To put LADS continued downfall into perspective: This month had the highly anticipated new myth pair featuring Rafayel who is the poster boy for the game in China. That event, BY ITSELF, should have easily pulled in more than 17mil. His last myth pair, Lumerian Sea God, alone made 22mil. This month also had a highly desired Sylus rerun, a new Caleb solo card, a bunch of new outfits, and the bimonthly reset of their battle pass featuring new cards of their two most popular love interests.
They are fully cooked. Don't mess with a girlie's husbandos.
They basically destroyed their own game and it’s kind of amazing to look at it, especially since they kind of did it to their other game as well. Like who is running this game studio and do they actively hate what they do?
Literally every one of their flagship games have had some kind of massive community backlash. This is the first time Infold is actually dealing with consequences though. The boycott has been fascinating to watch and participate in.
JP and KR too. JP players have been the only other server that stood with global from the start, and KR players started making noise on their side since they set up the Valko billboard in Seoul.
Of course they're getting consequences. LADS is their clear moneymaker and most likely funds their other games. If it goes down, then they're in trouble.
They do reinvest. You can actually see improvements in quality of everything in the game. It's just they reinvest not as much as we, players, really want.
CEO of Papergames wants to break into general audience(=male leaning mainstream) gaming landscape and all those juicy extra funds are funneled into games like 'Project: The Perceiver' and 'Ballad of Antara'. And since their mainline game is Nikki series, I'm pretty sure some funds are/were shared with Infinity Nikki.
LADS is basically a cashcow for the whole company and is left with breadcrumbs.
Yes, I'm aware that they reinvest... far less than they should for something they need to continue being a cash cow.
Quality? But the story is barley updated, there's nothing to battle for late game users, and the last story, there were only 2 animated scenes. They reinvest the money into other games while severely neglecting LaDS.
I'll just echo what everyone else says... the one running that company has issues.
Animated Scenes:
Under Deepspace: 41
Long-Awaited Revelry: 5–9
Prologue to Tomorrow: 3
Homecoming Wings: 5
Death and Rebirth: 2
To Our Yesterday: 2
Oh... I didn't realize they wanted to break into a male player base. I knew of Ballad of Antara, but I just assumed it was going to be 'soulslike for the girlies,' so to speak. If that's their direction, it feels like kind of a betrayal...
They announced a new character (Valko), then a highly vocal minority of their playerbase engaged in some foul tactics, including making false reports to the government, which led to Valko's cancellation before he was even released.
The quiet majority has been (less quietly) protesting and boycotting ever since. The dev ran a month of dead air and some basic reruns in July which led to a predictably horrible month of 10m, but they pulled out some content that should have absolutely smashed charts for August; the last comparable release (same content type, same character) was June 2025 which made $53m.
Some will claim that the anti-Valko group is the actual majority, and they're still boycotting for "other" reasons like the glacial pace of main story updates (which would have been remedied by the new character... they had a POV missing from their story that the new char was meant to fill in), but the DAU, when pulled from reliable sources like SensorTower, and the revenue charts simply don't support that. In fact, throughout August we kept seeing them rallying the whales to spend as much as possible to prove how much they want Valko to stay cancelled... and 17m is all they could scrape together despite isolated reports that some of them exhausted all available packs and went on to buy literal decades of the monthly pass.
Tl;dr they announced a new character, then canceled him after backlash where Chinese antis reported the company to the ccp. Lot of the backlash wasn't about Valko, but lingering issues such as long waits between updates, lack of f2p currency, and an earlier update which referenced numbers related to atrocities in WW2.
Valko became the sacrificial lamb. So both Asian and Global big spenders went full boycott.
all other gachas ahould be glad they dont have lads girlies cuz they know how to boycott and they dont fuck around. absolutely insane fumble by lads lol
On the contrary: All other gachas should be clamoring for the LADS girlies, because we clearly speak with our wallets whether we're happy or sad. And so far the bar for "happy" is pretty low: all we asked is for someone to acknowledge we deserve a AAA-quality game made for us too. But like, actually for us, which requires understanding the female gaze and not releasing a character cast of 30% "here, damn" characters that actually appeal to us amid a field of male-gaze designs.
LADS was the only one filling that niche, so that's where we all were, but the field of competition is open; the game was Infold's to lose, and although they had less choice in the matter than they're often portrayed as (it wasn't just caving to bullies; the bullies brought govt scrutiny) they continue to lose that game every day they don't find a way to stand by their original creative vision and release the character.
If they're smart, they'll announce Valko back before the first multi-banner. But this is Infold, and they're known for making some of the dumbest decisions.
i dunno, the crazy Valko haters in China might report them to the CCP again, comments saying about how much they hated him for looking gay have thousand of likes when he launched, there were harraassment to some fans putting up Valko billboard
They can't involve the government as easily anymore as they did previously. They used "731" numbers to label the game anti-china that's why the gov took fast action. Now the game and even the unreleased character Valko have been pretty much cleared by the gov, since they had to submit the game content for review. The narrative in China has also changed, and is continuing to change. Because back then the ones who were pretty moderate to excited about the character Valko were quickly bullied and reported, but now they've also mobilized and fighting back to get him reinstated. Though the situation is still messy there and there's a lot of other factors like if there are other parties like competitors trying to sabotage the company too.
the unit 731 thing got cleared fast, but the stuff of Valko 'breaking' into MC home got talked in national news in China, in romanticizing stalker behavior, if they bring Valko back, the CCP might invest in other LIs actions to see which is toxic in their book since the haters report Lads to the CCP, which would lead to Infold delete cards from their old LIs
But those allegations were all faked. None of them are true. And this is fiction. We can't start gatekeeping stuff because it's "unethical" or "dangerous".
I don;t think the CCP can think about the fiction stuff not affecting real life when a hint of China or fictional China, the goverment being a bad guy in some fiction stories are enough to get reported to the CCP and remove. Or Hoyo bunny custom gobal got backlash for whoring a Chinese god for international players
But the villains in LADS are EVER, a sorta conglomerate that's more akin to Shinra in FF7, not a government? And like, I'm pretty sure the CCP used checking stuff about A-0731 as an occasion to check on other things too, most probably. So... LADS is in the clear. There might be a chinese law that stopped them from releasing Valko in the month after he got "looked into" by the CCP, and now... they're probably waiting for the next best free window in the schedule to release him, and that window is coming FAST. We'll have to wait and see.
I said the unit 731 situation got cleared, lads doesn't have any content that can be deemed as against the goverment, you said "And this is fiction.We can't start gatekeeping stuff because it's "unethical" or "dangerous"." most of us know that but the CCP doesn't have the same thought as us with how much they ban contents they deemed as problematic. I use those as examples.
It's more related to toxic romance now, although it's just about some fantasy, when those old men checking lads LIs card and contents, they would come to conclusion of how some of the LIs are toxic in someway and Infold "normalizing" it to young women. Like Valko breaking to a women home situation, it's 100% false, yet it made into national news and the news report framed it like that, imagine if they check Sylus and Caleb cards, and come to the conclusion that Infold is showing how kidnapping and drugging someone are romantic to younger generation
Yep~ there’s been a steady decrease in spammers in comment sections, increase in likes and followers online. Eventually these people will get tired and leave and the fanbase can rebuild itself
Where are you getting your numbers? Lol. They started with 907k followers 03-Aug. They are now 894k followers 01-Sep. Not to mention global spending went down by 1 million compared to last month as reported by Sensor Tower Data.
XHS numbers, they went up by at least 100K this month
You realise that last month Infold gave out 40 pulls and there was a log in event which gave out 200 diamonds every other day right? Not to mention the usual dailies/weeklies that were saved up over the month.
Honestly, it was hilarious seeing CDGs rally to spend, only for them to not even get Vermillion Martial God up to 50% of Rafayel's previous myth. Who's the true "minority" now, lol.
You guys love bring up what a some CN people did to protest Valko but not the fact that Valko fans have totally gone off the rails: 1) sending a truck to drive around Gamescom. Calling the cancellation of Valko ”cyber murder” 2) threaten to commit mass suicide at infolds building if they release the next multi banner without Valko 3) just today Valko fans got exposed for doxxing the CEO and many other employees. Even going as far as doxxing the CEOs daughter (who is a minor). They got banned.
Oh look! A sheep who eats CDGs' lies. First of all, that truck thing was done by a Sylus solo stan to frame the entire boycott. The other points are blatant lies or done by CDGs masquerading as Valko stans.
You really think anyone with half a brain will believe that a boycott that funded charities for wildlife conservation, flood victims, and women's shelters has actually encouraged these? Lmao, yall sound as dumb as you are desperate.
Note that I said "That support the girls that sent PPG cow dung"
None of those things you listed are things the majority of boycotters support, we in fact were vocal about our disapproval of them.
I am SO GLAD to see this, I left the game after they announced Valko wouldn't be releasing, despite knowing Raf was next, and it's the first time I'm checking revenue at all. Infold shouldn't have messed with Valko
Wow the only gacha I’ve seen where the fans successfully boycotted. I’ve seen so many hoyo fans complaining about GI & HSR yet they’re always on top every month
As an applecrowfish, it's literally a test of how good you are at sticking to your principles. I refuse to spend for a company that has zero backbone to give to its own artists and works.
I like to battle so even though Raf is not my main I would have usually gotten his myth. Add in No Defense Zone and the Promise reset and Infold missed out on at least $300 from me just this month.
The "boycott" in HSR consists mainly of Reddit/X, where there is generally a long-standing tradition of crying over the slightest reason.
In Asia, there is currently not even a hint of a boycott - and that is essentially the main thing that Chinese developers respond to.
It nullifies every team if the user does not know how to read boss mechanics and does not want to turn off auto-battle.
I tested this personally on myself, using old characters with premium teams - I do not have Elation or Rem teams.
Therefore, I say - the situation is blown out of proportion; clears with almost e0s0 teams are already starting to appear.
The situation reeks heavily of the hysteria with Nikador in 3.x - Reddit was pouring out tears and snot about powercreep, how to even kill him.
And then videos started coming out where people simply read the boss's abilities and began clearing it with any piece of crap. 😂
Hilariously enough, some Chinese girlies were paying for CapCut because it kept showing up ahead of LADS in the rankings and they wanted to keep LADS low lmao
Ok but bringing a single character back isn’t gonna shoot up the revenue instantly it’s bad enough that it’s going to be a slow incline for them, could take MONTHS
The last two love interests who were introduced faced huge backlash when they were released and then quickly became fan favorites. If they had kept to their schedule and released Valko the same probably would have happened.
Unfortunately now they have to decide between catering to a viciously insane fanbase in China or making money.
No they didn’t. Go look at the live comments from both Sylus and Caleb live streams, it’s a stark difference from Valko’s. Sylus and Caleb’s are all generally incredibly positive, which is a far cry from Valko’s. No matter which side Infold panders to, they’re gonna take some sort of loss either way.
Can't say much about Sylus's but Caleb's addition was absolutely controversial. It took a long while for the incest debate to die down. If it weren't for Valko's entire fiasco, he'd still be the most controversial guy
Caleb is only controversial in EN, extremely well received in CN/JP/KR. If you want to buy his merch, his prices are always hiked up compared to the others.
Valko meanwhile is controversial in every language with CN and KR mainly disliking him heavily if you look at comments on the day of his release. JP and EN have very mixed reactions. This is nowhere near as much backlash as compared to Caleb who only dealt with EN complaining about his incest or possessiveness trope
Worth noting that unlike most other gachas, EN LADS makes a larger portion than KR/JP (cough KR's smaller size is unsurprising considering infold's track record there)
You might be misremembering. Both of them faced backlash. Sylus especially in CN and Caleb globally. There were definitely people excited for them, just like there were for Valko, but neither of them had a drama free introduction.
Sylus and Caleb had significantly less backlash, just go read the comments from bilibili or XHS yourself, it’s not that hard. It’s no where near Valko’s where most comments are straight up negative
With all due respect, you are not an impartial party. You're a noted anti who gets downvoted into the abyss on the official sub for obstinately glazing a deeply flawed game and gleefully gobbling up any card tossed to us like breadcrusts to pigeons.
Not an “anti”, unless you mean anti boycott then yeah I think boycotters are annoying considering you’re begging for a character from a company you really seem to hate when it’ll still be the exact same company who will produce his content anyways.
You aren’t an impartial party either. A “noted anti” solely because my comments on the official sub are positive lol
I enjoy the game, ain’t my problem that others don’t like it. If they don’t they can just not play and leave the others alone
I don't hate Infold. I hate their decision making and lack of backbone. I whaled on the game and enjoyed it until they decided to destroy everything they had built.
But, by all means, continue to enjoy your broken game. Removing Valko sure got you all that missing Caleb content, main story branch, and new ways to farm diamonds. Oh wait, no, none of that happened.
I will continue my boycott. You are free to not join in. But don't pretend everything is sunshine and rainbows.
It’s sunshine and rainbows in game for me considering I’ve never cared about any of those issues, even as a whale for Caleb. It’s still the same as it was two months ago and the newer content is very much enjoyable to me, I don’t really care to act as if it’s all doom and gloom because you all aren’t enjoying it
Hell will freeze over if anyone of you ever tries to show empathy to those who are boycotting a PRIVATELY OWNED BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY WITH NO SHAREHOLDERS. Do you realize that? This is the only way we can make a stand. Instead of standing with your sisters, ACTUAL WOMEN who are trying to fight to make the game better, you just roll over for the company.
And now Valko is already extremely loved in global with a huge fanbase in China too.
The numbers that you see here is the direct reflection of how much people want him back.
i’m not sure that the smear campaign really was the initial part of the backlash. Maybe from June 24th onwards but on the day of the first livestream, that backlash was likely genuine.
Technically, the smear campaign could have been ready to launch at the first occasion (Valko's reveal was thus their signal to start it), since it was probably orchestrated by one or maybe several rival companies. This is a known problem in China that they're finally starting to deal with properly. Love that for them.
but that ignores the fact that global also had a pretty negative reaction on June 22nd too. If rival companies wanted in to the smear campaign, they would have had to know that the initial livestream would go live on June 22nd and then plan to use the legitimate outrage of the playerbase. They would have had to have the WU number and the advertising material for Valko before hand too.
But isn't Valko not really the problem? Or are people thinking they would magically make more money if they go back and release him after all. Isn't the whole problem that they neglected the OG characters and the whole Valko release drama just made everything worse?
Valko was the catalyst but the game has been suffering from slow main story updates and accusations of being heavily paywalled with little chances to grind for in game currency. If Infold wants to bring people back, they need to first bring Valko back and then also provide tangible game updates.
From an outsider point of view it feels more like they need to fix the game before every thinking of adding a new love interest. Like this all started because the reaction to Valko was extremely bad. So don't think there are any plus points to get by releasing him.
If you compare LADS revenue in 2025 to 2026, you can see that they were slowly sinking already. But the boycott, and subsequent immediate drop in revenue is solely because of Valko. It would go back up if Valko would be returned, but people will still be sour about the situation, so they likely won't be back to where they were in June. The difference between 2025 and 2026 is due to the ongoing issues, such as lack main story updates, lack of updates to the battle features, and just general shallowness of the game, while squeezing their players dry.
Yeah, it's about a 20% YOY decline. They were fully banking on Valko being a shot in the arm to the game and a way to bring in new players. Cancelling him is a mortal wound. It won't kill them quickly, they're going to slowly bleed out for months until their expenses become unsustainable.
I’m not really sure bringing Valko back would bring everyone back at this point. It might bring the revenue up a little but long term, it likely won’t fix anything. All the legitimate complaints would still stand so the revenue would still be down either way. CN fans are not purely boycotting for Valko. A lot of their complaints have little to do with him.
You gotta use a defibrillator to keep the patient alive, then address the other issues after.
Same with this scenario: bringing Valko back also brings back the main story update (continue progression on their story telling, vs. having to scrap and re-hash the story without him) and move banner schedule with him included (vs. having to go back and remove all files related to him).
Instead of wasting time trying to perform surgery and remove files related to Valko, just bring him back, so that they can focus on their efforts to bringing more content in the game. Infold has heard the dissatisfaction from both sides loud and clear, especially from this month.
I have yet to see any proof that CN players are boycotting for anything other than Valko, yet people keep bringing this up. When you look at the revenue from June 22 up until now, you can see that it barely went down between June 22, and June 30th. The highest spike between June 30th and July 31st is lower than the lowest point in revenue between June 22nd and June 30th. That doesn't support the claim that the boycott is mostly due to CN boycotting for other reasons, and can be solely contributed to Valko's cancellation. That also proves that the people who boycotted to get Valko cancelled were a vocal minority.
Valko's cancellation was the straw that broke the camels back.
The whole game is neglected. There's so little content and infrequent updates besides banners to pull on.
And they're extremely stingy with rewards, probably the least f2p friendly gacha I've ever played.
But people stay for the (rare) story updates because underneath the predatory practices is deep lore, an interesting story and compelling characters.
Valko's cancellation showed that not even that story is safe at this point. 🙃
But was the cancellation the problem or the whole announcement of him releasing? I feel like it's more of the second than the first, because it went from "They don't release new content because they are lazy." to "They didn't release content for yet another love interest they said they wouldn't do.". And I can see how the second hurts for players more.
They were both a problem in their own way. The LaDS fandom hooks it's players primarily through emotional attachment rather than gameplay content (because what content lol).
This leads to certain sections of the fanbase being quite parasocial with their chosen character. They often ignore any content that doesn't involve their chosen character to the point some will consider it 'cheating' if they engage with another characters content. So for this section of the fanbase, they see the addition of a new character as a huge problem as they see it as less resources for their chosen character.
The thing is that LaDS (used to) print money. Papergames could have done regular story updates for all of their characters if they had wanted to. This backlash was loud and toxic to the point that they got the CN government involved. But financially not much changed.
The cancellation of Valko was a problem for a large section of the remaining fanbase, and that's when the revenue began to nosedive.
His update was scheduled prior to the long awaited main story for the more neglected characters, which will now need to be rewritten and most likely delayed. That has upset a lot of people who care deeply about the story and creative integrity of the game.
Some also argue that by having the 6th character finally implemented (as there's been breadcrumbs for a 6th character going back 2 years ago) that they could actually progress the main story faster now. I'm not sure I personally trust Papergames that much but it could have been possible.
Not to mention this character was cancelled days before his launch. Those resources and years of development were already spent. His cancellation hasn't magically brought updates for any of the existing characters. Instead they had half month of nothing and now their back to churning out paid banners.
If the current trend keeps up with this massive hit of revenue, they'll have to make cuts and no one is going to get the updates they wanted. So no one wins.
For my personal take:
Papergames has basically just completely mismanaged their game, their community and this whole entire situation. I'm tired of them taking advantage of female gamers and I'm tired of the LaDS players accepting such shoddy treatment.
Valko fans sure love to twist the CN boycott into being about Valko’s cancellation when the boycott started because he was introduced in the first place. Half of the active CN player base left because his introduction completely shattered their trust in Infold. That loss of trust is why they stopped playing and spending, which is why the revenue has been in free fall since. There is a whole post on this sub explaining the situation: https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/s/aOmoXcAGkf
I can tell you as someone active on CN SNS that if they dare to reintroduce Valko, the few remaining CN players (who are the actual spenders on this game) would be gone.
That DAU graph has been debunked multiple times. The original source was an estimation from a fan forum. If you have a more reputable source I'd like to see it.
The actual DAU data from Sensor Tower showed an increase in both CN and global until the cancellation. Source.
That “half the CN player base left” claim anti-Valko global players keep pushing is always based on the same single graph that was created by one fan (and I think they said they based it off the activity of players in their own friends list)
Apparently, SensorTower DAU estimates don’t show a significant decline until AFTER Valko was cancelled on June 30th
Does global audiences even matter? Their spending is very minuscule compared to the whales in CN. This month there was been better spending on CN than the boycott drop from global. I don't know why so many people here are peddling the narrative that a global boycott is ever effective when the numbers say otherwise
Of course it matters. The total revenue in June was nearly 40 million and had them at the top of the charts here. Losing global (by as much as 80%) is partly why they are here now. CN whales can't carry the game. If they could, it would be back to 40 mil again but it's nowhere close
CN revenue increased around 7 mil while global dropped 1 mil after Valko got removed. It seem like it's a no brainer to remove Valko to appease the CN audiences and have revenue gradually improve
Compare it to the revenue from the rest of the year though. It's an increase of 7 mil from a month that had NO events. It's still down like 50% from earlier months
Doesn't change the fact that global is still spending significantly less compared to CN. Bring back Valko back would only piss off CN players again and drop revenue further.
THE CN MADE LESS MONEY, NOT GLOBAL. GLOBAL STRUGGLES TO GO ABOVE 10 MILLIONS. LOOK AT MARCH 2026 WITH THE SAME CONTENT COMING OUT. GLOBAL MADE 7 MILLIONS. GLOBAL IS ONLY "COMPETITING" WITH THE MONEY OF HK, KR, AND JP.
Sweetheart, lay off the energy drinks and touch some grass. You clearly need it. China wants to expand their soft power into global markets. Up until Valko's cancellation, infold was a strong source of revenue flowing into China. Given valko's global popularity, it quite literally only makes sense to bring him back. Esp when you consider currency conversion rates. For example currently 1 usd = about 6 cn yuan. It really only makes sense to appeal to global audiences alongside domestic audiences to increase rev and, in turn, domestic tax income.
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u/BookerDeWittsCarbine 9h ago edited 9h ago
To put LADS continued downfall into perspective: This month had the highly anticipated new myth pair featuring Rafayel who is the poster boy for the game in China. That event, BY ITSELF, should have easily pulled in more than 17mil. His last myth pair, Lumerian Sea God, alone made 22mil. This month also had a highly desired Sylus rerun, a new Caleb solo card, a bunch of new outfits, and the bimonthly reset of their battle pass featuring new cards of their two most popular love interests.
They are fully cooked. Don't mess with a girlie's husbandos.
NoValkoNoMoney