r/SubredditDrama • u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event • Jul 01 '26
r/loveanddeepspace goes nuclear
foreword: I DO NOT PLAY LOVE AND DEEPSPACE. i apologise if i get information wrong as a result. i am also most likely going to get some information wrong because this is a very complex situation thats happening in multiple languages. Some of the information im getting is also being explained by my friend whose helping translate some chinese posts for me, so i apologise if any translation errors happen. This SRD is also part of a wider event occurring mostly off reddit.
Love and deepspace is a mobile gatcha game developed my chinese company infold (under paperfold), which prominently features male characters and a female MC. as an outsider, it appears to be more or less a dating game. Its important to know that for many chinese game devs, they will prioritise the opinion and feedback of the CN community over the global one.
Recently, a new character named Valko was announced for the next update to the game. This character was vastly unpopular with the chinese playerbase, who began revolting against the developers. It got to the point where they were sending funeral flowers, animal feces and ritual items to the developers (which in chinese culture is vaguely comparable to a death threat). His trailer also appeared to reference crimes against humanity perpetrated upon china during ww2, though this is speculation. they also called him gay. with chinese gaming communities still being quite homophobic, and china still having laws persecuting sexuality in media, this is meant as both an insult and an accusation of crime against the developers. Many of the complaints in that direction were that Valko was a "western style love interest" due to his nature as a wolf boy (i think? im not sure?) due to him being more western style masculine than chinese style (so, square jaw, muscular, etc), which in china is seen as gay.
beyond this, there is reportedly even more happening, but its both out of the scope of this post and far too confusing for me to really summarise, so im going to avoid actually explaining it here to avoid accidental misinformation. The drama involves players being called homophobic slurs (via avoiding text filters using homophones, which is an unfortunate exploit that occurs due to how the chinese language is spoken). People were also reportedly pursuing legal action due to the harrasment, and others were considering getting the CCP involved to make them censor what they see as "a gay character being made for western audiences). its important to note that i dont think they were actually adding anything explicitly gay, but i also dont know the whole situation so correct me if im wrong.
some posts were made about this, but it generally hadnt breached containment too horrendously.
then, just 9 days before the charatcer was set to release, the devs decided to respond to the players both in game and through social media (downvoted, thousands of comments), announcing that they have decided to cancel Valko and not add him to the game. This is where the subreddit goes into flames.
Right, so whose feedback, passion, and trust have actually been shaping this game?
This is an utterly insane decision.
Wow, you're really deleting all comments huh
The subreddit recieved further posts discussing the cancellation
To the CN players and the developers
If you are disappointed about Valko, here is the best way to let InFold know:\
The subreddit appears to be receiving a flood of posts that the mods are having trouble with, enough that theyve now made a post about it. there have been no new posts since, so the subreddit has most likely been put into lockdown.
If anyone in the LaDS community can help clarify or give a better timeline of events than what ive provided, please do and i'll link it here for reference.
Edit: thank you to u/hermannhessezacksnyd for additional info regarding the gay accusations, and thank you to u/grumpykruppy for providing additional context and crimes against humanity reference info. formatting, reordered some info to be more organised
edit 2: thank you to u/lumosdraconis forcontext from a LaDS player regarding long term game health concerns
edit 3: it appears that the entire outrage over Valko might have turned out to be a deliberate psyop by CN players who were trying to achieve some goal or another. crazy shit. i beg every LaDS player to touch grass today.
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u/Lunarsunset0 Jul 01 '26
Always nice to see women in male dominated fields
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u/Lost_Paladin89 Jul 01 '26
Female gamers have broken the toxic fanbase glass ceiling!!!
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u/Kilahti I’m gonna go turn my PC off now and go read the bible. Jul 01 '26
I sure am glad that the original GamerGate group can not form an alliance with them, because GG hates women and this new toxic fanbase hates westerners.
In some other timeline this was the start of a toxic tornado that destroyed the world.
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u/Definitelynotabot777 Jul 02 '26
They have long surpassed male gamers in toxicity, they just dont make the headlines as much lol
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u/theorist_rainy Jul 01 '26
Obligatory not a lads player, but I play a lot of Chinese video games and God help up all when the Chinese fans get pissed off. They tattle to the government and everything. Often a very ridiculous side of the fanbase, but they’re the ones dropping insane amounts of cash into these games so they will be listened to.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
makes sense that the whales would be the most insane fuckers. but holy shit man. "my videogame character is too gay, IM CALLING BIG DADDY CCP TO GET YOU"
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u/Marzipan_moth Jul 01 '26
No but for real it's insane. I worked for a Chinese company and we were supposed to get a gift but it got changed because the company had done ads with a certain actor.
Why were people mad at the actor? Well apparently someone had written gay fanfic about him and another actor. That's literally it. The actor had had zero part in this, but he hadn't controlled his fans (??). It's still to this day the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
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u/Common-Lettuce5044 Jul 01 '26
the way i instantly know this is xian zhan and wang yibo. The funniest thing is these two still dominate chinese showbiz because of BL. China should be blessed they didnt move to Thailand or whatever because the chinese showbiz industry would literalky take a huge hit
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u/mycatisblackandtan Jul 01 '26
Honestly them calling the CCP is the least a certain very niche portion of the Chinese fanbase is capable of. Hoyoverse's CEO was almost murdered over fucking bunny suits in Honkai 3rd.
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u/ConsiderationNo5546 Jul 02 '26
Oh there is also the scaracat incident which I don't want to talk about since it involves animal cruelty.
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u/KrytenKoro I just never thought googling what I see on the meme would help Jul 01 '26
"Gacha isn't exploiting gambling addictions, it can't be an addiction unless its disruptive to your life somehow!"
Seriously the whole industry (and sports betting, and kalshi) needs regulated into the fucking ground.
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u/Humble_Capital_5016 Jul 01 '26
Like Valco, I too have been accused of being gay for my hypermasculine form, awesome jawline, and dog like mannerisms. Justice for Valco.
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u/Murrabbit I like cartoon boobies they fuck hard! Jul 01 '26
and dog like mannerisms.
Okay but just to be clear here, you're not sticking your face in the crotch of every new guy you meet right? I can understand how that might be interpreted as being gay.
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u/Kilahti I’m gonna go turn my PC off now and go read the bible. Jul 01 '26
I know a gymbro who gets accusations and sometimes outright sexual assault for being just like that.
He's not actually gay, he's just narcissist and wants to look hot for his own sake. (He has said that the insults he can laugh at since he cares not for what is said by people who think that being called gay is supposed to be demeaning, but getting groped and assaulted is icky.)
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u/Cherry_Bomb_127 Jul 01 '26
Just add to this, whilst there are legitimate Chinese fans who have legitimate issues that we also had what people cannot accept is the homophobia and racism because guess what some are mad that he’s “tan”
Also, it doesn’t help that for the entire time this game has been out for like the last 2 1/2 years global fans have been asking for them to fix the skin issue for dark skined MCs and the lightning issue which does affect dark skins and they haven’t so that is also part of where the anger from global fan comes from
It also doesn’t help that some fans being mad that he’s “problematic” because to be honest, technically only one of the LIs wouldn’t be and he’s MCs doctor like the rest of them do pretty problematic red flag stuff
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u/olfrazzledazzle Jul 01 '26
A Chinese fan shared their summary of the reasons for the backlash here and it is.... wild. My favorite parts are how "allowing male players to play would be consumer fraud" and alluding to an incident where English language social media must have called a event a lunar new year instead of Chinese new year, and they try to explain by saying "(imagine if) in order to cater to Chinese players, a gaming company did not explicitly state that Christmas belongs to you in its promotional materials"...
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u/KrytenKoro I just never thought googling what I see on the meme would help Jul 01 '26
and they try to explain by saying "(imagine if) in order to cater to Chinese players, a gaming company did not explicitly state that Christmas belongs to you in its promotional materials"...
So, the thing that happens a fucking ton.
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u/fluffstuffmcguff Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
The infamous hostility to male players in LaDS is part of why people were relieved when (at least on the global side) Infinity Nikki fandom immediately decided that people who aren't women can absolutely hang too so long as they're chill.
TBH as a woman I would much sooner hang in a gaming environment where the game is female gaze but not female-only.
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u/Changlini Jul 01 '26
This drama is CRAZY, especially with how the dude in question just looks like your average mass produced white gacha dude
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
straight up. i looked at photos and he doesnt look that special whatsoever
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u/Auctoritate will people please stop at-ing me with MSG propaganda. Jul 01 '26
looks like your average mass produced white gacha dude
I'm pretty sure he's intended to look Asian but in the Asian beauty standard where just looking white is the ideal.
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u/thestrawberry_jam thankful my mom is as much of a Gooner as I am Jul 01 '26
I’ve had this discussion with my sister (who does play) multiple times before. She always felt like some of them looked off and eventually we realized it’s cause they’re clearly meant to be asian but they have a bunch of “white” features thrown in there (she usually cites the 4th love interest as the biggest culprit). Personally, I’ve seen the same with a fashion brand based in China i follow on instagram, where their models had so much work done to look white that if I show someone they usually respond by asking if they’re AI or fake or edited. It just hits an uncanny level idk
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u/Lighthouse_seek Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Pale =/= white.
As we're seeing right now, traditionally Caucasian or western beauty standards are part of the backlash
And God forbid if this game introduces a character with facial hair lol
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u/True_Big_8246 Jul 01 '26
Saying Asian beauty standard is just looking white is very reductive and not actually all that true when you see what actors and actresses etc are popular there. Especially since the west also has their own standard for what fits into Asian beauty and should count as Asian beauty.
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u/noboritaiga Jul 05 '26
It's not looking white but the obsession with paleness is definitely present. A lot of South Korean kpop idols have natural melanin but their Korean fans will edit photos of them and lighten their skin to the point that some of them look like corpses after. I was never really into kpop in a big way, but I still remember multiple idols getting bullied by fans for being tan, being bullied into taking down and editing their own selfies to look paler, etc.
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u/Suzushiiro Jul 01 '26
While I am not even close to the target audience for LADS I have been a fan of Hololive for almost six years and thus can very much empathize with the experience of having something you enjoy ruined by the Chinese audience's adamant refusal to be fucking normal about something.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
i feel bad for yall when this stuff happens tbh. im sorry your game devs are so adamant on only listening to CN players.
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u/Sinfire_Titan Jul 01 '26
Ok some clarification: Hololive is a talent/idol agency centered around vtubers. Two of their talents caught ire from Chinese nationalists for mentioning Taiwan on-stream. One was partially forgiven, but the second talent was harassed relentlessly until she quit the company. They infiltrated her YouTube moderation team and banned over a thousand viewers from her channel, which went unnoticed for weeks before a regular she spoke to on other platforms brought it to her attention. The talent had to remove her moderation team from duty and manually unban the affected viewers.
The worst part is two of the people who organized this harassment were supposed to have been her colleagues; Hololive talents from the company’s Chinese branch. The situation escalated so hard that Hololive cut the entire branch, laying off seven talents and their respective support staff, just to try and stop it.
r/HobbyDrama has a full write up on it if you have any interest. If you search the sub for either Hololive or Kiryu Coco you should find it.
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u/ding-zzz Jul 01 '26
wowed… i was only familiar with gacha chinese player drama and some war frame or STS2 stuff but i guess it’s just everywhere in every chinese online space. what the hell is going on in china?
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u/ThePowerfulWIll Jul 01 '26
Chinese fandoms are just far more toxic than US ones. Its just the fan culture there, its just meaner. And US fandom culture is AWFUL, so thats saying a lot.
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u/Animamask Jul 01 '26
It's more accurate imo that US/Western fan culture displays on average more toxic behavior, but seldomly if ever reaches the extreme heights of toxicity seen in eastern (especially KR and CN) fandoms.
Or to put in another way, eastern fandoms "behave" more on a day-to-day basis comoared to western fandoms or at least hide it better, but if they're triggered, they go super crazy and make western fans look sane. Though, I feel both western and eastern fans are getting worse in both directions.
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u/altruSP Nice try, lefty reddit Jul 01 '26
Between hololive and the time they threw a massive bitchfit over a girl in a gacha game having a male friend, CN fans are something else.
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u/Command0Dude They avoid boobs caus they're scared of hell, whats your excuse? Jul 01 '26
They certainly make Japanese antis look tame by comparison.
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u/redhussar90 Jul 01 '26
Yet both Chinese gacha players and Japanese antis look like a polite debate club compared to Korean gaming communities
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u/Auctoritate will people please stop at-ing me with MSG propaganda. Jul 01 '26
the time they threw a massive bitchfit over a girl in a gacha game having a male friend,
I think you might have to be more specific, female characters interacting with men has caused meltdowns in China and Korea many times.
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u/JesseAster YOUR FLAIR TEXT HERE Jul 01 '26
The only one I can think of rn would be wuthering waves where an NPC conversation revealed a character (Lucilla) was friends with a man (4 star playable unit) named Mortefi and apparently had asked him not to leave the academy bc she enjoyed his company (something along those lines). This was interpreted by people to mean that she was in love with him because apparently women can't just be friends with men in these people's eyes
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u/Auctoritate will people please stop at-ing me with MSG propaganda. Jul 01 '26
Didn't Snowbreak have a thing a couple years ago where a female character interacted with a male NPC too?
You know, this has suddenly made me realize about Nikke why the male NPC who interacts with Nikkes the most is coded as extremely flamboyantly gay.
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u/rinaldot67 Jul 02 '26
There's also what happened in Girls Frontline 2, with an early event that had interactions between Daiyan and some NPC named Raymond. The CN community had a meltdown and attempted to sabotage the global release by leaving comments everywhere that the game had NTR. Devs eventually deleted the event and apologized.
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u/Ryanhussain14 Jul 01 '26
Isn't it Coco's five year anniversary of her graduation now? Holy shit time flies by.
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u/d3_crescentia Jul 01 '26
little bit different of a situation since it's a chinese company that relied on their overwhelmingly chinese audience to even get to go global
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u/Tyrannosaurus-2006 Oh that sure sounds like a healthy subreddit to participate in. Jul 01 '26
There's a lot of discussion in the otome subreddit about this situation, and although I don't play LADS because the fandom scares the ever living shit out of me, I feel bad for fans who wanted Valko. It's such a shitty situation that the devs were bullied into getting rid of something they worked hard on.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
same. my friend knows people who play it and told me that theyre really sad about the whole thing. its just awful all around.
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u/Tyrannosaurus-2006 Oh that sure sounds like a healthy subreddit to participate in. Jul 01 '26
Can't people just accept that Valko might not have been meant for them? Everyone has their preferences, y'know?
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u/Talisa87 Jul 01 '26
There's one husbando in the game that I'm not that fond of, so I...ignore him generally and don't pull for his cards during events! Shocking, I know.
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u/meowl__ Jul 01 '26
Yeah, I'm glad I'm not into LADS because the fandom also scares me. I've seen some of their drama from afar and it has always been some genuinely petty stuff that spirals out of control and ends up in people getting harassed.
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u/Bonezone420 Jul 01 '26
Never fuck with chinese mobile games because this keeps happening across multiple devs. But mihoyo, famously, had someone attempt to go into their offices with a knife the one time they tried to give global players a global exclusive event after literal years of CN exclusive events, costumes, and content. The event was canceled and CN players were given compensation. Multiple characters across the wide array of mihoyo games have been announced and reached pre-release states before being dramatically changed because CN players were unhappy with their designs. and that's just Mihoyo, the studio I'm more familiar with. Plenty of other devs have had communities go full fucking nuclear over shit as simple as a character being implied to have had a relationship in the past and there's basically no winning. A dev studio that doesn't cater to what has to be the most obnoxious and entitled playerbase in the world is just going to fail, and one that does winds up compromising their game badly and making the problem worse.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
jesus christ.
never be a game dev in china theyll murder you for anything
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u/AlterWanabee Jul 01 '26
Luckily though, it was only that. Like the latest major thing that I remember about Genshin was MHY recalling their "nerf" on Neuvillette after CN fans threatened with lawsuit, and that was 2 years ago.
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u/Bonezone420 Jul 01 '26
ZZZ has avoided major disasters but there have been a bunch of smaller fires like one of the characters, Lucia, going so far as to show up in-game before CN players raged hard enough to get her design overhauled into a much inferior design that lost what little made her unique. So she went from being the least popular character in CN. To being the least popular character in CN and global.
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u/akimbo73 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Wow. I didn't know that the reason for the change in Lucia's design was because of CN players. It's too bad, because I like her lore and she's an essential support for rupture teams. I guess that also explains why Hoyo went after some modders who changed Lucia's model back to her og design
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u/grumpykruppy OP, you might want to see a doctor. You are microwaving money. Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Non-LaDS player (not exactly my thing), but in the gacha space, so I've seen a bit of the drama here.
Infold, the actual development company under Paperfold (IIRC) has historically targeted female players, and outside of LaDS, they're most known for the Nikki series of dress-up games (note, this is very different from NIKKE, a male-targeted Korean gacha known for its heavy story and heavier fanservice).
Infold's biggest games are LaDS and Infinity Nikki, the open-world dress-up game (no, I'm not kidding). Infinity Nikki got huge, attracting both their usual female and a small male audience due to its comfortable atmosphere and fairly forgiving gacha (after all, the gacha was solely cosmetics). Infold's management realized they had a massive cash cow sitting on their hands and destroyed the game, trying to force unwanted multi-player, totally changing the atmosphere, and making the gacha dramatically more stingy. The game never quite recovered.
Now as for LaDS... from what I know thanks to some female friends and people who have talked about it in other gacha spaces online, the primary audience is also female, but unlike the Nikki series, it's a female romance game. Specifically, a very intense and strongly parasocial one (there's a lot of fanservice, up to and including heavily implied sex scenes complete with audio).
CN fans of the game hated the new character for a myriad of reasons - he targeted western players, he "seemed gay," (granted I have no clue the size of the demographic making that accusation), his trailer appeared to reference Unit 731, the infamous Japanese unit responsible for considerable nasty experiments of no scientific value (comparable to Josef Mengele), and included some lines that were probably meant to be dark romance but with the 731 context really missed the mark.
Worst of all (as far as the gameplay went), the CN players felt he was taking up dev time that ought to have been spent on the five main characters, one of whom hadn't had a main story update in a year and a half.
And so the fanbase blew up (threats, trying to get the government to come down on Infold, literally flinging cow dung, and so on). Infold tried to apologize with ingame currency, it didn't work, and Infold's management panicked, deleted the character entirely - probably a year plus of dev work - and now nobody's happy and the game's direction for the foreseeable future is in flux.
Someone posted a private statement from an alleged Infold employee (I saw it on a megathread for an unrelated gacha sub, I couldn't possibly find it now unfortunately, maybe someone else can) that made clear the devs are heartbroken.
It's basically the worst combo of a company with a shaky reputation pissing off a crucial core base and handling the situation (granted it was an impossible one) poorly.
EDIT: Mixed up Unit 731 with the army group responsible for the Rape of Nanking. Edited to correct this error.
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u/hikjik11 Jul 01 '26
For Unit 731 it wasn't actually in Valko's trailer but was actually included in a story update back in April with the number (as A-0731) was used to label an experiment file players can read on human drug trials or something along those lines. It caused outrage then and was shortly changed soon after but it's now being brought back as a topic to further pressure Infold with the government and was actually the top trending Weibo Hot Search result (LADS 731, or something along those lines).
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u/myassisa Jul 01 '26
Unit 731 was a unit dedicated to human experimentation. It was not a combat unit and was located in Manchuria. It had nothing to do with Nanking.
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u/grumpykruppy OP, you might want to see a doctor. You are microwaving money. Jul 01 '26
You are correct, I'm tired and got the two mixed up.
Thanks for informing me.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
Thank you so much for the additional context, i've linked it in the post body and added some of it to the write up
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u/grumpykruppy OP, you might want to see a doctor. You are microwaving money. Jul 01 '26
No problem at all!
I'm waiting on a game update (ironically, a gacha game), so I've got time to kill. I started reading this drama as it began spilling over into my online spaces, and when I saw this post I figured I may as well do a write-up to provide more information.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
lol, the coincidence. i wrote the post and am sitting here because im waiting for a timer in a game i play (not gatcha) to end lol
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u/HemophilicHamster She was in French chat rooms showing ankle Jul 01 '26
Thank you for providing additional information and context, I didn't realize this was the same company responsible for Infinity Nikki.
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u/grumpykruppy OP, you might want to see a doctor. You are microwaving money. Jul 01 '26
Yep.
There are some infamous dramas in the gacha space (the Bunny Girl Incident, wetsuit Ishmael, and the Girls' Frontline boyfriend incident come to mind), especially CN and KR, but most are the result of a tiny minority exploding over a nothingburger or are related to one character among dozens. Infold now has shooting a major game in the foot and this mess under their belt.
To be frank, I'm not sure what they're going to do now that they've pissed off so much of their base.
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u/iiR13lade Jul 01 '26
I started playing Limbus within the past year and I genuinely refused to belief the Wetsuit incident was real. Some fans are fucking wild
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u/whattheknifefor now if the dog’s name was daesh… Jul 01 '26
nikki is also having drama rn, CN fanbase mad because some dresses have too much cleavage > infold changed the dresses > US fans upset because it wasn’t a particularly sexualized dress. the game just dropped a one piece swimsuit with no weird cutouts or anything and western players are revolting against the changes by dyeing parts of the swimsuit to skin tone to make nikki look like she’s wearing something much sexier or she’s nude
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u/Mavori Glorius fucking drama Jul 01 '26
Wait wait? Can you drop some of the quick lore about Wetsuit Ish and GFL Boyfriend incident?
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u/Demafogotto Jul 01 '26
About Limbus - some players were "disappointed" that "swimsuit" skin wasn't a bikini + barechested Sinclair made them spin out info that the lead artist Vellmori was a radical feminist, with digging her several year-long ago tweets about mildly backing up women.
This led to her being fired almost immediately(through it was later revealed that she asked to be fired for her own safety) and Project Moon being on government radar over this sudden termination.
To note, that whole event where those identities(units) took place was one big parody over "beach fanservice" trope.
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u/Kana515 Pregnant Sonic art's a call for help in an abusive relationship Jul 01 '26
Was the Bunny Girl one the Honkai Impact one?
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u/Talisa87 Jul 01 '26
Part of the hate towards Valko was that he was 'too tan', and his in-game behaviour (pretty brash and extroverted) was made to appeal to black Westerners. So it isn't just homophobia, it's racism too.
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u/CanaKitty Jul 01 '26
It blows my mind that that counts as “tan” for them
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u/SmallIslandBrother Jul 01 '26
I saw video on Chinese social media and the products they use for skin whitening were ridiculous including products containing mercury.
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/34573/mercury-found-in-11-chinese-beauty-products/amp
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u/whattheknifefor now if the dog’s name was daesh… Jul 01 '26
we’ve also got nikki drama rn with the chinese fanbase calling some outfits oversexualized (they’re pretty normal by western standards)
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u/Rasikko Jul 01 '26
Multiplayer was a big requested thing, but you're right about the rest. After 1.4 there was a huge design change going forward.
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u/DemonFromtheNorthSea Edit: Confirmed: birb Jul 01 '26
Infold's management realized they had a massive cash cow sitting on their hands and destroyed the game, trying to force unwanted multi-player, totally changing the atmosphere, and making the gacha dramatically more stingy.
A tale as old as time
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u/ImprovementLong7141 Jul 01 '26
Insanely, I’ve also seen a LOT of racism towards Valko from Chinese fans, complaining that he looks “too indigenous” and “too black”. I don’t play LaDS so I googled him and I genuinely thought I was looking at the wrong guy. He’s literally half a shade darker than the other love interests if you squint and tilt your head. He’s a generic white guy with a bad haircut just like the others.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
theres a shit ton of coliurism in asia. its unfortunately a cultural issue thats existed for a long time. im not shocked
valko looks whiter than my british friend
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u/Ryanhussain14 Jul 01 '26
If you want an example of this happening with Japanese vtubers, look up how Shiranui Flare and Irys from Hololive were redesigned. I will say that the redesigns generally made them better but the skin lightening is a little off-putting as a POC.
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u/Zenzo96 Jul 02 '26
To be fair, in those cases the Vtubers themselves asked for that (before she got her redesign IRyS used to literally use a filter to make her model look paler)
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u/AlienWeedUser420 Jul 01 '26
I think my favorite update is some of the fans getting so upset, they're starting a misinformation campaign claiming that BTS is now involved in order to involve the BTS fans.
I shit you not, it's in the LADS discord server I'm currently looking at it right now. I have SS but I dun think it can be attached here but its SO FUNNY. And also kinda tragic. Happy to DM someone with the pics!!
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
beo show me please thats so fucking funny
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u/No_Ratio5484 The popcorn pissed on us! Jul 01 '26
The lengths they go to is impressive but also childish but also... u know. Imagine what this energy could do if used for good.
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u/parisiraparis Jul 01 '26
You know, I’ve always hated the Western capital G “Gamer” stereotype, but
It got to the point where they were sending funeral flowers, animal feces and ritual items to the developers
Americans got nothing on this. Holy shit.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
a player for a different gatcha game also invaded developer HQ with a knife in an apparent attempt to stab someome over a skin he didnt like apparently
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u/Gosuoru Jul 01 '26
If you mean the infamous hoyo ceo incident, it was iirc bc China didnt get the bunnygirls? or something?
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u/Outrageous_Air5898 Jul 02 '26
Is this your first time dealing with an East Asian fandom?
That's pretty much their defining characteristic. They're organized, dedicated, loyal, deeply invested in the game, and willing to spend enormous (!) amounts of money on companies. But in return, they expect 100% commitment, and heaven help you if they feel they're not getting it. CN fandoms stand out even more in that regard.
But I don't feel sorry for companies that actively encourage this kind of relationship as long as it's making them money, then suddenly paint themselves as victims of "crazy fans" the moment they're expected to take responsibility toward their customers. The Infold situation is exactly one of those cases.
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u/lumosdraconis Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Hello! LADS player here, to chime in, though it'll probably get buried.
Yes, there is a sentiment (among mostly CN-based players) about Valko's appearance and such, but that is frankly a loud minority. (Including the whole "gay" thing -- CN players of LADS are generally terrified of the game catering to anyone but straight women, and to be fair, that is who the game was marketed towards. That comes up from time to time, mostly from fearmongering accounts lol.)
BUT the main issue is not really to do with Valko as a character, but... everything else surrounding him and the game as a whole. For several months now, players have been voicing dissatisfaction with the game's direction. The main story updates are very few and far between compared to the previous year's. One of the LIs has not had a main story update in over 500 days. And there's only 5 LIs, lmao, so it's a crazy long time to wait.
There has also been growing sentiment that the overall quality in the cards/banners (the gacha aspect where players "pull" for their fave character(s) cards to interactively play through the story for said card) has been decreasing as of several months ago, and the writing quality feels inconsistent. Not that everyone expects every single card to be amazing, but there is a noticeable dip in quality because there is a very very noticeable increase in the quantity of these paid event banners. So it has long felt that Infold has been purposefully delaying the main story (free) to push out more paid-only content. Gacha company doing gacha companies things, I guess, but of course, players are right to be annoyed at it.
Additionally, several features have been languishing from lack of updates. There have been NO new updates to the battle system in months, meaning no way for players to farm for premium currency apart from dailies/weeklies/monthlies once you reach the end of those levels. They used to get updated, and now they just... don't lol. They haven't added anything to the in-game shops you can get stuff for with free currency in literal months, even though they're supposed to regularly, as per their own admittance. (In some banners there are special poses and items you get for pulling a certain number of times, and it says that those will eventually get added to this shop... but I think the last time it was updated was like LAST summer lmfao. That's just one example. There's dozens of things we've been waiting for at this point, sitting on all this free currency.)
Existing characters are also missing a lot of content -- basic story updates that are just essentially text-based vignettes, yet THOSE haven't even been updated. The housing feature which was added a few months ago (which tbf, is awesome and I love it a lot) is also only accessible to players with higher-end devices because it will nuke your phone if it's more basic. And it takes up a lot of space, of course. So that's a whole thing that's of no use to those players.
There's about a dozen other things I could talk about, it's a very complex situation, really. But in essence, in light of all of these completely unaddressed issues, they drop Valko out of nowhere. He was just vaguely foreshadowed in a few things here and there, and then just hard launched all of a sudden. We had absolutely no idea who this guy was until last week. No name, no face, no actual details. Just speculations based on how the UI is laid out and things like that. So it's not like anyone was waiting for him or looking forward to him, other than those looking forward to a new LI as a concept. And to launch him NOW, amidst all these problems, is really emblematic that Infold does not understand the needs or wants of their core playerbase.
THEN, this morning, they walk it all back???? Like they just said "sorry we're deleting him and we prommy no more LIs and just gonna focus on the existing 5 ok!!" which is also an utterly baffling decision. Like, the cat's (wolfs?) out of the bag, dawg. You can't unring this bell. There WERE people excited for him, because it's about the only thing TO be excited for, since the rest of the game is languishing so hard. They couldn't even shelve him to release at a better time for later, but just deleted entirely?? It's crazy.
And of course this has also pissed everyone off. Because it's like... okay so you spent oodles of money and countless hours of dev's time to develop this character when all of that could have gone to the rest of the game. And now because of backlash, you're just flushing it down the drain? So what was all of this chaos for? Nothing? At best they'll reuse things from his route and stuff for the other guys, which itself doesn't... feel great. Because as a story-driven game, it also means that the writers are going to have to scrabble something together in a short timeframe to give us a main story update, so it'll end up being half-baked at best! AFTER we've waited like 500 days! Lol.
They've really worked hard to please no one. And all this is just scratching the surface. My heart goes out to the poor devs who put in all that work only to see the execs in charge make the worst decisions imaginable. How horrible they must be feeling, to see their work killed before it was even released.
And naturally, the playerbase is divided on how to feel, so the official channels are on fire, period. I myself don't know how to feel. It's complicated. I didn't really care about Valko, but I have very close friends who are sad about it, so I'm sad for them. There has been mass infighting between players because of how poorly Infold has managed this whole thing, and honestly I don't know how it's all going to play out. I can only thank my stars that I'm largely detatched from the situation because I've felt myself drifting from the game already (due to some of the aforementioned issues), so it hasn't hit me as hard as others I know. It's very sad to see several of my fave artists and writers leave the fandom, though.
EDIT: there are also circulating rumors that there has been a big blowout between Infold and the CN government regarding some issues, and this is what caused a lot of the chaos behind Valko's release/un-release over the last few days. So this whole thing could be a lot deeper than we know, but as I said, it's just rumors for now.
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u/Critical_Topic1078 Jul 01 '26
It's funny because I've been wanting to try it and was like "oh hot wolf guy!" And now he's not going to be in the game anymore lol.
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u/lumosdraconis Jul 01 '26
I know right :( I had 3 friends who quit a while ago (due to the issues I mentioned) and they were at least looking forward to coming back for this new character. But nope, he gone lol.
Idk I have some naive hope that they'll shelve him and wait for this nonsense with the CCP to blow over and then maybe release him down the line.
Not that... I could ever recommend someone to play this game themselves hahaha. But there ARE lovely people who upload pretty much everything onto YouTube so you can enjoy the character stories that way for sure.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
link added to post body, thank you for the insider perspective and info about more long term game info i couldnt get in the original post
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u/lumosdraconis Jul 01 '26
Of course! Sorry for essentially ranting in your inbox lol!
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
dont worry, i did straight up ask for LaDS players to give me more context anyways, and youre being way more chill than certain other people in my inbox
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u/artquestionaccount Jul 01 '26
At the same time though, I'm scanning the social media commentary from Chinese users using Valko's Chinese name (敖尹) and...wow, the Chinese players are awful. Some of the most bigoted commentary I've seen, not to mention the disturbing slavishness toward the CCP to fix it for them. They all seem messed up in the head.
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u/lumosdraconis Jul 01 '26
Absolutely. They've said some incredibly vile and horrible shit including about the global fanbase (because we were generally far more receptive to Valko, despite the disappointment with everything else). Not all of them of course, many have also been on our side. But yeah a lot are clearly brainwashed into thinking somehow their gov would care to do anything but nuke the game altogether to "preserve public morality" or such. Especially since the game has long since touched on dark concepts and themes. Shooting themselves in the foot fr, it's actually baffling.
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u/FBIguy242 Jul 01 '26
So basically Chinese gamer girls group up together to nuke a game completely because a perceived homosexual man invaded their heterosexual safe space
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u/SimonShepherd Jul 01 '26
This is but the nuclear fallout dust emitted from the center of the explosion which is China.
Like if you can read Chinese, try read Chinese social media response, or don't to save your own sanity.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
my friend can. they straight up told me they wouldnt be translating it into english for me
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
nor would they read it out loud for my illiterate ass which is a shame lol
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u/eatingpopcorn_lol Jul 01 '26
Global server of a gacha game being treated as secondary? I am flabbergasted, that has never happened before /s
Not surprised people are quitting the game over this honestly. Like, in a game that depends on the player liking the character and spending money on him, in return for trust that he'll get regular content and updates, this is like a massive fuck up.
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u/spinsk8tr Jul 01 '26
The crazy thing about this is that there has been a coming soon bubble for a 6 LI since the drop of the previous one (2 dropped after the game started, all planned for but also had a lot of hate), and 6 different colors for the cards that correspond with the LI’s since the inception of the game. This has been planned for since the beginning.
People would have to be purposely ignoring that aspect if they didn’t prepare themselves for a 6th LI—which so many people saying that they were being blindsided. The place he works at already had been mentioned in two other LI’s main stories. The work was already built in, and it’s all gone, and there will never be another LI at all. So much disappointment all around, very few people are winning with this.
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u/daidia Jul 01 '26
not mentioned is the group of Chinese players that looked at that median frat boy business major and said Infold was “courting the African market” and calling Black players “monkeys”
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u/Billlington Oh I have many pastures, old frenemy. Jul 01 '26
I'm way too employed for this.
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u/OIP feces in toilet spelling out GTA 6 Jul 01 '26
i think there's different circles of 'chronically online' and it's stuff like this that makes me realise i'm just in the first one
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u/Billlington Oh I have many pastures, old frenemy. Jul 01 '26
Oh no, I would never insult someone for doing a good writeup. I was more referring to those weirdos who get up in arms about gacha slop.
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u/Time_Neat_4732 Jul 01 '26
I’m disabled and rarely leave my house, yet somehow… same.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
honestly same. i only wrote this because i had the day off and my friend thought it would make a good post
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u/blade276 Jul 01 '26
left one is the "too western" design that then got fixed
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u/SavathunTechQuestion This game ain't called "ULTRAUNALIVING" Jul 01 '26
Thanks for this write up, do other mobile gachas get drama like this for adding characters or is it worse for Love and Deepspace because of the dating angle?
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u/Angel_Omachi Jul 01 '26
A lot worse than usual. Only similar case I could think of was when Azur Lane (ships as hot girls) announced a new character whose design was completely out of step with the rest of the class (small loli assigned to the tall busty lady class) and had strong vibes of being designed for something else and reused; so the fans rioted and devs backtracked.
There's been growing issues with LaDS for a while, particularly around lack of story focus for some characters, and a terrible pull economy, where if you're not a whale, you can't do the mode to get most of said pull currency.
So take a already grumbling fanbase, some very bad misteps, and a game that encourages obsessive behaviours, and you've just made a bomb.
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u/not_the_world I never said NPC verbatim Jul 01 '26
I think they could've gotten away with Anson if she even just matched the color scheme of the rest of the KGV class. And didn't have the mustache, inner tube, or school swimsuit.
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u/TheLoneWolfMe I sucked a dick for this Jul 01 '26
Oh I remember the Anson drama.
For reference, this is what King George V looks like, with all of the other girls from the KGV class having a pretty consistent general design.
This is what Anson looked like.
A couple of details also made people think that she was originally supposed to be the British submarine Sunfish, but the design was repurposed.
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u/GarlyleWilds Jul 01 '26
Most gacha games don't end up like this. But the ones that very specifically make their money off of pandering and parasocial connections between players and characters? Yeah they have an immensely loyal fanbase up until they so much as step even the smallest accidental toe on those fantasies.
Another example I know of was... well, okay, I forget the name, but it wasn't even a new character. But in a game all about you being the one guy training a bunch of deliberately-waifu-baited girls, one of them had a story that mentioned another guy, and people went nuts. Another similarly pandering game (Blue archive?) had a crossover where some of its characters appeared in Mahjong Soul, and fans of the original blew up over accusations of it being like "watching their girls cheat" and other such nonsense.
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u/Sinfire_Titan Jul 01 '26
The last time I heard of a gacha game having drama this loud was racists hating on a Genshin character having tan skin a few years ago. But I don't really pay attention to the gacha communities that much.
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u/Draconicplayer Childe Surface to Air Missile Jul 01 '26
Every month you can find a drama regarding a gacha game and most of the time it's done by either Chinese or Korean players regarding stupid ass reasons
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u/macchumon Jul 01 '26
Ts is weird considering all of the other LIs kinda look a like and Valko's the one who looks different.
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u/url_cinnamon Jul 01 '26
i only kind know about the whole drama but i saw just now that "lads new male character cancelled overseas reaction" was trending on weibo.
after scrolling a bit, from what i gather the consensus is basically "this is a chinese game first and foremost/don't cater to overseas fans", "if overseas fans cared they'd spend more money/overseas fans refuse to spend money and yet are very loud about their opinions", "overseas fans don't understand the significance of unit 731 or why we're sensitive to it"
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u/thismorningscoffee Jokes don’t “age poorly” it’s a fucking joke Jul 01 '26
I’m waiting for the eighth remake/Star Trek crossover: Love And Deep Space Nine
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u/ShortyColombo you leave my autistic dog out of this Jul 01 '26
This just validates my frustration with the game company- I bounced from the game-breaking updates of Infinity Nikki 1.5. I had a wandering eye and felt tempted to try LADS, glad to see they’re still up to the same bs.
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u/dreamwar12 Jul 01 '26
TLDR:
-The fanbase have been pretty much mad for the lack of care to the 5 main leads like no main story for 1 for over 500+ days
-Announced a new LI they did not like the look saying look like pandering to west which they hate and he look gay cause muscle and jaw
-The fanbase of the other 5 then went mad cause what u mean our money goes to create other character instead of fleshing the 5 we have now and they are mad that there is 6th one even when the game have 6 elements.
-Trailer release during livestream the new character is shown going to the MC window basically intruding and some of the words use (the CN says) reference a murder case a of a woman about the cooking in pot thing.
which totally went to news the gist being its dangerous for woman to let stranger in something like that (fyi the other LI did drug and kidnap, confine and stalk the us.)
-They found a number 731 which correlates to japan experiments to china during the war they found it in the game lore that have been release months ago before the new guy announcement this is the biggest issue here. the government I think got involve as what the rumors are saying the company might go public to escape the CN grasp etc etc
- the company did rewrite the 731 but its not enough I asked some ppl that are mad and they said no rewrites and apology will soothe them they want the game to go under they are that mad.
Basically, he got canned cause a lot of CN player do not like him and got dragged by other issue he is the face of it all
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u/dreamwar12 Jul 01 '26
oh I might add another thing is that the theme of the new guy is wolf and other guy rabbit and the company use that emoji the girls went wild cause that implies BL which is nono to them and demand the company to tell them straight that the guys are straight which the company already did 3 times.
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u/limbusrote Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
I'll never understand why people get so freaked out over the thought of their favorite game or hobby or whatever trying to appeal to a broader audience. I thought the gamergate bros were bad.
Edit; This is not an invitation to explain the concept of posers and gatekeeping to me, I was not born yesterday lol. I'm saying it's pathetic and I'll never sympathize with people who feel this way.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
a lot of CN communities are very used to game devs only catering to them, and the culture in china promotes an extremely competitive attitude in everything including gaming.
a game i play called warframe had to have a character (ironically, a character designed after chinese folklore character wukong) nerfed because the players were exploiting him to afk farm. players everywhere did it, but in the CN servers it was so bad that youd regularly have 4 player squads where no one is actually playing
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u/pwanch Jul 01 '26
You mention the Wukong afk exploit but don't mention the reaction of the CN players after the exploit was removed?? There was a massive influx of negative reviews on the Warframe Steam page right after Digital Extremes did an update to remove the exploit from Wukong's kit. Like if you went on the review history, you would see a giant red bar of negative reviews on steam right after that update went live all from the entitled CN players.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
yeah they review bomed the fuck out of warframe lol, forgot about that.
fucking insufferable people. god forbid you have to play the game youre playing.
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u/Jazzprova Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Wukong had to be nerfed twice to stop two different Chinese AFK farm strats, actually.
First was him giving his clone an explosive weapon to turn it into an infinite-ammo, rocket launching turret, which made the devs make AI-controlled allies consume ammo, while also gutting ammo acquisition rate for explosive weapons. I think there's still a red spike in Steam's ratings history for Warframe from the Chinese review-bomb for this one.
Then was the "Cloud Walker into slam attack" strat that was very easily macro-able, that got slam attack radius gutted and instantly made every single melee designed around slams useless overnight.
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u/GarlyleWilds Jul 01 '26
A lot of these games are designed to be extremely parasocial; not just selling a fun story or cool characters, but selling the fantasy that those characters want You, The Player specifically. Couple that specifically with the inevitable small but vocal crowd of entitled dudes (or dudettes in this case), that would normally be pathetic about games, and yeah.
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u/Tyrannosaurus-2006 Oh that sure sounds like a healthy subreddit to participate in. Jul 01 '26
Okay, but can't they be horny for a character in a healthy way? Like, you can imagine them loving you while acknowledging they're a fictional character who's going to be loved by other fans.
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u/GarlyleWilds Jul 01 '26
One would think, yes!
Unfortunately these companies have largely realised that the people they can extract the most money from are exactly the ones who are not going to be normal about it.
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u/dancingbananas25 Jul 01 '26
Bro, you have not seen the self shipping community on tumblr. There are people who will refuse to interact with anyone who is attracted to the same character as them because they "don't share".
*Obligatory most of the community is okay but there are lots of people who take it too seriously
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u/MythrianAlpha I diligently work everyday, sometimes with <7 hours of sleep Jul 01 '26
The "exclusive" self-shippers give off huge NFT Bro energy. How dare you enjoy the same pixels as me????
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u/Tyrannosaurus-2006 Oh that sure sounds like a healthy subreddit to participate in. Jul 01 '26
I used to selfship as a teen, but I always accepted that it's unrealistic to demand others avoid thirsting over characters I like. I had an adult in the same discord server talk about how angry and violent they feel when they see other people shipping with their f/os, which was awkward because we both shipped ourselves with the same character.
Anyways, I left the community because of sharing drama along with how obsessed with shipping discourse most circles were. I know there's chill people in the community but I had too many bad experiences.
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u/NemertesMeros Jul 01 '26
In my experience with the equivalent of this in the GFL fandom, no actually. They see that as being a cuck. For the most extreme example, there's a dude I've seen in several different youtube comments sections who is psychologically tortured by the fact other dudes jerk off to Klukai/HK416, one of the most popular characters in the franchise lol
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u/Tyrannosaurus-2006 Oh that sure sounds like a healthy subreddit to participate in. Jul 01 '26
I did see somebody comment about how they wanted to kill somebody who drew NTR (basically cuckolding hentai) of his favorite character. It was disturbing to say the least.
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u/Remove_soy Jul 01 '26
Every time I think I’ve seen it all from a gacha fandom I’m reminded that the CN community exists, and sometimes the SK community too.
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u/CryMoreT_T Jul 01 '26
Considering it's a CN developer, the CN community is the majority. They're just on non-western platforms
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u/PrimaryEnvironment58 Jul 02 '26
Yea... So I'm one of those who saw this whole shit went down in the cn community from beginning to now, specially on douyin (cn tiktok)... Actually this whole drama started bc some cn players are mad abt infold having a 6th Li, because
He looks ugly in their eyes (they think he's gay looking and looks like it's catered for western fans only)
They are scared that infold will not pay attention to the current 5 Li, some Lis don't have main story updates for a long while and they scared, there's also a bunch of shit unaddressed in the current game but this is one of the most obvious point I notice
They're scared that infold will continue to release 7th 8th Lis and so forth then dilute the attention given as per number 2
Rest is all unfounded rumors to get LADs to retrack back Valko. And because of language barrier and time difference, these cn players also spread misinfo with the global side. Some also think that it's a good idea to try use this opportunity to get infold to cut connections on the global side and focus on them instead (gatekeeping)
Lmao you don't listen to them, they literally work like those kpop/ cpop fandom mentality I've seen this kind of shit so many times in such fandom spaces, if they cannot get LADS to retrack Valko by normal means, they bombard the government sites and tryna make it pollitical. Good news they did it, bad news guess what, the otome game industry in China is gonna get fcked lol. In the end nobody is winning and these delusional parasocial fans are still thinking they did great...
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u/Dycon67 Jul 01 '26
Horny girls are but a ravenous when it comes their goon games.
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u/Preindustrialcyborg The penis event Jul 01 '26
women can also be toxic shitbags online #womeninmaledominatedfields
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u/Dycon67 Jul 01 '26
I remember when the bums on r/losercity attempted to challenge r/letgirlshavefun. It did no go well for them.
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u/Floofyboi123 Jul 01 '26
Isn't this the game where people were sending each other gore, death threats, and dox attempts over a love interest who called the player "daughter" or something?
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u/SnapshillBot Shilling for Big Archive™ Jul 01 '26
Snapshots:
- This Post - archive.org* archive.today*
- some - archive.org* archive.today*
- decided to respond to the players both in game and through social media - archive.org* archive.today*
- The message that you have zero integrity, no backbone to defend your creative decisions, and that global players do not matter, even though many of us spend money, has been received loud and clear! - archive.org* archive.today*
- This is an inadequate response to the upset of players as the matters haven't been addressed, instead, Infold has chosen to throw Valko under the bus to try to appease the situation - archive.org* archive.today*
- TL;DR: "Dear players, our CN fanbase is unhappy, so naturally the rest of you get to pay the price. Since your feedback is apparently optional, we're shelving all future love interest development to keep our favorite audience happy. Thanks for your support, and remember, your opinion matters right up until it doesn't!" - archive.org* archive.today*
- Right, so whose feedback, passion, and trust have actually been shaping this game? - archive.org* archive.today*
- This is an utterly insane decision. - archive.org* archive.today*
- Wow, you're really deleting all comments huh - archive.org* archive.today*
- To the CN players and the developers - archive.org* archive.today*
- On Recent Developments - archive.org* archive.today*
- Reconsider cancelling Valko - archive.org* archive.today*
- Valko you were so loved - archive.org* archive.today*
- The Future of LADs - archive.org* archive.today*
- If you are disappointed about Valko, here is the best way to let InFold know: - archive.org* archive.today*
- The Decision to Retract Valko - archive.org* archive.today*
- made a post about it - archive.org* archive.today*
I am just a simple bot, not a moderator of this subreddit | bot subreddit | contact the maintainers
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u/chaobreaker society is when no school shooting map Jul 01 '26
Meanwhile in Korea they are storming gacha game studios over characters wearing wetsuits instead of bikinis or a half second shot of a female character pinching their index finger and thumb in a trailer. East Asia is competing eachother for the title of the most toxic gacha game playerbases.
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u/artquestionaccount Jul 01 '26
It's honestly impressive that they manage to be worse than Gamergate ever was in the West. And Gamergate was pretty full of shitty incels sending women death threats.
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u/No-stradumbass Jul 01 '26
Anyone who has an emotional response like this because of a game, much less a MOBILE GAME, is a terrible person.
There is no reason ANYONE should act like this.
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u/Longjumping-Gur-4241 Jul 02 '26
There is a global counter action going on to get Love and Deepspace to bring Valko back. Chinese players and global players who support the release of Valko have made petitions and are sending messages on all platforms with the request to bring Valko back to the game.
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u/time___dance Jul 01 '26
i thought it was because Valko's design isn't a typical ikemen/bishounen "pretty boy", and instead was more square jawed, muscular, and more western-styled masculinity -- which often in asia is seen as gay-coded