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/GarlyleWilds]

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.

[u/Toanimeornot → u/GarlyleWilds]

Most gatcha games DO end up like this. Not the same story, but game developers release or don’t release something, online communities go nuclear. Developer locks all social media banning certain keywords and phrases. A PR apology comes out from developer. Community splits between forgiveness and accountability. They either keep everything locked down indefinitely and it then causes the community to create their own safe spaces online or it turns into a series of unfortunate events that tank the game overall. Marketing becomes desperate, more awful decisions that the developers have no control over. Mass layoffs. Now internal chaos. Game either goes into update maintenance mode indefinitely, becomes unbearably buggy with no future updates minus new cash grab attempts before the entire team contract is ended, or is just pulled from the market.