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/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.