing, a smaller debt then if you voted on the girl's item
or if you are lucky a decent amount of credits if some people don't withdraw everything.
The problem arises because only the once who did not vote at the start could vote with small amounts, so only the people who withheld investing could
safely invest in the soap.
The minimum investment number went up with every investment so people who invested 100+ credits could only invest 100+ credits at a time if they wanted to switch.
And because everybody withdrew the investment, the soap won.
Its a bit unrealistic, as In real life, both sides would have ended up with small investments.
There is a no way 100 % of the investors would have withdrawn everything for the same reason as some voted for the soap anyway.
But yeah, basically
people got cold feet when they realised they would lose huge amounts of money for basically nothing other than pleasing the spoiled rich kid.
Something she never considered as she never had money problems.
Hope this helped clear it up a little bit.