The Rule
Excitement requires the existence and persistence of challenging obstacles.
"The twist comes three pages later when he tells us he MEANT to become an indentured servant to IOI. Which is kind of irrelevant because we'd either guessed it three pages ago or it doesn't matter because he told us two pages before this he already had their codes and was sabotaging them actively already."
Commentary
A larger category encompassing My bullet bill is gonna be huge!, an inability to present difficult and persistent obstacles for characters to overcome drains the proceedings of any excitement or interest. One common source of this difficulty appears to stem from Author Insert/Mary Sue situations where the author cannot conceive of putting himself in danger, even in a fictional situation.
In RP1, a fake tension is set up by having Wade be kidnapped, even though it was part of his plans, and he bought the codes to hack IOI years ago, which they apparently never rotate.
This is compounded when not long after he says that if the codes don't work, he's a slave forever—except he already had arranged for his debt to automatically be paid off, in case something went wrong.