General
Extreme Chinese players send cow dung, funeral chrysanthemums, curse banners, and ritual items to Papergames/Infold office as Love and Deepspace controversy escalates. LADS Chinese social media accounts have reportedly lost around 1 million followers
Love and Deepspace has been facing one of its biggest controversies after the official reveal of its sixth male love interst, Ao Yin/Valko. Since the teaser was released, the game's official Chinese social media accounts have reportedly lost around 1 million followers across platforms.
The controversy has also drawn attention from Beijing Daily, which published a commentary arguing that the backlash reflects a growing crisis of trust between Papergames and its core player base.
The backlash has also spread offline.
As part of Ao Yin's promotional campaign, Papergames installed a giant Valko wolf-print display and a large themed balloon outside its office.
According to reports circulating on Chinese social media, some extreme players placed cow dung inside the company's delivery lockers, with visitors claiming they could smell the odor.
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Others left white and yellow chrysanthemums, curse banners, glutinous rice, and pomelo leaves around the promotional display outside the building. Some visitors also posed outside the office while making middle-finger gestures for photos.
In modern Chinese culture, white and yellow chrysanthemums are closely associated with funerals, mourning, and paying respects to the deceased. Sending these flowers to a person or company can be interpreted as wishing death upon the recipient.
Meanwhile, glutinous rice and pomelo leaves are traditional folk items used in spiritual cleansing rituals to ward off evil spirits. Some protesters used them sarcastically to suggest that Papergames had been "possessed" after introducing the new character and need to ward off this new evil spirit.
One protester also reportedly delivered a banner reading "The new male lead is a wild boar" to the company's office and later claimed that Papergames threatened to call the police. Online, some players also joked about destroying the giant Valko balloon, although there is no evidence that anyone actually attempted to do so (now).
Following the protests, Papergames reportedly increased security around its headquarters. While visitors were previously allowed to enter the building to take photos, recent reports claim that public access has become more restricted, particularly to prevent provocative photos or obscene gestures inside the office.
According to the article by Beijing Daily, the issue goes far beyond Ao Yin's appearance. While some players criticized his more Westernized character design, the main source of frustration is that many longtime players feel the existing five love interests have been neglected. Main storylines of a love interest have reportedly gone over 500 days without updates. Many fans believe the company's resources have been redirected toward introducing a new character instead of continuing content for the existing cast.
Beijing Daily noted that Papergames' global expansion strategy is commercially understandable—Love and Deepspace has seen strong overseas revenue growth—but argued that otome games rely on a "trust economy." Players invest not only money, but also years of emotional attachment. When that trust is damaged, commercial success alone cannot easily repair it. According to the editorial, Ao Yin became the catalyst for frustrations that had been building for years rather than the sole cause of the controversy.
Papergames issues a midnight apology
At around 12:00-1:00 a.m. (China time) on June 27-28, Papergames released an official statement responding to the backlash.
The company stated that:
Ao Yin (Valko) will remain the sixth male lead.
The main story updates for Caleb and Sylus are currently in development.
All players will receive compensation consisting of 10 Limited Wish Tickets and 10 Standard Wish Tickets (20 pulls total).
However, Beijing Daily published a second commentary shortly afterward titled "Six Questions for Love and Deep Space."
The article argued that the statement failed to answer several key concerns, including:
Where was the apology?
Why did the company only respond after millions of comments and tens of thousands of complaints?
Was the 20-pull compensation a genuine apology or simply an attempt to reduce player loss?
How will Papergames fulfill its promise not to neglect existing characters?
Has the company truly changed its attitude, or is it merely responding to public pressure?
The editorial concluded that the controversy is no longer just about Ao Yin, but about whether paying players can still trust that their time, money, and emotional investment will be respected, but about whether paying players can still trust that their time, money, and emotional investment will be respected.
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Ao Yin is scheduled to officially release on July 9, and his performance may determine whether this controversy has a lasting impact. However, many observers believe the situation has already become about more than a single character—it reflects years of accumulated frustration over story updates, resource allocation, and communication between Papergames and its longtime player base.
It would be funny if the game shuts down because of this, these female players don't realize how good they have it.
LADS has all types of oral sex, simulated sex, showering together with characters, groping the character in sexual ways, and so on.
If that game had even a single female character you could do these things with, it would immediately get mass reported until it gets censored or taken down entirely. I believe the phrase is these players are "eating good" with the amount of hyper-sexual stuff you can do to the male characters.
They complain about sexualization of women in male centric gacha games meanwhile the most profitable gacha game is LADS atleast according to sensor tower
It's the price to pay when you're making money by sucking off every penny with very predatory models from very a dedicated niche fanbase. It make consistent high money even compared to the top dogs like Genshin but if they piss the playerbase off? These gals are much ferocious than the guys
My thoughts go out to the one person who normally works the mailroom at their company. Probably normally a bit of an odd job but not like a bad one or anything. But suddenly now it's probably like a warzone or something.
Indeed, however, I do find hard sometimes to sympathize with the dev companies when they are the ones fostering this extreme parasocial relationships their audience tend to develop with their games.
they cultivated their own fanbase to be this parasocial.
like i know in gacha spaces eastern fans are seen as the superior gigachad fans that are chill and nice and right about everything while west is just messy but at the west really doesnt fall for parasocialism compared to east
stan(twt) culture doesnt get half as messy as idol culture
i know this is happening cuz of reward and story drama but this is how you get fans that send you cow shit
The amount of money they spend for a LI banner honestly track with Kpop Fans spending ability. It also doesn't help they lean into Fan Service even more than kpop idol snd look how obsessive some of their fans are, this reaction honestly track
I don't condone their actions but I'm also laughing at Infold because the writing has been on the wall for YEARS starting with Love Nikki, then the Infinity Nikki incident with the infamous patch. They've been stingy and predatory from the very start. IDK why people thought anything good would come from a company whose fanbase named the spending events "Hell Events".
I get the impression from quite a few people I see active in the community that LADS is like.. their first exposure to not just gacha games but mobile games/video games in general, Discord, Reddit, the internet outside of social media (maybe specifically TikTok), and... adult men? They seem so critically ill equipped to deal with the situation and have no idea how to navigate the environment. I don't think they had even the faintest notion that Infold might be a company with a history of bad behavior. Of course, all I see is global/NA stuff, but man. It's mind blowing to me.
Yep. It's baby's first fandom, game, whatever for soooo many people. I'm always shocked by the posts I see in the fb groups. Many are so clueless and it's so interesting to me that they have made it to 2026 without prior exposure
More so, these people don't have many experience with parasocial relationships that gacha companies love to exploit to make them pull for characters/scenarios. I remember my first game many years ago, and it's licensed to a domestic publisher in my country, which is notorious for sucking blood of players. Tactics back then even much more predatory than gacha game today. After sucking people money for 2 years the game closed. I spent quite a lot back then and the reckoning after EOS make me realize the nature of gacha game and since then i mostly f2p
I don’t know why Reddit swallow a lot of images supposed to be in the post. I also includes other hand gesture, things put in front of Papergame office, and another article by Beijing Daily but it all gone.
I saw someone's photo at the paw print sight with a choco bar saying something along the lines of "Don't be sad, pup, come here, here's some chocolate for you"... Yikes.
On the slightly fun side of this, all that aged like milk lmao. Dude's absolutely fine with chocolate consumption
Whenever people wonder why media companies bend the knee so easily to consumers over there in China and South Korea, its important to remember that pissing them off enough has a reasonable chance of having your office bombed.
Lads currently has the biggest controversy since the release of the Game. And it's Not because of Valko (the newest LI), though, of course, there is a loud minority that complains about him.
Most of the criticism is because infold refuses to give anything to the player for free. The latest Main Story Update for Caleb was 1.5 years ago. There is no real endgame content. There is barely any option to Farm ingame currency. The free currency shop is mostly dead because Infold wont update it. And there are even more complains of the playerbase Infold has refused to listen to.
A few hours ago there was a Livestream for the next big Update and we barely get anything. Around 30 STANDARD Pulls (10 of them were from the "Apology" we got Yesterday), 10 Limited Pulls, not even enough currency for 20 Pulls. Barely any new functions and the biggest one is not even playable for some with weaker phone hardware. It's just a Joke atp
Yes and no. I think one thing to keep in mind is that a lot of LADS players are sensitive about the fact that LADS is 'the' major female-based game, so they feel like the LADS community behaving poorly is a reflection on women. I think that's led to some dishonesty about the reaction to this character when it comes to defending the fandom. "We're mad about greed/story" is a lot more pleasant sounding than "we're acting like idol stans protecting our bias".
Because, quite honestly, most of this reaction is about Valko specifically. If Valko had been a fluffy-haired twink there wouldn't have been an outcry like this. Frustration about the Main Story, yes. What's driving the furor is that Valko is perceived to not be aligned to Chinese women's interests.
A few things reveal this:
The Main Story updated every six months has been the norm with one exception (Prologue to Tomorrow) which was not very well received. Outside of that, it's been a six month rotation. Two of those updates were to introduce new love interests, and do not contain updates for any other character. Valko is following that pattern.
People have been objecting to a new LI on the grounds that it would take him a long time to catch up - with that logic, introducing him in the mid-year update gave him another six months of content he'd otherwise be missing, which is what a lot of people said the problem would be.
These reactions started as soon as Valko was actually revealed. Not when the version update livestream happened (the biggest problem of which was no new resource-farming mode was announced). Eventually they picked up the other threads, but I personally tend to believe that people's initial reactions are the most honest.
This is not to say that people aren't really annoyed by a lot of these other things, but I don't think you should be giving the fandom a pass here. They are mad about Valko because he's not the kind of hot they're interested in, and since they're not attracted to him he's perceived as a threat to their fave. There's a ton of racism, homophobia, and xenophobia baked into that.
We'll see how many people actually end up dropping the game. LADS has had two major boycotts and both of them were truly pathetic in how they were handled. The fact of the matter is people are mad enough to make noise on the internet, but not mad enough to stop spending - even if it was their own fave getting shafted (see: King of Darknight). Valko's release may not debut to amazing numbers, but what about the next multi? The next myth?
We'll see. Anyway, I'm going to brace for angry LADS girlies downvotes. 🫡
Because, quite honestly, most of this reaction is about Valko specifically. If Valko had been a fluffy-haired twink there wouldn't have been an outcry like this.
This is especially funny because people were asking for a red head with long hair who is a nerd and very toxic ("I'll put you in a cage or kill you" type of toxic) as 6th LI to be distinct from everyone else.
But now everybody complains that he's... distinct and not like the others. His burgundy hair color is a problem because it's mimicking Raf (and red hair wouldn't?), his very short hair "sticks out" (but long hair wouldn't?) and he's a nerdy goofball which is also somehow a problem because he's way too different and also not different enough. Don't get me started on that jaw thing and Frankenstein accusations.
Special attention to the growing sentiment that he's now accused as an abuser because he "broke into" MC's apartment through a balcony and is trashing her place like he owns it (dude was let in and is just goofing around). That it's sexual harassment and triggering, stuff which allegedly didn't happen with any other LI and they didn't expect from such a wholesome game.
From a game where Zayne picks up dozed off in a car MC and takes her to her apartment, Sylus violates MC in several ways right in the MS on his first encounter, Caleb spikes MC's drink and all LIs stalk MC or have other problematic aspects in their relationship going on. Like, this game wasn't free from problematic aspects from the get go. To claim otherwise is to blatantly lie.
And I myself don't like to engage with certain portrayals of problematic themes and I love this game because it tackles these problematic themes in a way I find satisfactory.
I can sympathize with people who get triggered from certain content and it's tragic stuff like that happens. I myself got triggered once from objectively very innocent interaction with Zayne's moment post that I almost deleted the game on the spot (it was very early game and I didn't know what's what yet, especially MC's dynamic with Zayne, so I was kind of caught off guard). But you have to understand that it's just fiction in the end, you have the power to readjust your approach and continue having fun.
Then we have some other people claiming that Valko came out of nowhere while we've known other LIs for a long time before their release.
Like what and where, genuinely. Caleb abruptly showed up in a very short portion of the game in the beginning and promptly died. That's it. "Caleb truthers" is a thing, he was that sudden, brief and rather inconsequential there was infighting whether he'll actually release as a LI or not. Sylus was even less, mere couple of lines in a voice recording with nothing else to go off of. You expecting Sylus and Caleb to release due to trademarks and Paperfold making statements isn't you "knowing Sylus and Caleb for a long time". They were fucking ghosts.
And it's not like first introduction of OG3 isn't similarly whiplashy. Everyone's first reaction to them is literally "who tf are you and why are you such an ass". It's only after engaging with rest of the content players get a broader picture, see their other sides and warm up to them.
Special attention to the growing sentiment that he's now accused as an abuser because he "broke into" MC's apartment through a balcony and is trashing her place like he owns it (dude was let in and is just goofing around). That it's sexual harassment and triggering, stuff which allegedly didn't happen with any other LI and they didn't expect from such a wholesome game.
💯 Yeah this one is especially hypocritical to me. Not that I'm saying people can't draw their own individual lines, but this is very much a 'don't piss on me and tell me it's raining' situation. Very few people actually care.
Hell, God of Annihilation had an actual sexual assault - yes, we know MC secretly liked it and wanted it, but the fact was she was saying no and Zayne kept going. If that wasn't enough for mass fury and boycotts I simply do not want to hear it for Valko.
Then we have some other people claiming that Valko came out of nowhere while we've known other LIs for a long time before their release.
This one I disagree with more or less. I think you're underselling Caleb - he texts you, calls you, has a whole chapter devoted to him and then basically the entire rest of the Main Story until he reappears is devoted to the effects of his and Josephine's deaths. He may not have been there, but he had a presence.
The build up to Sylus is more pronounced than you're saying - it was several chapters of mentioning things related to him up including her trying to meet him until he debuted.
I think Valko being telegraphed more clearly would have helped the situation both in giving girlies time to anticipate him and an idea of what to expect. It would have muted the reaction.
But I don't think it would have 'fixed' the story because the story is, frankly, poorly written.
Unfortunately Infold often requires drastic measures to listen to their players. Unless their top spenders are at risk, nothing changes. As a Nikki player, even our headline-making "girlcott" did not solve most of our issues (shit tutorial, shit dyeing system, shit multiplayer).
I don't condone any of the behavior of the LaDS fandom that is doing things like this, but it's so important to note that a relationship with an infold-developed game comes with agony, exploitation, and a unique level of disrespect. Because they make extremely captivating games with few competitors, they feel free to walk all over their players. It's awful.
Yes, they did play. But right now the revenue is dropping. Of course it could just be now and tomorrow everyone spends money again but maybe the community finally woke up :D
I mean, I quit because I was tired of how predatory LADS was, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. There’s barely any content if you don’t pay real money, since 99% of all of the card stories are paywalled. I’m a low spender in other gachas, but spending real money should feel like getting something extra rather than meeting a baseline to play
Tbh. Everytime i open my wallet for lads i feel incredibly bitter. Like bro, the amount of gems you get a month isnt even enough to get to the soft pity (70) unless you're on monthly. And they keep pumping out banners bi-weekly? It's crazy. Ggwp if your main is popular and always featured, fomo is your worst enemy.
I notice ones with a higher female playerbase tend to be more stingy. LaDS, Nikki, even HSR feels a lot more stingy and low effort compared to ZZZ. I heard Genshin is a bit stingy too, but at least the content seems well-made.
ZZZ is a bit more generous but it's more because the game was less of a success so they have to try harder to win people.
imo it's not strictly because of female playerbase but rather because of no competition. Genshin is more stingy because for 3-4 years it had no competition, and even now the "competition" is mostly other hoyo games. Non-hoyo games aren't seen as big enough of a threat
Atm no other company makes high production female oriented gachas so Paper has no competition
Genshin is "Stingy" because it releases generally less characters than the other two. But if you actually calculate the amount of free gems to the characters, they ended up being the same more or less.
i saw the screenshot of some players spending on this game and........ I'm baffled. those money could get a decent car in China hence a down payment for a house in some Tier2 city 😭
Right here is why LaDS is able to top the revenue chart despite only catering to a (supposedly) minority audience.
The parasocial bond is real and scary, and the company encourages that since it leads to more spending, and well, this is the other side of that same coin. You made your bed, now lie in it
I stay true to the fact that romance games are so much better when you are socially aware that the characters are fake. It allows you to basically main more people instead of one, and your life wont revolve around the game like whatever this is.
Yeah but you aren't the main audience then. These games live and die by their whales, and nobody is going to put thousands of dollars into a game unless they are both rich and mentally unwell to various degrees. And the game encourages it, I've heard LaDS was tracking even the periods of the player and making the characters inside the game react to it.
What this means is that a good chunk of their revenue comes from people who really believe a 3d model inside a mobile game is their soulmate... So these kinds of reactions are unfortunate, but also somewhat expected.
Yup the more extreme the degree to which the person is invested, the more they spend. These people spending thousands on gatcha may be rich but they may also just be a bit insane. Like its beyond hobby collecting.
And thats why lads is so successful they tapped into parasocial to the nth degree.
Most gatchas just give you a hot character and thats it.
"So your life wont revolve around the game" theres a reason why this game is designed to avoid that from happening. It a worst romance game but it creates more money than it should.
Why would a company wants consumers the money not revolving their life around their game in the first place... theres a reason why this game top 5 every tower report.
i don't play this anymore for a number of reasons (and thank god i quit when i did) but if i was and i saw that statement basically saying "yeah caleb's main story update is still in development even tho his last focused chapter came out with his release a year and a half ago sorry hope you like the new guy tho" i'd probably be tweaking out a little too. the story is not nearly good enough for them to be taking 6 months per update, and if we're being real we've just barely made it out of the main story prologue. that's an abysmal pace for an almost 3 year old game, and they genuinely think they can fix this problem by pumping out limited cards with shitty writing instead. as unhinged as the fans are maybe they'll finally listen to at least some of the complaints before it really is too late lol
Like compare LADS to another big CN Otome Gacha: Lovebrush Chronicles, for example.
Lovebrush Chronicles has massive main story updates where every new chapter offers a route for every love interests that also furthers the overall plot of the chapter + romance. Getting through a single chapter takes a good amount of time there!
I dropped LADS because I felt there was barely was any main story to read and the relationship progression in the events felt all over the place...
Wow, 500 days without any story update !! I still can't understand how this game can be so successful even with the very high budget. I play otome games and the story is the most important part for me...
I think the fans should have quitted the game earlier with how bad papergame treat them but parasocial relationship just make them accept everything.
Too bad because Lads is pretty ambitious and is the first otome gacha without a crappy card game as the main gameplay but the story was too barebone for me.
Thanks for the info. It would also have upseted me a lot. I tried lads at launch and I didn't like it because I felt the story update were too slow. The game clearly wasn't for me.
I didn't keep playing it for this reason either. I played for a couple weeks and was kind of busy so I figured I'd take a break until the next story update came out ... which was a good 6-7 months later, at minimum. That's when I knew I wasn't really interested. Because the only real content until then is waiting for a new shiny banner to come out that you can try to pull on so you can read your favorite LI's story. Yawn.
LaDS honestly felt really predatory to me, with the irony being that it's still better than the otome gachas that existed until that moment. Women really get the shit end of the stick in this genre so it's not surprising that people put up with a lot of junk just because there isn't really anywhere else to go (well, there is always a choice - but you'd have to move to spending time/having hobbies outside the genre mostly).
It feels like a drought because the parasocial side of the fandom
They literally told us yesterday that despite the millions they raked in they still haven't finished content for Caleb and Sylus, they have a right to be angry the money they spent wasn't used to help ease the burden on production. Please stop focusing on parasocial fans and not the billion dollar company playing in our faces.
It’s literally the only gacha game catering to women on such a scale, of course this is the response. We’ve seen it happen again and again on the flip side with men and their waifus, the difference is they have oversaturation gojng for them
I think so too. The fact that lads doesn't have a serious competitor allows Papergame to exploit their fanbase. I play Infinity Nikki and Infold tried to screw the players in the 1.5, so many girls left the game and IN still hasn't recovered whereas the game is pretty good.
That company only thinks about how to earn more money. It will do what it wants and players feel powerless upon more and more mistreatment. Nothing will change.
One of the most extreme stuff is all users on Chinese social media are tied to phone numbers, so there is no shot they be escaping if police start investigating and track down all accounts.
They are so mad about this situation that they don’t even mind exposing themselves to everyone. This is like doing prank but you leave your phone number and face on the scene of crime.
Yeah, but the police isn't going to arrest them for shit posting. For users that could be making a legit threats, like the one that sent a banner to the office, the police were involved. For the other pranks, those users could play it off by saying they found said prank instead admitting they made it, if they are smart about it.
That’s exactly why. Gacha playerbases are already psychotic and this one specifically panders to horny loners which amplifies the psychosis by like 10 times.
I hope a bunch of chinese whales quit over this tbh. It would be so satisfying to see infold actually have to face consequences for their greed for once.
Emotional attachment to fictional characters is truly a poison. I joke around it but I will probably never reach this level of obsession. People in this case are being too unhinged.
Oh you don’t have to worry about that. People here are emotionally attached to companies & IPs instead. Getting attached to characters is too normal of a behavior.
The Beijing Daily framing of a 'trust economy' is exactly right. Otome players aren't just buying pulls, they're buying into a years-long relationship with specific characters, and 500+ days of no main story updates for existing LIs is the real wound here, Ao Yin just ripped it open.
having such a emotionally attached audience is a double edge sword, u earn fuck tone of money by playing with those emotions, u can also get in danger if u played your cards wrong
China, Japan and Korea have like, decades of companies injecting the idea of idol culture into their fandoms, and associated with the individualistic behavior fomented by social media and marketing (consumerism), it's the recipe for failure like this.
It's like that for a lot of media projects...And lately I've been seeing it grow in other countries like Thailand as well.
Of course other aspects also contribute to this behavior happening more in certain countries and not in others. Work culture with longer extra shifts and a huge importance given to your career leads to more loneliness, for instance.
It's everywhere in the world. People just talk about these countries because of these dramas that cause shocking headlines, but just look at average twitter or tiktok posts of gacha games and their takes, "head cannon". Playing Genshin, sometimes i use Twitter and check genshin tweets related for rewards, and my god, these people may need some mental health sessions
It is... Online. But for some countries where idol culture originated and spread earlier it's more prominent in the physical realm, with death threats and stuff like riot trucks, zeppelins, shit being mailed...
It's cultural at the end of the day, and a culture created by capitalism in its core. For instance, the average "crazy person" you see in America or Europe would have a huge collection of items dedicated to Hello Kitty or Batman, maybe even a thematic house; while in Japan and China it's usual to have the "crazy ones" making a whole drone show, renting a venue for an event dedicated to a character, doing billboard ads for anniversary or smth like that, it's something more to show the world they're superior fans or that their character is better than their actual joy and entertainment.
lmao infold continues to treat their players like ass, cultivating this sort of intense parasocial attachment to these characters who they neglect in terms of content while simultaneously doing their damnedest to extract as much as possible from their customers' wallets
LaDS player here (among other gacha games for more than 10 years). Its so surreal how this company, the same one that fucked up Infinity Nikki, is the worst possible company ever to manage a gacha game. They have been mistreating us for 2 years and Im so happy that FINALLY all communities are united and I really hope this boycott works and they lose even more players and revenue. This is surreal specially for one of the biggest gachas in the last years.
Also the "apology " yesterday was pure damage control. They had a livestream today and it was SO BAD. For you guys to understand, they didnt even give us a 10 pull in diamonds, not a single improvement in any area of the game and opveral the worst livestream you can expect for a big major update in a gacha. Its surreal to say the least.
To add to this, the issue is not only the new character introduced, its also:
- The lack of Main Story updates (mind you, most of it is VISUAL NOVEL STYLE). We have 2 very short updates per YEAR. We havent seen Caleb in 500 days and Sylus and Zayne for more than 6 months.
- The combat content that is supposed to be the way to get diamonds is literally for whales at this point
- The resource farming stages are crap to the point is impossible to level up your cards properly
-They keep making more and more banners constantly and making them available for less time
- The optimization of the game is awful and at this rate the storage required on the phones will be impossible to handle
- The content that the characters have is not the same
- They also changed one of the newest characters (KOD Xavier) after the announcements and he underperforms (chinese players have an ongoing lawsuit regarding that)
Edit: Btw, the mods in the official subreddit are actively removing any kind of post talking about the boycott or asking for improvements in all of this, even if the post is respectful. They removed 2 different comments for me lol Kinda crazy
I took a break after playing for a couple weeks on launch figuring I'd be back when the main story updated. Well, by the time that happened (6-7 months later) I decided I wasn't interested, lol.
I think all that is to say, Infold has had almost no reason to change what they're doing. They make money hand over fist with LaDS. Sure people gripe here and there, but that has never mattered. People basically enable them to do all this. (Part of that is because the alternatives are worse or don't exist - I've tried other mobile otome gachas and they are truly dire. But then the alternative is simply to find hobbies outside gacha rather than continuing to throw money at something you're not fully happy with.)
I do think some of this behavior is getting unhinged, but that also the frustration is totally understandable. I do hope you guys get some concessions (or competitors step up) but we do have to remember that as consumers we definitely enable this kind of behavior as well, lol.
Tbh, the other options are there: there are a lot of visual novels and otomes nowadays that are full games without any kind of gacha. I have been playing VN and otomes for more than a decade now, and we have so many different games and the localization of those games has increased in the recent years. But for some reason I see soooo many people literally not caring about that? When we have so many different kind of otomes: slice of life, other focused on story, others in character development and romance, so many different settings... However they are purely visual novel, so full reading and your classic cgs (which tbh I think its okay, again classic visual novel).
Most of these games are on switch and some of them in pc. Anyone that has spent money on the gacha should have just bought a switch 1 and get full games.
But yeah, LaDS could have been a great game if they focused in the story and developing the world they created as I think its pretty interesting and very innovative in the way they implemented 3d, battles and all. I just wish they start fixing all of this now.... Very sad companies behave like this.
I admit that these actions are extreme but imagine any other gacha continuing to make millions every month while not updating the main story for over a year? People get mad at Genshin and Wuwa when we get boring end of patch events for 3 weeks. There’s no end game content, no way to farm resources just banners and clothes to buy. It really is quite bad.
LADS fans are one of the most toxic in CN, there's a video showing a group of women verbally assaulting a man just because he was cosplaying as a character from LADS, citing he was destroying the image of said character or something like that.
I don't know who said that but they were lying. LADS community is just like any other. They can't even be nice to each other, constant infighting on most random and non-offensive things ever is the norm and it's not pretty.
There’s still a lot of drama in the en/global community though(almost all of it being infighting of course).
It’s gotten so bad that other people from the same community (otome including the gacha otomes) don’t like them (even other lads players don’t like them and players from it’s sister game don’t like them).
This some of what I’ve seen
Solo main vs solo main
Solo main vs harem main (play with all LIs)
Re-heated nachos
Caleb en loc vs original
Caleb sister line / anniversary event
Lads players wanting Caleb removed
Anything related to Caleb
Lads players wanting to censor the game
Sylus kitty card
Lads fanartists getting reported for drawing Valko (including this because the artists getting attacked weren’t CN)
BL
Oh yeah I remember that showing up in my twitter algo quite a while ago, I was kinda surprised by how would it be controversial, but that's probably because it's not uncommon here in Asia to call your loved ones sister/brother or equivalent terms.
the only time i seen people defending LADS on this sub was by pointing out that SnowBreak died due to itself instead of LADS. outside that case i mostly see the sub talking about the craziness from that fanbase.
chinese gacha feminism is somehow more performative than western gacha feminism where they say you can't question a female character wearing a short skirt when it doesnt make sense because its her choice (she is a fictional character)
because most of them gauge whether a game is "woman friendly" or not based on if they do a women's day celebration post and if their staged images and livestreams show an adequate number of female employees or not. not, y'know, the actual content of the game...
Previously their favorite virtual boyfriend got 1/5 of the games content, he now gets 1/6.
They're trying to sell a fake relationship here, so long content droughts for individual characters isn't tolerable the way it is with character of the month games.
The funnier thing is that this is not Infolds first Otome game, their last one (Love and Producer / Mr Love Queens Choice) also had such insane drama when a new LI (Shaw) got introduced late into the game, to the point that he is only half around for the game after his introduction.
Them saying Sylus and Celeb’s main story are being developed is funny. Sylus got introduced 2 years ago and Celeb is here for a year already. With how small the cast is the story should’ve been progressed more. Them saying this won’t make players happy coz there’s no long time plans aside from ones that they need to put out to pacify players.
And people booed me when I said that lads players were just as crazy and parasocial as the kpop stans. This behavior is beyond embarrassing, and even more so when everyone knows that none of these people are actually going to quit the game, so it’s just the most pathetic way to cure their boredom
Eh, this is why I think using the gacha monetization model on an otome game is a mistake. Sure they made millions of dollars, but I would have art/story block trying to develop one character over and over again. When that character is already completely fleshed out and went through their development arc, I think it is difficult to continue their story indefinitely. Maybe that's just a me issue, but I wonder if they're releasing a new character is because it's easier than continuously developing older ones.
That said, this will be a gamble on Infold's part whether having their new LI is worth the loss of some of their current players. This probably wouldn't be as big of an issue if they updated the stories for their LIs frequently, but releasing a new LI without updating their current LI stories is a slap in the face for the otome genre. The whole point of most otomes is to stick to one guy (or maybe a few, but it's mostly for one guy) rather than collecting a reverse harem...if they wanted to release more guys while giving them non-fleshed out stories like a ton of gacha games these days, it shouldn't have been an otome. Heck, they could have even aimed for a joseimuke.
I can’t help but feel that this whole outburst is not just because of Caleb and Sylus’s story. There is also a very glaring fact that Chinese players hated Valko because of his looks, and were blatantly racist and homophobic. They don’t like how Valko looks—he is too dark skinned for them, doesn’t meet their beauty standards, and have been vocal about how he is only made to cater “the western side”, “poor foreigners”, and “gay” people.
I don't play Tthe game but the post says they don't like him because they rather add new romance options instead of giving more content to existing romance routes.
The devs previously stated that the game would only have 5 male characters and the addition of the 6th + some of the original members being neglected made it seem like a betrayal or something. Players also don’t like his design and background
In that context the crashout could even be a bit valid, since more for the new character means less for everyone else so if you liked anyone you'd get shafted. I'm also in a way envious about how... serious (crazy) the players can be about the issue, since in the west corpos can just walk over everyone (like they give a shit about some "boycot" that's just words). Extreme measures might at least have some effect, not necessarily positive effect though lol
So the CN players sending a calling card to Blackwings studio during the P2W Raphael Persona Fiasco in P5X is much tamer than this I guess. But nothing tops the reaction of CN community in the Bunny girl Hi3 controversy.
Like I always said don't mess with CN players, they are serious in gacha.
I would also mention that given the context of the game here, its most likely women doing this, not men. So just goes to show that unhinged behavior isnt exclusive to male gamers, which so far we've mostly seen in male oriented games.
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u/Barnak8 Jun 28 '26
I'm always impressed by the intensity of Korea / China gachadrama.