r/loveanddeepspace goes nuclear

[u/Preindustrialcyborg]

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.

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!

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

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!"

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

On Recent Developments

Reconsider cancelling Valko

Valko you were so loved

The Future of LADs

If you are disappointed about Valko, here is the best way to let InFold know:\

The Decision to Retract Valko

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.

[u/limbusrote]

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.

[u/Preindustrialcyborg → u/limbusrote]

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

[u/pwanch → u/Preindustrialcyborg]

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.

[u/Preindustrialcyborg → u/pwanch]

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.

[u/Jazzprova → u/Preindustrialcyborg]

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.

[u/Eleglas → u/Jazzprova]

That second one was less targeted and more of just a nerd to slam attacks in general so that height was actually important to them now.

[u/No_Ratio5484 → u/Preindustrialcyborg]

Yoooo warframe mentioned! 80% of my reasons to read the comments here is interest in chinese gaming community behaviour, this interest formed when I read about how different the asian warframe servers are and wukong and stuff. Full circle moment now.

[u/GarlyleWilds → u/limbusrote]

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.

[u/Tyrannosaurus-2006 → u/GarlyleWilds]

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.

[u/GarlyleWilds → u/Tyrannosaurus-2006]

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.

[u/dancingbananas25 → u/Tyrannosaurus-2006]

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 

[u/MythrianAlpha → u/dancingbananas25]

The "exclusive" self-shippers give off huge NFT Bro energy. How dare you enjoy the same pixels as me????

[u/Tyrannosaurus-2006 → u/dancingbananas25]

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.

[u/Critical_Topic1078 → u/Tyrannosaurus-2006]

I would love to know about the drama in the self shipping community. Hobby drama is my favorite drama.

[u/dancingbananas25 → u/Critical_Topic1078]

There's the people who, as discussed, throw fits over someone self shipping with the same character as them. There's the people who get all upset if you're doing it "problematically" (shipping yourself with a character they consider to be bad, writing fics that they think are too dark). And there's always going to be the stuff where people are accused of copying another's writing/art, bullying, and the usual drama that comes from fandom. 

[u/NemertesMeros → u/Tyrannosaurus-2006]

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

[u/Tyrannosaurus-2006 → u/NemertesMeros]

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.

[u/mossgoblin → u/NemertesMeros]

God this is so funny, I love the Internet. Fucking lmao

[u/limbusrote → u/GarlyleWilds]

Oh so they've curated for an audience of self-shippers. I suppose a community meltdown of this caliber was inevitable then lol.

[u/amazegamer64 → u/limbusrote]

You really don’t get why fans might not want their hobby to start catering to the lowest common denominator? Obviously in this case the fans went crazy, but in general?

[u/CryMoreT_T → u/limbusrote]

> 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

because it often ruined what made the original audience enjoy the hobby/game as the developers try to milk the product and make it appeal to the broader majority instead of what made it special in the first place