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.
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
I'm sorry, but I'm tired of the "dark romance is bad because it normalizes those things to women" narrative. We almost never see this kind of take being made about things usually enjoyed by men who also show toxic behaviours.
Also, the CCP weren't checking the contents of the game on their own. Devs and reps of the game were probably there to explain things to them too. They probably showed the content in context while the articles were showing a reframed version of it. So no, I don't think the CCP will want to censor LADS further. The CCP knows this is supposed to be an 18+ game aimed at a women's demographic. It would also go against any plans of furthering China's soft power dynamics in the West, since they probably know the Global playerbase in general wouldn't take too kindly to more censorship.
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u/BookerDeWittsCarbine 8h ago edited 7h 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