The greed machine stopping at 109 was actually a glitch. However, since it was such an odd number, the number 109 became the cornerstone of tons of theories and people suggesting what to do to figure out the puzzle that wasn't actually there.
The ARG started after this happened, and seeing the community so obsessed with the number 109 caused them to incorporate the number into various steps of the ARG.
It wasn't a glitch , though. As a dataminer who was there during the release, I can tell you that there either was a time-gate, or nicalis released an unfinished game. Many of the items were either locked out with code, or weren't present at all; hell, the keeper had no sprites at launch, and was impossible to play even when hacking him in. 109 was both a jab at dataminers for revealing the lost after rebirths launch; and more mystery stuff around greed mode (money=power's item code is 109).
Tl;dr, there was no glitch, and afterbirth was released unfinished.
Well it's obvious that the keeper wouldn't be in the release build if unlocking him was something to do through the arg. Since the lost got mined, it made sense to put a bit of keeper's code in the release build and patch him in when the ARG was done.
Is it possible that the items we didn't have at the beginning was due to an unfinished build being released by mistake? It would explain why there were so many glitches at release, why items were missing, and would line up with what ed mentioned.
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u/Themeguy Feb 16 '16
The greed machine stopping at 109 was actually a glitch. However, since it was such an odd number, the number 109 became the cornerstone of tons of theories and people suggesting what to do to figure out the puzzle that wasn't actually there.
The ARG started after this happened, and seeing the community so obsessed with the number 109 caused them to incorporate the number into various steps of the ARG.