General
The cancellation of Valko, the would-have-been 6th LI of Love and Deepspace. Was it because he was too ugly or was he just the straw that broke the camel's back?
I know a lot has been spread that Valko was cancelled because the CN audience of LaDS thought he was too ugly. It's true that he doesn't fit their aesthetics, and that they called him ugly a lot especially the 1st day of his reveal. But if aesthetics was the only problem, players wouldn't have been so angry that the game's DAU (Daily Active Users) would be cut in half.
The game had around 1.6m-1.8m daily users. However, when LaDS announced Valko on June 22, the game's DAU sharply declined. And when his cancellation was announced, it stabilized to ~900k, but many players still haven't returned due to a large number of issues
What is Love and Deepspace?
It's a 3D otome game made by Papergames with realistic graphics that focuses on 5 characters (Xavier-Shen Xinghui, Rafayel-Qi Yu, Zayne-Li Shen, Sylus-Qin Che, and Caleb-Xia Yizhou). It focuses on the story and romance with the LIs, has ARPG combat, has roguelite gameplay modes, and also a sims-like house feature.
What were the game’s constant issues even before the 6th LI?
The game has many issues which include:
The Main Story gets updated at a glacial pace (Twice a year when the game only has 5 LIs. One particular LI, Caleb, hasn’t had any MS update since his release 550+ days ago). Branch stories are a bit different from MS. They’re like alternate versions of what happened in a main story chapter.
The last 2 LIs (Sylus and Caleb) had significantly less base content than the 3 LIs on release (more on this later)
The game direction getting noticeably more monetized with barely any free content.
The game’s story relying on limited paid banners which have become repetitive as of late (mostly about vacations, AUs, almost always fluff).
Imagine Genshin’s main story barely being updated but there’s always new characters to pull for (let’s say 2-6 characters per month) with a fluffy character story chapter that isn’t related to the MS (but they'll drop nuggets of lore sometimes). I think that would be the Genshin equivalent of what is happening with LaDS.
To add to the previous point, the game has a lot of multi banners (themed banners that have all LI). In 2025, we had 6 (SIX! Or 7 if you include Nightly Rendezvous) multis. I get wanting that multi banner money. But honestly, to me they could have MS banners too if they wanted to monetize them where we can delve even deeper into an LI after their MS. Caleb’s Painful Signal and Lucid Dream cards are a good example of this. So I think they just don’t know how to write the Main Story.
Dark skinned players always having a bad time in the game. They can barely see their MCs due to the cutscene’s bad lighting, card arts only have light skinned MC, and the 2D chibis that represent your MC always has pale skin). (I’ve seen CN complain about MC’s 4* and 2D chibi skintone too but global is more vocal about this. While this is a prevailing issue in the game, it’s not in the list of CN players’ main complaints). 2.5 years and they still haven't figured out how to properly show MCs that aren't pale in cutscenes.
Sylus and Caleb were released after the game’s launch. Why were players angry at Valko’s inclusion when he was also a ‘new’ LI?
To preface, PaperGames already announced after the beta that Sylus and Caleb would be released after the launch, players just didn't know when. In the beta, they also put hints for Sylus, and you can meet Caleb too.
“They didn’t mention Valko because that would be spoilers and they got angry at Sylus’ leaks when he was released.” Yes they care about leaks and the Sylus one made Papergames really angry. But Caleb literally exploded in the beta and they still confirmed he’s an LI. Informing players about upcoming LIs ≠ leaks
Qin Che = Sylus. Xia Yizhou = Caleb. The announcement was on January 7, 2024. Love and Deepspace officially launched on January 18, 2024. Beta footage is also on youtube if you're curious
These two were already integrated in the main story from the start. Sylus and his organization were mentioned in the main story on release. Caleb basically had half a chapter dedicated to him before he ‘died’. So for all CN players knew, there will only be 5 LIs.
What about Valko? Well, he wasn’t mentioned anywhere during/after the beta. Not even a hint that they were thinking about a 6th LI. They applied for his trademark the day of his teaser trailer.
And the only hint he has in the story is a World Underneath (text only side stories for lore) that was released in April 2026, only 2 months before he was announced. That hint only mentions that the company he’s a chairman of, EonCore, is in close collaboration with EVER, the big bad of the story. Compare that with Sylus and his organization, Onychinus, where they were already mentioned as early as Chapter 3.10 on the game's release.
Another ‘hint’ is the UI. The list of the LIs had ‘Coming Soon’ even after Caleb was released. However, after the July 9 update, a week after Valko’s cancellation, they removed the ‘Coming Soon’ label.
So. CN players only knew about 5 LIs. That’s what Papergames told them. So what?
In an announcement on July 6, 2024, they mentioned that they had insufficient production capacity. On July 15, 2024, Sylus was released with significantly less base content than the 3 LIs
What is this base content?
Standard battle companions: The OG3 had 3 battle companions from the start to help with combat. Sylus (and later Caleb) only had 1.
Bond stories: They are stories fully animated (around 10-15 min length) that unlock as affinity with the LI increase. OG3 had 2, Sylus and Caleb only had 1.
Anecdotes: Text-only side stories that expand on the LIs lore and characterization such as their backstories or their lives in their alternate universes. This is different from World Underneath where it focuses on world building or other NPCs’ lives related to the LIs. Each anecdote also has a battle companion (from point #1) connected to it. So OG3 has 3 anecdotes. Sylus and Caleb only have 1.
Significantly less 4 star (and 3 star) cards: Every 4/5* card has a story. And it can also be used for battles. When battling, you need 2 solar cards and 4 lunar cards of different colors of 1 LI, and you can’t use different LI cards. Each matching color has a +5% damage against enemies, and when you match all colors, you’ll be able to easily put the enemies in its break phase (think of HSR’s break).
So if you have less base 4 star cards, that LI will have less story content. And if you’re a new solo Sylus/Caleb player, you will have a tougher time with battles. There’s also leveling up affinity of LIs which can unlock texts, calls, poses, etc. So less cards means less ways to level up and unlock content of an LI too.
Given that the main story moved at a glacial pace, and that Papergames never added the above I mentioned to Sylus and Caleb. Can we interpret that they never fixed their insufficient production capacity? If they never fixed it, then how come they had resources to make another LI? Or if they did fix it, it means they didn’t care to listen to player feedback.
But how come players of all LIs got angry and not only Sylus and Caleb players?
The difference between Sylus, Caleb, and Valko’s livestream content. Version 6.0 had nothing for the existing 5 LIs
Let’s compare the version updates:
Version 2.0, Sylus, July 2024
Abyssal Chaos Part 1: roguelite gameplay with lots of storylines, branches, and different endings for each LI
New free outfits for Xavier, Rafayel, and Zayne
Announcement of release dates for the branch stories of OG3
More stages for Deepspace Trials (endgame combat) and LI-specific Orbits (it’s like the Deepspace Trials but you gain affinity for that LI)
3 new World Underneath stories
The smaller stuff that I forgot (new photo feature, etc)
Version 3.0, Caleb, January 2025
Abyssal Chaos Part 2
Paid outfits for all 5
Free 4* cards and an event for all 5
More stages for Deepspace Trials and LI orbits
The small stuff that I forgot (period tracker, etc)
Version 6.0, Valko, June 2026
NO roguelite update. We’ve had Abyssal Chaos Part 1 & 2 (in ver 2.0 & 3.0), and Unicorns Operation in ver 4.0. This means no combat or additional story content. Not only for the other 5 but also for Valko too btw!
There’s a kitchen update. However, unlike the roguelite feature, which have storylines and branches distinct to an LI. The interactions for the kitchen unfortunately aren’t unique to each LI.
A giveaway of the 5 LI’s free 4* from the very recent January update. So you most likely already have this if you’ve been playing since January.
Other stuff (new widgets)
Announcement of upcoming new main story for Caleb and Sylus. No release date unlike what they did in version 2.0. And it was at the very end of the livestream where it was silent like they were doing an in memoriam. (It’s very clear that this part was slapped on after facing livid CN players. And that they originally never intended for any MS/branch updates for these two in the near future.)
They later change this to BRANCH story with release dates (September for Caleb, November for Sylus)
So! Glacial main story updates (Caleb hasn’t had an MS update for 550+ days), severe lack of base content for Sylus and Caleb, repetitive writing for multi events, and barely anything at all for the 5 LIs in version 6.0.
Does that mean most resources went to the 6th LI? Or that they couldn't keep up with the output (because like I said, there's barely anything for the 5 in ver 6.0) and yet they decided to go ahead with Valko anyway? Yeah CN is angry angry
The timeline since Valko’s introduction and CN’s boycott
Here’s another DAU graph but more updated. I’ll also be using UTC+8 Beijing for the dates and time. Stats (both this one and the one above) are from tieba’s 壁吧专楼吧 in the thread where they talk a lot about different games’ revenue and DAU (that they scrape).
万 = 10k. Noteable dates: June 22: Valko introduction. June 30: Valko cancellation. July 9: Game is updated to ver 6.0
June 22 19:30
Valko’s first trailer dropped and received a lot of hate. His weibo post had 2 million comments before the video was removed after his cancellation
How much hate did he get compared to Sylus and Caleb, new LIs but were already anticipated by CN players? Here’s a XHS comparison I took 3 days after this trailer.
Sylus and Caleb had around 200k likes and 15k comments, Valko had 50k likes and 300k comments.
So after his announcement, CN players realized that they needed to mobilize or else Papergames would walk over them with no worries even when the game has several glaring issues. They decided to team up and boycott as seen in the DAU graph. But even without that, you can tell from Papergame’s responses that their data was worrying.
June 26 11:00
Another trailer dropped and people noticed his facial structure having similarities to different LIs in every other frame, almost like his face is morphing. Personally, I thought his face during this trailer was inconsistent. In some frames he looks like Sylus, sometimes Caleb, even though both of them look nothing alike to me.
DAU has dropped an impressive ~400k. From 1.88m to 1.4m
June 28 01:00
They suddenly dropped an announcement at 1 AM (when China should be sleeping?) saying that "Valko is part of a long-term plan" (remember Sylus and Caleb but not Valko being in the beta + were announced before the game’s launch + Valko’s trademark date? Yeah), that Caleb's and Sylus's Main Stories are in ‘active’ development, and that myths will be arriving soon. (myths are LaDS biggest money makers because lore + combat)
They bribe players with 10 limited wishes and 10 standard wishes
This angers players even more because they didn’t seem apologetic at all. They mention Caleb and Sylus’ main story in a ‘here damn!’ way. And they dangle myths kind of like saying ‘give us more money!’
To me, it’s quite clear that CN’s reaction to them since June 22 made them feel like they needed to make a response. DAU decreased ~600k at this point, from 1.8m to 1.2m. That’s a worryingly sharp decline and the free wishes is basically begging people to come back.
June 28 19:30
Version 6.0 livestream drops angering all 5 LI players. I’ve already mentioned that there was no new content at all for the 5 LIs besides the kitchen
So days after June 22, Papergames was hounded by the press and was even condemned by China’s Women’s Confederation for the phrase ‘inviting a wolf into your home’ in Valko’s marketing. Idk how to describe it well but PPG's reputation was really bad like imagine your door keeps getting banged on 24/7.
Love and Deepspace 731 shoots up in Weibo’s trending topics in the afternoon. I can't remember how long it was, but I do remember that within 30 min to an hour, it got lower and lower until it was completely removed. I heard removing something from trending costs a whole lot of money compared to putting something on trending.
The story in question was a World Underneath story about human experimentation by EVER with the log [Test Record A-0731]. Just to remind you, Eoncore was in close collaboration with and funded EVER and Valko is Eoncore’s chairman. While of course they’ll good guy-ify him regarding this, it’s still not a good look haha. It's not important but I’m only mentioning this because I see a lot of ‘Well that WU was about another guy and not Valko’. Also, CN focused on 731 at this point and not Valko anymore. They don’t even mention him regarding the numbers.
At this point, the press, outsiders, and players were now hounding Papergames for Unit 731 references, not the character anymore. (For reference, My Hero Academia was banned in China for having a villain that referenced Unit 731)
Later that night, Papergames announced that the World Underneath wasn’t referencing Unit 731, but they will change it and train their staff better. Or that the phrase they used in Valko’s trailers (related to victim blaming) was because he’s a wolf, and that it didn’t have any other meaning, but they will change that too. They also imply that players are crazy lol. Naturally this angered CN players even further because they're not the one who put that in the game lol.
LaDS had around 1.8m CN players before June 22 (perhaps even more in April). It’s said that CN players, who are of course more than familiar with their own history, have already warned Papergames about this number when the World Underneath dropped in April.
Which is more likely? That out of ~1.8m players, no one noticed and reported it to CS? Or that Papergames ignored it? So everyone took this as another example of Papergames just refusing to listen to players even when they were actually trying to help the game.
June 30 20:00
This letter is more ‘apologetic’ compared to their 1st and 2nd announcements. But then you get to the bottom and you see #LADSValkoCanceled so how apologetic are they?
Valko is deleted from the game and they will focus on the 5 existing LIs from now on.
However, they still haven’t addressed the glacial main story updates (what is their 'stable pace'? Every 6 months?), or anything at all. "Oh hey Raf's myth is coming make sure to give us money!" So CN is still boycotting. Although the DAU has stabilized to ~900k now after his cancellation.
Players also get 1 wish everyday for 30 days to boost DAU lol
Also I just want to show that his cancellation after a few hours had more likes than any of Valko’s posts after a few days hahahaha (60k vs 3-6k). He was NOT well-liked at all. And also a comparison on how it would have looked like if the announced LI was actually loved and anticipated
I also want to mention that they've lost around 1.4m followers across their social media accounts around this time lol. There was a joke going around that every time they post something, people remember that they forgot to unfollow
Left to right: Douyin, Weibo, XHS, Bilibili
July 8
They cancelled their Bilibili World event. They said that they sincerely accept criticism and will not shirk responsibility. They’ll take reverence for history, protection of national sentiment, and inheritance of Chinese culture as their standards to comprehensively carry out staff training and self-inspection and rectification.
July 9
The game has been updated to version 6.0 with the ‘Coming Soon’ on the LI list removed from the game.
The rerun banner that they ran is the multi banner that emphasizes Chinese culture, and also one of the most requested reruns ever.
The rest of July
They’ve just been silent. No social media posts. No nothing. Zayne’s free 5* was dropped in the game without any social media promo.
People ask customer service about Raf’s myth and suddenly they reply that it’s been moved to August. Papergames did not announce at all that they’re delaying his myth. Players had to ask CS themselves. That’s how shitty this company’s communication is.
CS response: 因近期版本排期调整较大,为确保 后续版本内容上线后的稳定性和用 户体验,制作组正在全力推进相关 筹备工作。经审慎评估,祁煜全新 日卡身份预计将在8月与大家见 面,还请您再等待一段时间,感谢 您的理解与支持 / Due to significant recent adjustments to the version schedule, the development team is working diligently to ensure the stability and user experience of subsequent version content. After careful evaluation, Qi Yu's new solar card is expected to be released in August. Please wait a little longer. Thank you for your understanding and support.
Rumors go around that a solo Caleb card will be next, and CN Caleb mains vehemently dislike this when their core complaints are main story related. From what I’ve seen, CN Caleb mains won't be pulling his solo if it’s true that he’s next. A solo card isn’t a main story.
August 3 11:00
Finally, a new banner is announced, Caleb’s basketball solo card. Another fluffy card unrelated to any main story plot.
It’s not Rafayel’s myth, who’s rumored to be a Chinese General in this myth, despite them saying that they will reveal that in July. Because myths and multis are the biggest money makers, I assume they’re either waiting to reveal it when the mood is more calm to maximize profits, or they’re improving it a lot or modifying and polishing it.
CN is still boycotting (or some of them probably left for good) because Valko isn’t just the issue, he’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The game already had several problems that the company refused to work on.
They added another LI when they have already been neglecting the current ones. Where is more character growth or them struggling with their views? A common complaint is that the LIs' characterization and story have basically plateued. Where is the plot? Oh well. That's not important. Here's another AU banner for you!
They lost so many players after they announced Valko, and lost a bit more after his cancellation. I say this company deserves this haha
On another note:
CN otome should be judged by CN otome standards. Not JP joseimuke games (like twst/enstars), JP mobile otome games (like Ikemen series), nor any CN general games (like Genshin)
The CN otome structure focuses on a small cast of LIs (the Big 6 CN otome only have 4-5 LIs and they have been doing well for years). They focus on companionship, character & relationship growth with the player over the years. It’s wrong to say “LaDS will fall if they don’t continuously add new LIs” because that has never been what CN otome players (where the majority of revenue come from) look for.
There was another game that added a sudden new LI when that game already had several problems. The players boycotted, and that LI became a ‘special encounter’, an LI who doesn’t show up in many banners and generally has less content. I've already linked it above but this explains more about that game's drama and boycott. The name of the game is Love and Producer. The company’s name? Papergames. Oh man this company just refuses to learn its history lmao.
The game prints money and there's so little content except for paid banners which give you short CGI side stories.
It's genuinely shocking.
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u/planetarialP5X(KR)/IN/Prosekai(JP) Future: Petit Planet/Silent Whispers29d ago
It’s why competition is important.
When you have multiple choices that are vying for the same demographic of people you actually have to try and do better or else your players have no reason to stick around.
But when nobody else is making an otome game remotely on the same level of production quality you can get slack and greedy (up to a certain point) because lol where else are you going to go?
I really hope Silent Whispers is actually decent and forces Infold to treat it's players decently for once because the bar is literally in hell at this point.
The company behind Silent Whispers lost a plagiarism lawsuit against Infold for copying Nikki games for their game Life Makeover. I don't think we should herald them as some kind of saviour/competition when it seems as though they're worse than Infold have ever been.
I would argue that some decisions in Shining Nikki were pretty influenced by Life Makeover.
Dyeing clothes, a (mediocre) home system, and others were ideas taken or influenced by their competitor. Just because they won lawsuits doesn’t completely mean Infold isn’t susceptible to competition.
It's the curse of their target audience. Lads players effectively marry their husbando. It's why adding new LIs doesn't matter. The quality of the game for the most part doesn't matter, as long as their husbando is still there. There needs to be a lot of "DV" before the divorce happens. The fact that Lads still has most of their player base (even though a large minority left) is proof of that.
Yeah, my only hope for them is either this latest drama actually is enough of a hit to papergames' wallet that they shape up or a competitor forces them to be better.
And even then both of those might not be enough if PPG just bank on people being so emotionally attached that they can be reliably exploited further.
This is what i’ve been saying! Ladies are already told irl that they should lower their standards in relationships. Why should they have to do that for their fictional boyfriends too?
One of the theories that I think could be true is that Papergames was simply not prepared for how popular LaDS was going to be. They were expecting it to be successful (They were so confident they took out a loan from Hoyoverse of all places because they ran out of money a few months before the game launched) but nearly to the degree that it was. Their team was too small, but quite frankly it’s been over two years and they should have had the time to hire and train additional workers.
I do think "suffering from success" is probably part of it. Seems like they lacked the experience to deal with that amount of money. They also had a management change in July 25. Yao Fei who is apparently the nephew of company owner and founder Yao Runhao took over for Liu Chenxi and things steadily got worse after that. We also had a strange 8 month pause in main story updates during that time, Update 5 "Death and Rebirth" was May 25 and then nothing happened until "To our Yesterday" in Jan 26.
I tried ToT out a year or two ago and it just feels really outdated. I know it has its fans (who have taken umbrage each time I say this lol) but it is what it is. I honestly think hoyo could do a decent otome but ideally it'd be an actual new offering that was a bit more modernized.
The cast is really great, I played through the story and I came to like all 4 of them. The story is my favorite in hoyo games and the arts are beautiful. But yeah, you can clearly feel the date in it. I hope hoyo will wake up one day and revisit the game.
I tried it and I just couldn't get into it. Yep, really dated. But then again, while I initially liked LaDs, I didn't last long because I didn't like the events that had nothing to do with lore or the main story.. just all fluff and dates.. pretty boring.
There was some kind of business deal. Either Papergames paid back the loan or Hoyo got a substantial amount of stock in Infold. Needless to say, they easily paid the loan back and the CEOs are still on good terms.
You can say, that they had no long term plan in terms of storyline lol… hence all the vacation and alternate stuffs just to print more money while they still can. Milk the cow until they can’t , then introduce a new cow. 🐮
Regarding the main story, I personally think it’s cause it’s entirely free so it’s not a priority lol. I remember comparing it to Themis’ main story releases cause when I played, their main updates were also slow and was also free, even how you get the card associated with it. I can’t say much for the other CN otome games, but for LaDS’ sister game, before s3 dropped they were releasing 4 main story chapters every 3 months and it included all the guys (yes, even Shaw despite only making short appearances in a diff LI’s chapter). I think they’re able to do this because other than the fact that it’s 2D and they focus a lot more on the writing than visuals, they drop chapter cards where you earn by spending gems. In hindsight, they’re much cheaper than a card you get through their gacha but anyways they do make money from main story updates. (When s3 dropped they started doing two main story updates per year but it’s mainly cause they’ve upped the quality, visuals, and some formats compared to the last two seasons so production is taking longer. They have communicated this with the players at least lol)
I used to back up PG saying because LaDS is 3D and they’ve been making more dynamic cutscenes, it’s probably taking longer but now Idt I can cut them some slack anymore, especially when they’re pumping out myth companions each year for 5 guys and their story lengths have become longer than an average movie run time (3rd gen myths have a run time of at least ~2 hours)
Sorry for the yap LOL. Just wanted to give some insight of what I’ve been thinking for the past 2 years
asdjakfsdlk that's like one of the highest compliments I can get for writing this silly thing. Thank you! I think subconsciously I did want something hobbydrama worthy haha
Hello! I came across your post from another section. Your summary strikes me as extremely objective and truthful. I’m genuinely moved to see such unbiased, honest analysis amid all this heated public discussion, so I came over specially to give you a like! ——An Ex Hunter
I wonder how the company doesn't have enough funds to expand their manpower while they are making like 30 million dollars every month for the last year... Is running their business so expensive or is it just the big wigs getting giant paychecks?
So glad weve gotten like 2.5 Main Story updates in row. And another next patch. After year 1's festival side story galore, i can understand why LADS players are incensed by a lack of main story.
And even then, IN is also plagued by mismanagement, poor optimization, poor communication, and super light amounts of content compared to other games in the genre, paired with nigh unreasonable amounts of monetization, Infold needs to realize that even though their target audience is women doesn't mean they can give us slop and we thank them for it, just because they are one of the only studios attempting to fill a niche for a traditionally underrepresented sector in the gaming industry
You, me, and everyone knows it's the latter. Hoyo (though I don't play their games anymore) seems to be about the only gaming company that takes their profits and reinvests at least some of them in expanding the quality and scope of their games, rather than coast forever on good will and player spending.
Ex-LADS player here. Was thinking of quitting for a while and finally uninstalled when this shitshow first blew up. And hoo boy I’m so glad I did, PG fumbled so hard to the point where I’m back to playing Genshin lol.
PG has always mismanaged their games so badly to the point where I now have a newfound respect for Hoyo. Hoyo may be greedy, but they at least know how to properly handle a live service gacha game and actually listen to players if there’s any glaring issues like missing story content or abandoned gameplay features.
I honestly don't know how Hoyo does it.. lol.. How can they be so consistent.. And I'm also in awe of some of their charity / art / culinary features.. The most recent one was bringing kids from the province to watch an actual rocket launch.
Most of the big gacha companies invest in their existing IPs or create new ones, some of them even more than Hoyo. Cygames, Hypergryph and Kuro as examples.
Cygames for e.g has their own animation studio that has several shows and movies under their belt, multiple gachas and several non-gacha games in production etc.. and they're working on expanding their existing IPs too, with Uma movie and Anime+party game and GBF with its anime, Relink and GBVS
Yeah I played rage of bahamut and granblue and the speed Cygame moves is slow as hell. Even localizing uma musume took forever and you can smell cheaping out and dragging their feet.
There is no way they reinvested as much as hoyo. Not even close just look at the animations and songs for Individual character for zzz, it's like 2x the effort of those overwatch shorts every 3 weeks
Honestly that line on limited production capacity made me suspect Infold reviewed what they were capable of outputting with Valko and without Valko,, and they came to the conclusion that they're unable to meet a more reasonable MS release schedule with Valko's inclusion
which is idk something they should have realized before starting development on him
You'd think a dev that milks the even more "fake partner" obsessed female audience would have enough cash to write stuff consistently for only 5 characters. Maybe they were hoping the players would make their own goon content with AI and did the bare minimum.
One has to wonder where the fuck did they squander all the profits, because female gooners spend a lot. LaDS bas consistently been ranking high on the monthly pvp charts posted here.
too many companies want that genshin money, but it's quite telling when even hoyo themselves pivoted to other genres for the future games: competing with genshin the elephant in the room is a tall task, not to mention it's an elephant that's been very stable for 6 years plus
I hope they will make a complete game for once. Making 2 opw live service game will be hard to manage considering they want Varsapura to be their next flagship game.
"Genshin clones" are in the 2020s what "World of Warcraft clones" were in the 2010s. With the same end result of an oversaturated market and with the original game never being dethroned.
The funniest part is they already have one, that's Infinity Nikki. But that's a dress up game (in open world), so the key point is male and female playable characters, which makes it mass market appeal instead of the strict female player appear that Infold has built their success on.
I think I’ve seen that game’s trailer on ps5 channel before, the artstyle and the character’s face look familiar so that should be it. If I’m not hallucinating, but I’ve also heard that rumor as well.
It's called The Perceiver if you want to look it up. Honestly looks good though, giving off some Where Winds Meet vibes, having less of an anime art style compared to the rest of the competition.
They have released trailers for these 2 games. They are called Project: The Perceiver (Chinese style) and Ballad of Antara (Western style, joint venture).
This situation is still wild, mains spaces were invaded. Sylus sub? NO VALKO SUB. The top post was about Valko bruh. Even now, the main sub is still full of him, same for the official Discord.
That's crazy lmao. I bounced from the game about a year ago from lack of main story content but I truly don't understand why people are going nuts over a fictional character that they knew about for like 5 days?
I had the exact same initial reaction to the 6th character's sudden reveal. I'm not CN nor did i even know what other ppl's reactions were. I am pretty much a day1 player who has been very frustrated with the game and my patience had been wearing thin for a while now
I had no idea that this game had a glacial content release problem. The game is always at the top of the charts. How could they allow that? Are they basically terrified of their community now? Making a mistake and costing them everything?
Are they basically terrified of their community now? Making a mistake and costing them everything?
Lmao I assure you they aren't afraid of us. If they were terrified they would have released another statement apologizing since their DAU and revenue is low. Current DAU is half of what they had before this incident and yet it's business as usual for them.
Infold got so greedy and comfortable with their playerbase that’s the thing, before the Valko situation they never listened and continued to bombard players with more multi banners— with multi banners so often it’s different than normal individual banners cause they kinda force you to spend more money to get the card you want— Infold was using the game as a cash cow since they had no competition (until Silent Whispers is released).
It’s was the same thing with Hoyoverse until recently: just big companies getting comfortable since they have the monopoly.
But tbh Infold has a history of making weird panic bad decisions when they have a controversy; they literally nuked the whole Korean server of their other game infinity nikki only because of some complaints of Korean players (valid ones). They’re horrible at managing crises, like very stvpid and weird.
They also has a different Otome game 2d but they did the same thing of deleting one guy out of hate, then bringing him back but less content tha the others, it’s a pattern for them at this point
Panic -> bad decision -> never back down on it or explain
My wife play lads, so I get nuggets of frustrations she has every once a while.
From someone not playing the game but get all the drama spoon fed to me, I think the entire thing boils down to how they handle character release and main story. (Also their PR strategies are very questionable)
The main story is releasing in snail speed due to not enough dev capacity, I’m not buying that. They always top 5 on the monthly PvP for like forever, and they can’t hire more writers or dev? I feel like they have enough revenue to hire teams of writers and have a battle royale on next plot line. They might still have enough profit to line their pockets. I always question where the heck did all the lads money go considering their new content are just onslaughts of new banners. (And a forgotten home system)
Then there’s the new character. For one he seems to have a lot of share trait with some existing characters, which probably already doesn’t do well with existing player base, then he is like come out of nowhere. Imagine some random villain name in some fluff text on a spoon in dark soul, and tell you that’s your next love interest. Like no build up at all, so I can already imagine the player reaction (note already starving for content update on their existing characters).
Now the PR… their entire strategy on PR is hype, and very short period hype. I feel since start of this game, they just hype the shit up of any release content a few days before release. Their stance on leaking content is extremely firm, so there is no resource planning for anything outside of birthday banner. Also seems like their way of combat negative response is dead silence, like a “we know what we doing, and you will see when the content drop” type of shit. And luckily until recently their content satisfy their player base most of the time. So part of the fan base become very toxic combative when anyone inside or outside of player base provide any critic. But for some reason, they are very apologetic this time around, it even lead to some conspiracy therapy where the PM is a relative of the owner of the paper game.
You're on the same boat as my bf because I've been ranting to him nonstop about this ever since it started. He even joked that it feels like I'm "in a toxic relationship" with how Infold treats me lol. I actually had a bit of a hard time explaining the situation to him since he's not a LADS player. And I can't simply compare LADS to other gacha games like Genshin/HSR for example because, even though they all use a gacha system, they are still different.
But if I had to make a somewhat similar comparison (though I still don't think it's 100% accurate, this situation is really unique), imagine if Hoyo suddenly announced a brand new nation that was never mentioned in the Archon Quest, had no foreshadowing, and came out of nowhere while existing nations were neglected or story has been paused. This new nation looks rushed/half baked (it looks way different on certain angles), and not that unique because it borrowed a lot of other features from other existing nations. There's also this one nation that had been sitting untouched for 500+ days. They debuted that nation, no extensive/follow up main story, just some side stories and AUs and that's it. To add, these major main story updates drop infrequently too, having long gaps/arriving roughly twice a year so it's a drought basically.
On top of that, players had been asking for YEARS for things like better diamond farming, endgame content improvements/addition, shop updates, fix lighting issues, fix KoD (companion), add more free permanent content etc, but those requests kept getting ignored. Then, instead of prioritizing on fixing those issues, Hoyo poured all their resources into this completely new nation nobody asked and expected everyone to be excited.
To add salt to the wound, they added this ppt slide during 6.0 livestream. The descriptions are vague and wasn't even even voiced/narrated which gives the impression that this is just some sort of damage control due to the initial backlash. They don't have anything concrete to show which makes a lot of us think they really haven't even started working on them at all.
From the outside, it just looks like "a new update/new character, why complain?" but for long-time players, it's about all the things we've been asking for that still haven't been addressed.
From a certain angle, that was Nod Krai. A year ago, the feeling was very much "what do you mean, we're not going to Snezhnaya proper and instead we're spending a year in this weird semi-autonomous region instead?" And there is stuff like "when was the last time anything happened in Inazuma." Was it 500 days? Not sure, but it's definitely been a while. Miliastra Wonderland also caused some real raised eyebrows about where the devs were putting in their effort.
But I think it does help that the overall player sentiment was just not as bad, so the backlash wasn't as bad, even if Natlan was divisive, and Nod Krai then managed to turn it around by giving what a lot of players consider a return to the good old days of Genshin. Infold really did mess this up on every level.
Yeah, I can see the Nod Krai comparison from the "why are you investing in this when other things need attention?" perspective. On the surface, it looks quite similar, but the structure of the games is still different, which is why I think comparing LADS to Genshin or HSR gets tricky and why I said it's not a 100% accurate analogy.
Aside from being different genres, LADS is just built differently. Each Love Interest (LI) has their own separate timeline and story route rather than all sharing one interconnected narrative. Players are also primarily invested in their mains. Because of that, player expectations and the impact of content updates are different as well and that's the reason why I don't think these situations are directly comparable.
The fact that Nod Krai writing was so much better than every other region softened the blow quite a lot, if Nod Krai had been like, worse than Natlan the dooming would never end.
The irony of the boycott is from the moment Valko became the flashpoint/scapegoat for players’ complaints and Infold cancelled Valko, the fans that boycotted due to Valko have now become the remaining playerbase and have the incentive to go back to supporting the game. Whereas the pro-Valko faction have an incentive to walk away and continue boycotting. This all despite the former group being the faction that was more dissatisfied to begin with.
I think it’ll be interesting to see where this goes long term but I suspect you can already see this playing out in the splinter subs, where the reaction to the latest update is more positive on the anti Valko sub despite the devs not really fixing any of the “underlying” issues players were upset about.
Even as a spouse of a player, who gets nuggets of information from time to time, you still have a better grasp on the situation and are telling it more fairly and accurately than most of the so-called players that have been spreading misinformation all over the internet for days... Like, I know what the truth is, I lived through it lol
To be fair. When the player base are super invested, a lot of action doesn’t make sense. My wife went from hating the character, to hating paper for mess up release schedule and lack of content , to wanting the character, to hating the community for canceling the character in matter of a week. The mood swing is crazy every time lads have a content patch.
The main story is releasing in snail speed due to not enough dev capacity, I’m not buying that. They always top 5 on the monthly PvP for like forever, and they can’t hire more writers or dev?
From everything I've read, it just seems like there was a great confluence of factors, and Valko's release just exacerbated everything. I'd be pissed too if I played a game with such a miniscule content drip only for the game to try to expand horizontally without offering more vertical depth for existing characters.
However, since LaDS has the most toxic fanbase in existence, that led to everyone being at each others' throats, certain fans looking forward to Valko getting utterly fucked over, and other fans celebrating out of spite of the aforementioned fans getting fucked over, despite the fact that their harassment campaign hasn't actually resulted in solutions to the underlying problems.
I didn't follow any of the LADS Drama but I played IN with my wife and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of LADS money went there instead and was completely squandered when they fumbled the ball.
Infinity Nikki is a big UE5 Game with a Genshin-esque open world and was doing the Genshin release cycle, yet it was barely making a 3rd of Genshin's revenues, and went down to about a 5th or 6th of the revenues for something that was said to have had over a thousand developers at its peak.
I wouldn't be surprised if IN is just straight up bleeding them money and they are using LADS to keep it alive since Nikki is their Flagship IP.
Which would also explain the glacial release pace of LADS and their complaints about not having the means to increase the pace.
I think IN is definitely siphoning LaDS money if it isn't generating enough on its own (hard to know since it's one of those PC/console primary games), and there are rumors of Infold having a different game in development that might be using that money, too.
But it's still no real excuse for how glacial LaDS is imo. LaDS is basically a fancier VN and those don't need millions and millions of revenue a month to run. If they wanted to they absolutely could put more effort into it.
To be fair most people who spend on Nikki likely don’t play on mobile because it’s so poorly optimized. I spend more on Nikki than any other gacha I’ve ever played but I don’t play on mobile so it’s never included in the monthly revenue posts. I don’t think Nikki is in that bad a place to be honest. It’s pretty good right now if anything
While I agree that there is a bigger problem with the game, the time between Valko's announcement and cancellation was too short to tell which caused a bigger loss in players. Claiming that they lost most of the players with his announcement is just speculation.
Also,despite InFolds laziness and money-grubbing focus, there is much evidence in-game saying that there were always going to be 6 love interests. While changes were definitely made to him, Valko was planned for at least as long as the game has been out.
The fact is that InFold needs to get a hold of themselves and start communicating.
Infold isn't very good at communication XD, I learned this well from Infinity Nikki. If that disastrous 1.5 update is anything to go by, they like to randomly make bad decisions to piss off their players.
yeah, maybe not by name, but there had been hints about future 6th LI. there is a reason it was such a popular topic for lore players for a while now
his cancelation actually made me so angry partially because of it. if infold can cut a significant part of the story seemingly so easily, how much of the story actually matters then. in regular circumstances throwing away a big chunk of the plot/lore with no consequences would speak of its low quality, which I know wasn't the case at the start of the game
I was a player with little emotional investment in the game but even I knew a 6th LI was coming (and that he would be hated for it with how atrocious the schedule had been). It’s been very obvious from the start with how they set up the protocore colors + the coming soon thing. Heck, even my friend who didn’t play the game thought another guy was going to be added just because of the coming soon thing. I just didn’t know when he’d drop. I knew I would’ve left before then though. Not a fan of overly greedy companies in general.
Seeing all this retconning of 'wE dIdN't KnOw ThErE wAs AnOtHeR cHaRaCtEr' is wild to me because it was widely discussed from the brief time I tried the game. It was also (correctly) assumed back then that the new character would have yellow eyes to match the 6th protocore that didn't match the other characters.
I think a lot of LaDs players don't play other games (which is fine) but their understanding of game development is nil.
I've seen so many people insisting the 6th character was rushed and a cash grab for reasons like they recycle some generic animations and he wasn't trademarked until the announcement 💀
Yea, the CN players only knew about 5 LIs theory is rather strange. They didn’t want him because he’s gonna make content more sparse? Sure. They didn’t know how he’s gonna look like and what his name would be? Sure. Perhaps even Infold hadn’t truly finalized his design until rather recently. Infold should’ve handled the game development and marketing better? For damn sure. I can’t comment on the possible rushed/recycled content, unfortunately (not invested enough to know that deep). But really, not a single person in that huge fanbase thought of the possibility of a 6th LI when the coming soon text stares at you every time you open the game?
Both graphs have dates written on it. The loss of most players after the announcement is not just a speculation based on the information provided. It's fine if you don't want to believe the information presented in front of you, but no one has presented anything stating otherwise - graphs or data.
There is a huge drop from Jun 22 till Jun 28. This is directly the period after the announcement. Valko wasn't cancelled until after the 30th.
After the 30th the first graph still shows a drop, which can be a mix of previous players still boycotting and the small amount of Valko supporters - as OP as presented is a minority on Chinese side.
The second graph shows it is much more stable after Jun 30. Also indicating the people who boycott are not returning just because of the cancellation but not a huge drop after the 30th either.
Valko was never the issue, the players just had enough and he was the last straw.
Instead of taking it out on the company, they take it out on a character to beat them up, blowing it up to the government. Shit is worse than kpop fandoms fr
OP, the write up is fantastic. I appreciate the amount of receipts you included. I think one thing you could add is that after the stream the customer service line was full and the ones trying to reach a real person had to wait days. Since then CS hasn't been full.
Here's the CS response of the queue being full below.
And for the people asking where the money went, some players speculate it went into their upcoming game they've been working on. They posted job listings in California for this new game, I believe titled The Perceiver? It's supposed to be general audience type of game so think Genshin, Wuwa, Arknights, etc. Basically they milked female players for money to spend on a game that is unlikely to appeal to them, which would've been fine had LADs not suffered due to it.
Here's the amount of people who RSVPd for the billibilli stream
Edit: I should also point out that PV for Valko pictured here is the one they released AFTER his reveal (the date has 6/28 on the thumbnail as proof; 6/22 was the stream announcing him), so their low numbers is reflective of how pissed they were.
Purple thumbnail is the update preview for Sylus and 2.0 content
Yellow thumbnail is 1st year Anniversary preview and first half of 3.0 content
Blue thumbnail is the update preview for Caleb and the rest of 3.0 content
Full moon thumbnail is the update preview for Valko and 6.0 content
When I read through their first apology for the first time I actually got confused because according to my friends who still play Caleb and Zayne hasn’t had any Main story updates in a long time and they said they’re still working on it. Like, what have they been doing with their time when they only have 5 characters to take care off? It’s no surprise other Lis main got angry, but they shouldn’t have deleted Valko. Just delay him and worked on releasing contents for older Lis and then announce him again. Now they’ve pissed off all side.
But the ones who reported their own game to the government are actually crazy when they should’ve known how ccp is like. But the way infold used 731 out of all numbers is weird too.
Apparently some players tried to message ppg about the 731 all the way back in April when that text was released. But I guess in all their arrogance, the company chose to ignore it. While bringing public attention to it might have been stupid, ppg handed the players the ammunition themselves.
They got mad because the last two cakes weren’t even finished and they decided to make a new half baked cake instead. Leaving the previous new cakes still not done after over a year.
Crazy how people focus their rage on one character and not on the company itself. They make tons of millions… having “production delays” is criminal with those numbers. They even have a VIP service for whales like, come on.
VIP services are unfortunately common in CN otome gacha games. They're good if they're in-game stuff like cumulative rewards. ToT has this, the more you spend you can get exclusive cards and mats but it's something over time so even low spenders can get this. Funnily enough, LADs doesn't have this cumulative reward system.
That's why the numbers are so low last month, CN ARE focusing on Infold; even after they removed Valko, they are still boycotting and want them to do more and actually improve the game ... Valko was literally the straw that broke the camels back it seems.
Meanwhile the West keeps crying about a wolf they knew for a week that never even made it into the game ... as if he comes back and then wouldn't end up having the same problems as Sylus & Caleb are having; hence CN's boycott in the first place lol.
Are you talking about the existing playerbase? The current playerbase has been boycotting since last year. But because they're mostly sporadic and not united. The company buy water armies to stir infighting. The complaints where there alright. There is also one earlier this year where many whales quit. They've been demanding content since forever. But V is the last straw that broke the camel's back. Global people are just unaware and reduce the whole situation to just one character.
Also they lied to CN Vip girls that there would be no more LI and also told them about production capacity hence why the updates are slow. So some fanbase are just waiting patiently only to get something else.
I hate that this is the one most popular game that women have. I’m so fucking tired of having complaints about how male characters get treated in games I want to play (I miss Billy and Hugo so bad) only for entitled men to tell me to “gO bAcK tO lAdS”
Two things can be simultaneously true;
1) the pushback was born from longstanding frustration about unresolved issues
2) cancelling Valco was not the right response
This is really the most clear cut balanced take. Unhappy players should have continued their boycott and advocated for more content for their LIs, not deprive people of a character they might enjoy.
For me it’s like, the cat’s out of the bag, you know? It would have probably been smarter not to make him yet since there is so much they needed to be doing instead. But they did, and not releasing that work is only making it take longer to release the other content, so there’s no upside in all of this
At this point, does it even matter? Even if Valko is gone for good, the infighting between the fans of the existing LIs (love interests) will still continue. In fact, I think Infold even encourages the division just to drive up the engagement. They'll have no incentive to improve on any of the playerbase complaints since people are still throwing money at them.
After all, the general sentiment is 'whatever that doesn't affect my LI doesn't affect me.'
Pretty much. LaDs went from toxic to straight up more radioactive than Chernobyl when it blew. A large portion of players aren't going to feel comfortable in this fanbase for awhile, if ever now, and it's largely because of infold's poor decisions and skewed priorities. Given what happened with Infinity Nikki, it's possible they are actually incapable of making good decisions.
Part of the blame still goes to some of the players though. Like you said, some really don't give af as long as it doesn't affect their fave. They'd be cool getting other characters canceled (and some have tried) if they thought it meant they'd get an update for their main a few weeks earlier. Really sorry state the game and fanbase is in.
for real lol I don't think ot5 truthers (and infolds spinelessness to listen to them) realize that their actions to get valko cancelled have:
delayed main story progression for years because valko was implied to be the catalyst for the actions in MS
killed the jobs of people who worked on valko (VAs, animators, riggers, etc)
will reduce the quality and writing of future banners due to them needing to write valko out
deprived players of thousands of diamonds potentially earned through the 6.0 update.
anyways, you're right that the infighting will kill the fandom anyways. things were always tumultuous before but lads fans (including me) are already fighting here so I wonder at this point, how soon lads will EoS
I don't think they'll EOS anytime soon, but the quality drop will definitely be noticeable enough that the playerbase will leave for other pastures, especially since PPG seem to be diverting resources to their new AA game (Project Perceiver). The fans who will stay are those who are content with mediocre slop, so you can't really do much about them.
My prediction is that LADS will end up exactly like its predecessor MLQC.
I thank you for this especially the additional context for their older sister game because my god, the ex-MLQC players who only plays the first 2 years thinks that they're the expert what whatever is fully happening to the game when they spread the information even worse and players who have played Love and Producer for more than 5 years are so tired of their BS
The OP's post clearly fails to connect the reasons behind the entire situation and comes across as biased in its conclusions.
First of all, the game was always designed to have six love interests. The developers made that clear by keeping the "Coming Soon" slot even after Caleb's release, in addition to the many other in-game elements that pointed in that direction. Valko's situation happened simply because a group of people did not want a new character, despite the numerous hints throughout the game indicating that another one was planned. In fact, the company's cancellation letter explicitly stated that not only was Valko being canceled, but any future new love interests were also canceled. I don't see why a company would make such a statement if not because of the pressure from antis who opposed the addition of new characters.
Unfortunately, the way they escalated the situation in the media was by spreading false narratives linking Valko to Unit 731—a number that had already been introduced months earlier in another love interest's lore, long before Valko was ever announced. They also claimed that the character posed a danger to women, accusations based entirely on three-minute promotional trailers taken out of context, since nobody had access to his full story or lore to form an informed opinion. On top of that, several physical attacks related to Valko's announcement were reported by Chinese news outlets.
So no, the issue was never the lack of content for Sylus or Caleb. Canceling Valko would never have automatically resulted in more content for them. Demanding the cancellation of a character means asking the company to throw away years of work and investment. That money doesn't magically get transferred to another character—it is simply lost.
The antis' demands were never focused on the game's internal issues, and they still aren't today. There is currently no organized movement advocating for improvements to the game itself. Instead, the hostility continues to be directed toward the people who are trying to bring Valko back.
Honestly, it's also unfair to compare the popularity of characters who have been in the game for over a year with one who had only been announced for about a month.
Likewise, it cannot be claimed that a character is unpopular or unsuccessful outside of China, since there is simply no objective way to measure that. Any such claims are ultimately speculative.
Finally, the company's actions were widely viewed as rushed and lacking any proper explanation. They publicly announced to every server that Valko would remain in the game because he was part of the game's long-term development plans, and that this decision would not change under any circumstances. Then, just two days later, they released another statement announcing not only Valko's cancellation, but also the cancellation of any future new love interests. That kind of abrupt reversal is understandably seen as a failure to honor both their word and their long-term vision for the game. No, that should not be considered acceptable in any gaming community.
I am pretty sure most of the ppls that didn't return are the Western players due to Valko being perma cancelled. The ones that stabilized are the Eastern players. (cause they wanted the dude gone, so they stopped leaving, which in term is the opposite of the Western players that wanted to keep the dude, so they didn't return) (also, don't forget, the CN players also snitched to CCP about Valko to force the company to never release him or any character similar to him)
But yes, some players also didn't return cause of content issue, however their complain also lies directly on Valko as they think the company was focusing on making new characters instead of new content for older characters.
CN players boycott pretty much just wants the game to stay in a stagnate state and instead only make new content for older characters, they don't want anything else new that'll take content creating time away from their old characters.
I wish this post mentioned the people who were neutral before that turned into supporting his return, and what was going on AFTER his cancellation. This feels like half a narrative. I was one of the people who were completely neutral at first, so I hardly interacted with other LI stuff like usual, but I quickly warmed up to him afterwards.
This isn't exactly wrong info, but it definitely feels very biased and is used to justify a shit company's decision. Idk, feels that way.
I’m the opposite. I was neutral and was excited to get new myths with blue pulls. But the Sinophobia and loudly unhinged and aggressive Valko fans have really pushed me towards being ok if he doesn’t return. The hope is that these aggressive people move on from the IP.
I feel sorry for his fans who were at least level headed and boycotted without harassing people.
Great read for my dinner. I was always bewildered by what they did, and i guess it's good to know at least they were always crashing to begin with and Valko just flattened them
thanks for the write up. i am not as in tuned to CN social media but just going on bilbili (a site that has way less LaDS players than XHS), and everyone was already grumblinf the lack of content pre-valko announcement. he was the straw that unleashed the biblical flood
Good writeup, but I'd like to point out that on Twitter, 'liking' a post doesn't really mean you agree with it or support it. People often use it as just a bookmark button, especially with the change to other people being unable to see your likes. Not saying this means Valko was secretly super popular, but it's an assumption in your post that doesn't line up.
This is a post clearly made by someone who does not favour Valko. Don't believe everything they say just because they can make a long post about it. The majority of players do actually want Valko. OP's timeline is quite comprehensive, but I am here to clear up some misinformation (or purposefully skewed information):
No hints for a 6th LI:
Literally every aspect of the game's user interface was clearly designed for six characters, and we had the coming soon sign for ages. If you look on the love and deepspace subreddit there are soooo many posts of people finding clues about there being a 6th. We even knew he would be associated with the colours teal and yellow. If a player thought they were only going to get 5 love interests in the game it was because they didn't want a 6th and ignored all the clues.
Trademark:
Sylus was leaked early, and it makes perfect sense for them to hold off on getting the trademark until Valko's release because they did not want a leak to happen again. This does not mean that Valko did not have a long development period. Companies can hold trademarks ahead of time through shell companies too, they did not have to register Valko's ahead of time.
Valko looking like other love interests:
They are from the same game, same art style. Caleb looks like Zayne sometimes. Rafayel looks like Xavier sometimes. Sylus looks like Zayne sometimes. It happens.
0731 issue:
It is clearly just a number, not used maliciously, they aren't using it to say the actions to unit 731 are acceptable or anything. If them using this number was actually deemed disrespectful to China, then the Chinese government would have taken the game down. Now I don't think they should use this number because people can and have maliciously taken it out of context. People who opposed Valko blew the situation up out of context, weaponizing national tragedies for their own gain. It is a tactic that has been used many times in Chinese media fan spaces before. Most recently people tried to make a fuss because Genshin had a live on July 31st. Love and Deepspace changing this number in an earlier update may have drawn unnessesary attention to it because it was out for months without issue.
The idea that "Valko is not liked" by the fandom
It is unfair to compare Valko's barely a week old posts to posts for Caleb that have been out for well over a year.
Valko has been around the 5th-10th most popular otome character in China based on Weibo Supertopic check ins. An unreleased character with only a few minutes of previews compared to well established love interests with tens of hours of content from the most popular otome game in China.
If people were happy with his cancellation, why didn't they come back to the game? Why didn't cancelling Valko boost all their numbers again? It's almost like the issue isn't about removing Valko? Maybe something to do with the fact that some people who opposed Valko started a literal smear campaign against Love and Deepspace and Papergames by maliciously taking Valko's advertising out of context fearmongering about "women's safety" and the whole 731 thing, causing them to loose their players that are the most sensitive to that sort of thing?
Valko is very well liked by the global fanbase, and it is somewhat more mixed opinion in China, but he still has plenty of supporters in China
It’s true that the government is well aware that the number 731 is sensitive and some people maliciously exploit it to weaponize national tragedies. In its official statement, the government never criticized Infold for using that number. But the problem is when the government gets involved, things rarely end well. Not because Infold did anything illegal, but because being on the government’s radar is rarely a good thing, regardless of the reason. This situation should never have escalated into a government matter. It should have remained a dispute between a customer and the company, rather than becoming an issue involving the government.
"Water armies" are huge problem unique to China and their laws and regulations. They first started being a huge issue in 2020 (go figure). An average Chinese person can buy 1,000 hate comments and government hotline reports with the equivalent of $5. Imagine if only 50 people banned together and pitched in $5 each. That's 25,000 hate comments/reports! I'm not making this up either, research it! That's how I learned about it.
Thankfully, though, these bot networks the average person "hires" are often unsophisticated, which is why they targeted the Cyberpolice after they made a comment about Valko. Now the ringleaders are even deeper shit than they were before. If any minors were involved with hiring the bot networks, their parents will be in deep shit.
There's a law that will be enforced in September that will finally make people unable to exploit the reporting loophole.
Furthermore, the government sees Valko to be a positive and useful asset to their country's economy, international goodwill, and other things and gave Papergames the blueprint/directives (aka orders) to reinstate Valko, so he's coming back no matter how much antis may break the law by accessing USA websites to cry about him 😊😊 We can likely expect him to come back in September or October after the law gets enforced and the criminal investigation paperwork is completed.
There's also so many references to werewolves, and it was nearly guaranteed the next LI would be a CEO. People quite literally guessed "the 6th LI will be a werewolf CEO." Lol.
OP mentions that PPG's reputation was bad, but they failed to mention that news media outlets were purposefully spreading false information to portray him as a sexual assaulter. One example of such news clips can be found here - notice how different the clip is compared to the original video? The news media one looks like the MC is trying to fight off a violent attacker, the official trailer shows MC teasing him throughout and them having a playful relationship.
I might write a debunking/clarification post on this sub in a few days to counter the misinformation spread by this one, could I use some of your points? Also if you have the capacity to write it out feel free too, I'm starting to getting burnt out by the whole situation haha
I'm not really a writerly person, so if you write a clarification post, it would greatly be appreciated 🙏 Totally feel you on getting burnt out - hopefully PPG gets its act together soon.
Twitter thread discussing the article published by the National Development and Reform Commission (aka official state media) in favor of Valko's release/has an EN translation of the article: https://x.com/xio999bsky/status/2077348442372821320
There is also this website that has a timeline & other resources. It at least provides sources/shows how they tracked revenue compared to OP's anonymous chart of "data" (though honestly I don't trust sensor tower or DAU analytics since it's not based on any credible data / is more where did the game rank on ios kind of thing): https://releasevalko.com/
The CDGs omission is on purpose. I made a comment about that and promptly have been getting harassed. I won't stop saying children do not belong in adult spaces.
I just wanna say thank you for this very comprehensive and neat post regarding the situation and why many people have been long frustrated with how LaDS devs have been handling the game and why Valko was the last straw. I’ve honestly been tired of the drama and basically have withdrawn from the fandom and interacting. I have just been watching from the sidelines atp. I’ve already vented my frustrations for a few days after Valko’s initial announcement so I don’t really wanna go back to that. I’ve said my piece haha. (I defended Paper hard on how they learned their lesson with Shaw by announcing beforehand what LIs were coming instead of dropping him out of nowhere and now I was made to look like a clown 🤡 At least Shaw had better build up WITHIN THE PLOT and not cause of UI shenanigans)
really great and comprehensive writeup, well done. from the very beginning I've said this isn't just about Valko. players have been ignored for a long time. our feedback isn't acknowledged or implemented. even though I was very excited for Valko, I was also wary--do I want to invest in a new LI if his MS update might also take 500+ days...? if they had made sure that the 6.0 update would have come with other content players actually want (this is a battle otome, where the hell is my battle, why am I in the kitchen) this likely wouldn't have exploded the way it did.
while a lot of factors contributed to this bomb exploding, it was ppg/infold who built their own funeral pyre, which is only compounded further every day of cold shouldering their community.
I'm a new player who didnt start until a little before the Valko stuff, so I generally consider myself uninformed about prior issues. But I have a lot of questions and observations about these graphs, some of the things you mentioned, and some of the things you didn't mention.
I don't really understand why DAU should matter when it doesnt mean a lot without context. A quick pass through google translate said that the colorful graph's statistics were anonymous? If you know what that means, please share. One of those graphs also appears to be missing about 10 days of data, it jumps from 7/11 to 7/22 without an explanation. How did they gather this data? The data is consistent across your graphs, but if the data isn't reliable it's just three bad graphs that represent a change in player behavior between two major changes to the game and can't differentiate. Those graphs would be more informative with some supporting contextual data, like revenue changes, changes in average play time, average log-ins, length of time between log-ins, player sentiment surveys, etc.
For the graphs you showed on their follower losses, it stops on 7/1 and doesn't provide follow changes before 6/22, or what follower losses looked like between 6/22 and 6/28. The data is simply incomplete.
As far as whether Valko was actually planned for or not hard is to say from my perspective. The coming soon in the list of LIs is a pretty strong hint that more were planned. Whether it was Valko exactly I'm not entirely sure if it even matters. Him not having a name or a face at launch doesnt mean he wasnt planned. And the date of a trademark application doesnt change that because you can't trademark a concept. A trademark application is public and would have revealed him before the company was ready to.
One of the screenshots showing engagement on posts doesn't have a source but unless you have a more recent screenshot or a screenshot of top comments I'm not sure you're capturing continued player sentiment. It's not telling a complete story. It also appears to be two images stitched together that cuts off what that engagement looked like on the first post about Valko. Your attitude in this section lost me a little and had me starting to question your intentions.
For the things that bothered fans like similar tropes and similar facial features, I didn't get that part so I'll just politely disagree. I think there are similarities between all the characters so it doesn't strike me as a genuine criticism.
I'm not sure I understand the problem with the phrase "inviting a wolf into your home," it seems to be a very literal reference.
Given how little we know about him specifically, its hard to say what his role in the story would have been. I can understand some trepidation about making him a love interest if the company he is the head of is associated with the main villain (who I haven't met yet). The previews suggested to me there's some enemies-to-lovers stuff going on there. Also given that the other LIs also have a past with MC, that was likely the same for him and possibly a reason for him choosing to work with the main villain.
One thing you didn't mention was leading up to the cancellation, players sent funeral flowers and cow dung to their HQ in Shanghai, and there are rumors of death threats having been sent to the development team. These could have easily contributed to their choice to cancel and change their plans.
The general sentiment I've seen, not just from you but from the community in general, is that Infold has ignored player feedback and demands for a long time. A better solution likely would have been to move forward with the main story for the existing LIs, and delay Valko's introduction until that happened. Again, since I'm new, I don't know enough about the story to know why that wasn't an option, but it sounds to me like it's part of a pattern of poor decisions.
I’m a bit confused on the point that there were no hints to a 6th LI as someone who only recently became interested in LADS. I’ve recently seen several past posts on twitter where players theorizing about the 6th LI had been able to correctly guess Valko’s traits and job based on in game lore entries.
While INFOLD/LADS absolutely should have done a better job at dropping clues or slowly integrating Valko into the story versus a drop out of nowhere, we always knew there was going to be a sixth love interest, yes. The most blatant sign was the fact that “coming soon” was written near the bottom of the screen when you’re choosing a character, meaning a new character was coming soon.
Beyond that, everything for the game is in sixes. There are six colored protocores, which you can use to add a buff to the cards you gather (I’ve seen people say that each character’s main color matches their eyes). The entire interface of the game is very symmetrical in two groups of three, with a blank spot next to Caleb’s name (the last addition before Valko) for the next character. There are six arenas that you can battle in, and with each one connected to a male lead.
I’ve seen people theorize as well (take this one with a grain of salt) that each male lead is meant to symbolize one of the six realms of rebirth from Buddhism, which correlates to the main story because the mc is constantly being reborn.
However, even with all these signs, dropping Valko’s trailer out of nowhere was a strange move, as usually male leads in games are teased beforehand so people who want to main them can plan for it. It’s a really unfortunate move on their part, because I think it would have been received better if there was proper build up. It’s really a pity, Valko’s personality was really interesting to me.
Hey OP, thanks for the fantastic write up. I was a day 1 player who was completely fed up with Infold. I owned 100% of each boys’ cards until 6 months after Caleb’s release. I should’ve quit sooner when I realized Infold was shafting the main story to simply release more multi-banner cards. I’m a huge Caleb and Sylus fan, so Valko’s announcement after 510+ days of main story stalling for my boys was a slap to the face.
I uninstalled the day they announced Valko. He’s always been hinted as the 6th LI and I have nothing against the character, but he came at the worst time. It would’ve been way more acceptable if Valko released last year, 6 months after Caleb’s release. I would have trusted Infold to manage their dev team and the timeline back then, but it’s been 18 months since Caleb released with no update to his main story. Valko was definitely the final straw for me after months of silence and no main story update.
I also don’t even want to get started on Infinity Nikki. I was also a day 1 player for that game and owned every outfit from the gacha. 1.5 was a disaster but I held on until June this year. I definitely noticed worse designed gacha dresses. It felt like Infold was basically selling us their deconstructed ideas and selling the base outfit as the final evolution. It was tiring and another slap to the face. I’m done supporting this company and I sincerely hope decent competition comes forward.
Thank you for taking the time to do this and clear up a lot of the misinformation global was cutting it down to be over him being 'ugly' when it was so much more, the neglect of the 5 current Li. Many outsiders sadly don't know and that leads to the trusting misinformation. The release of him opened the flood gates to how terrible infold is at managing the game and ignoring players enough to where they got in trouble with gov. There's been many boycotts in the past over infold issues but global has never held them to this extent or taken them seriously. CN is still boycott over it, until they see change in the game.
Global also thinks they've impacted the charts but.. we hadn't had a new banner in July, the fact that infold made 10m over reruns and usual spending says alot. I thought it would be less. If they actually had an impact then the numbers should remain low next month, right? Will see.
OP this is a fantastic write up, thank you. As a total bystander I will say it's really impressive how the fans were able to stick together and boycott effectively for once, who can't say that they'd want such a movement for their games when they fuck up. I second some of the comments that you should crosspost this to r/hobbydrama, it's a write up that would be right at home
I'm a western man, not at all the target audience for LADS (hence why I don't play it).
The first time I saw him, I was a bit shocked. He was soooo western coded. I kinda liked it. Didn't understand any later criticism of "oooh, he's just entering MC's room uninvited, fuck this guy". Huh? Nah he was fine to me, just fitting of his character.
Now I get that it's a bit more nuanced and that he's a main bad guy suddenly turned loverboy.
He’s chairman of a company that has ties to the bad guys who also operate as a company not the actual villain (it would probably have been explained more in the story mode).
Even with the whole entering uninvited, it’s a basic balcony meeting where he literally asks if he can stay over. It was just a portion of an in game cutscene, so there’s probably more to that too.
The reaction claiming Valko was some creep makes no sense when Caleb literally drugs the MC in the main story and is frighteningly controlling over her. There's other stuff other LIs did that are also wayyyy worse than Valko jumping onto MC's balcony to her room.
Good for those who quit for good. Thanks for the post!
Kinda wonder what the global gamer thinks, do they quit too? I've seen many # bring valko back, but ik that wont do shit. Also how much PPG cares abt global? Im just curious hahaha
Try looking for 壁吧专楼吧 (Bìbā Zhuānlóu Bā), i think it is from them... They are a community who is known to try to collect such data and they have some methods for how to approximate this.
But it is important to note that both this and gacharevenue SensorTower data are not real, and we are lacking a full picture.
OP does some date-linked statements in the post, but I dont think it is very credible for our case.. too many things happened in not so long of a timespan to find real patterns on such data. But it definitely shows why we are where we are with the game..
the difference between cn and jp otome games is that when they add a new li in cn otomes, the fandom goes into a fit of rage. happened with Shaw from mlqc, happened with sylus stating he’s too old and too western made for western players and players thought he killed grandma and Caleb, and happened with Caleb due to his controversial trope. I never ever see this happen in jp otome spaces.
the 6th li theory has been going on for a long time, the oldest post I can find with a quick search in the lads official subreddit is 2yrs old. So we can’t even say that no one expected a 6th li because it’s one of the most talked about topic.
oh I should add, I’ve been in arguments with some players who are ecstatic that Valko is gone and they never cared about the story being slow or the game quality going downhill. They just hate Valko.
My comment's probably gonna get lost, but I gotta add more egregious stuff that the company has done that personally made me lose any respect or hope I had for them :
- The main story synopsis posted above sounds VERY AI-generated and basic. More so Caleb's.
- Valko shares MANY, too many tropes with already existing and blooming lis. Otome characters often don't share tropes, each one has one. They might overlap if you want to deepen their characters. For example, some tropes are shared between lis, but not in the same way : Zayne is a nerdy doctor, while Sylus is nerdy technology-wise. But it makes sense with their job, and what they need to do. In a Rafayel card, he snuggles up in MC's hand because of an aphrodisiac perfume (that might be sent by EVER (a bad company), but I don't think it was ever explored again), he seems complicated when he does that : is the MC trying to trick him? Sylus snuggles up to her hand for comfort and because he's more animalistic compared to Rafayel. He often says that animals rub on each other to show affection and ownership.
- Like i mentioned above, big lore drops have not been explored : Sylus can heal protocore syndrome (an illness that many people have, including the MC), it's mentioned he can make people come back to life in his second myth Beyond Cloudfall, it's implied EVER is everywhere in Linkon, and while we have hints here and there, there's not much danger from that. There is a mole in the Hunter's Association (MC's work), yet it's never been brought up again. There are many more.
- The letter from the 29th was very arrogant, blaming the players and not taking accountability.
- The "apology" code they gave us was given in the livestream of the 30th, which was even more of a slap in the face. It's like CS couldn't do their job because Infold doesn't give them the leeway.
- Valko is the 2025 OC of the 6th li truthers, this is why he's so similar to Sylus and Caleb. There have been many mischaracterizations about them, and hoping that they'd me meaner, fitting more of the trope they inhabit. This is also why he's related to EVER, even if it's a faux pas considering the whole story of the game, and the morals the MC has. It's also probably the reason they released him the 6th month of 2026, because he's the 6th li and it was the "last" deadline his fans had. If not, many would've stopped believing in him, meaning the hype would've died down. There were also people believing every NPC was the 6th. Infold also had job ads for buff actors around that time, meaning the hired person could be used in mocap.
- The kitchen trailer was also built around Valko, which I don't think was done before, except maybe Abyssal Chaos with Sylus, but Sylus HAS ties to it. The MC goes on there to find details about him and his whereabouts.
- When Infold fixes stuff in-game, they do it in a very lazy, weaponized incompetence way. Players ironically did a post about the Numbers 731 on Rafayel's catch-22 outfit on Twitter (didn't breach CN side from what I saw), and they fixed it quietly by muddling up the tattoos. Instead of fixing the Zayne birthday outfit of the MC right before launching, they waited for players to complain on Twitter that it wasn't suitable for darker skin tones. They, once again, quietly and badly fixed it.
- Because Valko and every problem around him is a representation of the company's greed and lack of care for their player base, many lost hope for the storyline. Many players on the CN side already didn't read the story, except for their mains, because it's "juvenile". But now, because they showed they lurked, rumors that Infold has taken inspiration very closely from CN fanfics are kinda revealed to be true. I personally don't have hopes for my main and his characterization. They'll just do what's popular, fit him into his more toxic trope, and that's it. People already deny some aspects of him because it doesn't fit their concept of masculinity.
- Create fan wars, buying topics and bots. Inciting division in the fandom.
- There's probably more, but it's the main problems around it that haven't been mentioned.
Hey, OP, can I ask why didn't you include the CN players who hated Valko that relentlessly bullied the ones who did? Or how they are now constantly speaking up? Or how some of the CN players who hated Valko were racist and homophobic? Or that Valko wanters worldwide have banned together to boycott the game and raise money for various charities and causes in his name? This who paid for billboards in their country to show their support for him? Or how this is the first time the global side has been united with the CN side with wanting Valko back?
Also you did not mention that some of hate towards Valko were copy comments. Like someone can comment "I hate Valko", then they'll reply to their own comment one hundred times with the same first comment.
I just feel like you need to include all sides for a topic like this. It is so much more than what you wrote.
Edit: I want to add that I don't support racism, homophobia, or sinophobia on any sides or to anyone. My comment wasn't meant to discredit OP. I just simply felt that the whole story wasn't being told.
I mean following this logic OP would also need to talk about the mass sinophobia, racism, and misogyny of many Global Valko fans that appears on mass in official communities like discord or the official sub. Same thing with the charitable donations. It doesn’t add anything meaningful or conducive to the actual timeline of events that OP posted when the entire thing is centered on Infolds mistakes.
The sinophobia was insane honestly. I know a minority of people who play CN-games hate anything CN related even though the game is CN-based and made but this situation really showed the ugly side of global.
I don't see what relevance players' treatment of each other or billboards or donations would have to do with the topic of how Infold has been managing the game for years and how they've been leading the players towards the breaking point. Players do good and bad things in every fandom, but that's not relevant to the topic at hand.
Because the toxic behaviour of those players have already been discussed at length here, by poorly informed content creators and clout chasers. OP already mentioned in the beginning, if you read properly, about the reasons Valko was disliked by several people in CN.
And billboards and charity are frequent in the LaDS communities in the name of the LIs - they are here to talk about more of the reasons the pushback against Valko was so extreme. Is there a point in bringing it up?
Also…you are accusing OP of agenda posting - but aren’t you also on one side? Why should anyone trust anyone’s words in that case? At least let both sides of the story be heard since people like Mujin and large CCs are gathering their info from primarily outrage on twitter - where most of the western audience is active.
(And yes for the person stalking profiles I will save you the trouble - I am active on the no-Valko sub because I’m tired of the blatant head-in-sand ostrich behaviour that refuses to hold the company accountable for the bad decisions that have led to this)
The CN side? When he was announced, many whales quit the game. Not just boycotted, but actually quit. These were the types of fan art they made representing the mains of each of the 5 LIs. The CN fandom that had been at each others throats these past 2 years were actually united for once.
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u/Both-Safe-8678 29d ago
why were they releasing contents so slow tho.. they were earning gajillions and they couldnt pour some of that into the game?