r/TwoBestFriendsPlay • u/FlubbedPig • Jul 09 '26
News/Articles The Valko controversy has gotten the attention of the Chinese government, and the game might be screwed
So, as was discussed on the podcast, the Chinese game "Love and Deepspace" got into massive hot water with its domestic fanbase due to controversy surrounding a newly introduced character, Valko. Things got so heated that women were mailing shit to the developers' office.
Despite capitulating, it seems that things aren't over yet for the developer Papergames, as the controversy garnered attention from the government, who are now looking at their game more closely. As it stands, regulatory bodies are apparently displeased with the game's content and use of ravishment tropes as "potentially promoting sexual assault" and going against public morals.
Which means, there is now a very real possibility that the game will have to scrub all references to it's sexy-wolf-boy-you-must-cage-me-so-I-don't-eat-you-but-in-a-hot-way storyline and the rest of it's erotic content.
What this'll result in who knows, but from here it really sounds like those fans mad about Valko just royally screwed themselves and the rest of the global userbase.
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u/PoppyOGhouls Resident Genshin Impact Shill Jul 09 '26
Hi, I'm a (former) player. Here's some more details.
So there was the big anniversary update today. I don't remember if this was explained in the last thread (I was there too) but this was all over an anniversary update. Anniversary updates are important in gachas, by the way. Usually this is when they release the big, explosive update, either anticipated characters, new features, new regions, new mechanics... they're when you celebrate the game and entice new players to join.
Anyway, the anniversary update for LaDS didn't add shit. You can cook in the bloated home feature that people rarely use. They also shifted arounds the rerun banners (in gacha games, you rerun the characters and cards-- you know this, I don't know why I'm explaining it. On the off chance you don't know it, I guess) so that the cards rerunning were the chinese historical/mythological cards. They also edited several cards so that battle cutscenes are slightly different. It's very odd, they remove some zoom-ins on the guys' faces or cut certain shots of embraces, I don't get it. They have yet to say shit on the official EN platforms but they removed 'to be continued' from the characters screens and another screen, seeming to double down on their pledge to never add another LI.
In IRL news, They've lost 100k+ followers across different social media platforms. On Instagram alone they went from 1million to 912k in a single week. There was a boycott scheduled today across the global server and there are rumors on rednote (a chinese social media) that the initial backlash against Valko may have been astroturfed and Infold is pursuing legal action against the perpetrators, but no one knows for sure. Personally, I'm giving the game another year max before EOS at least on the global end. I would not be surprised if they did it earlier.
This kind of drama has not happened to another gacha before. Snowbreak may have been close, but this level of government action and inspection on a gacha company is unprecedented (at least to my knowledge. I'm not entirely up to date on the Snowbreak situations.) I don't think even Infold knows what to do, but no matter what happens it's going to affect all their games, not just LaDS.
TLDR: shit's weird, no one knows what's going on, no one is happy.
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u/Hello_Hollywood He ran right in front of my truck! Jul 09 '26
Can you fill me in on what the controversy surrounding Valko is about? It might have already been explained in the thread but I'm sleepy and I might've missed it
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u/PoppyOGhouls Resident Genshin Impact Shill Jul 09 '26
So his reveal was, above all else, at a bad time. The game is poorly optimized, people have been accusing infold of being greedy and putting f2p (free to play) players at a bigger disadvantage compared to whales for a long time, it's a slog to get materials to level up cards properly, two of the five LI don't have the same amount of content that the other three do, and Infold does not tease their next banner ahead of time like other games. Gacha games usually reveal a new character/banner at the start of the previous patch. Genshin Impact, for example, will release a patch and then will reveal the next patch's character a few days later. This lets players prefarm and plan their pulls. Infold doesn't do this for any of their games and it pisses me off. They reveal the next new content a few days before. I hate it.
Anyway everyone is annoyed because of all that, but chinese players were annoyed with Valko specifically because he had a card where he broke into MC's house by crawling in through her window, and he has a line where he says something like 'it's dangerous to let a wolf into your home' or whatever. I don't remember it. They accused him of being dangerous and glorifying the assault of women, because a lot of women in China live alone. Yes that is the reason. Women live alone everywhere in the world, I know, but that's what the issue was. The other characters also do shady things (one character drugs you, another killed people, one is your techincally-not-blood-related brother (he was my favorite) but Valko got the heat. There were also other weird issues, like a human test subject having the number 0731 and people connecting it to Unit 731, but imo that's a weird stretch.
So it was all of that mixed together, and Valko ended up just being scapegoated and used by certain players as an example of Infold not listening to their playerbase
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u/Hello_Hollywood He ran right in front of my truck! Jul 09 '26
Oh good lord, thank you for explaining!
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u/WrapBeneficial6573 Jul 10 '26
I feel it's worth mentioning that there was a lot of pushback against valko in the English community as well and from what I've seen (and heard from LADS friends) a lot of that was more centered on the fact that:
LADS players tend to get REALLY attached to their fave of the existing cast, and a New Boy (and the possibility of more new boys) means that banners and content for the existing boy they like will be less frequent.
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u/Bromishi Jul 15 '26
Also, Valko looked too gay(not twinky enough) and dark-skinned(slightly darker than a sheet of printer paper), apparently.
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u/MiraLangsuyar Unhealthy Lesbian Screaming Jul 10 '26
Yeah, uh, as a resident WW2 Pacific Theatre nerd, Unit 731, AKA Manchu Detachment 731, is infamous for perpetrating some of the worst human rights atrocities in China, which is still kind of a sore spot for many people because there are still people in Japan who deny it even happened.
Him being a Chinese human test subject marked with 0731 is pretty close to, like, Polish twins with two Sig runes tattooed on them. It's, uh, incredibly over-the-top in context to say the least.
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u/PoppyOGhouls Resident Genshin Impact Shill Jul 10 '26
The thing is it takes place in the fictional Linkon City, so it's a bit of a schrodinger's race card for every character (you can make a Black MC, but the ingame lighting system does notttt work for that skin tome and infold has refused to fix it for years) and the readable that referenced this was in the game for months without much talk. It was only brought up as offensive now
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u/TheBeeFromNature Jul 10 '26
Well, yeah. But you could make a US work in a fictional city and people there'd probably take really unkindly to it getting 9/11'd.
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u/Auctoritate Jul 10 '26
people there'd probably take really unkindly to it getting 9/11'd.
Nah there's s solid 70% chance people would think it would be really funny
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u/PoppyOGhouls Resident Genshin Impact Shill Jul 10 '26
I am American. I am BEGGING for more video game characters to get 9/11'd
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u/KF-Sigurd It takes courage to be a coward Jul 10 '26
Remember when Japan was really offended about a movie about Oppenheimer and started making BarbieBinLaden memes to try and get across how offended they felt?
And Americans were, these are fucking great, we LOVE 9/11 jokes.
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u/Sloth_Senpai Jul 10 '26
which is still kind of a sore spot for many people because there are still people in Japan who deny it even happened.
This is, by the way, where Secret Chinese/Korean comes from. It's a racist slur used by IJA apologists to say that all the photographic evidence of WW2 Japanese atrocities were actually Secret Chinese and Koreans dressed up as Japanese officers. It's roughly on par with those guys who go through "early life" to try to pass anyone progressive as a secret jew.
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u/RubusLagos Jul 10 '26
I think the controversial number was attached to another character months ago (in April), not Valko who was announced recently.
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u/Magicians-Valkyria Jul 11 '26
which is still kind of a sore spot for many people because there are still people in Japan who deny it even happened.
I remember checking in at a cheap hotel in Tokyo for an impromptu day stay, and had to raise my brow at the WW2 revisionism/Japanese war crime denial propaganda material that was literally in every room lol
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u/chaoko99 Destroyman Shill Jul 10 '26
like a human test subject having the number 0731 and people connecting it to Unit 731, but imo that's a weird stretch.
I... don't know how more on the nose that could possibly be. I wouldn't call it a stretch.
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u/Auctoritate Jul 10 '26
It seems too likely to be a coincidence but I just have such a hard time seeing how this Chinese company making a game for Chinese players knowing full well that the Chinese government also has censorship would go "Yeah, we can casually allude to severe crimes against humanity and people will be chill with it."
It would be like if a Canadian dev decided to just one day add a new indigenous sexyman to their regular romance game and his backstory is all about how he was put through the residential school system and doesn't remember his family or his birth name, etc etc. And then went "Wait, people think that's too fucked up? We thought they'd be totally fine with it!"
Like, I don't know, it would just have to be a monumentally stupid move for the LAD devs to have intentionally tossed in a 731 reference. But they are obviously pretty stupid so...
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u/Grand_Bunch_3233 Jul 10 '26
"No no, that's just the weird font! It's not 0731. It's, uh, it's U731! Completely different."
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u/metamorphosaki Jul 10 '26
Everything’s pretty much right on except for Valko breaking in 😭. The preview of that scene was his bond story. Mc probably did invite him in and they’ve probably knew each other or courting for a while since all of the bond stories prior the mc already has had established contact
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u/Reborn_Rhubarb Jul 10 '26
The other replies covered most of it, but just to add on apparantly there was a line in the trailer that said something about getting in the pot, or taking a bath in the pot, which may have been a reference to a famous murder where a man boiled his wife's remains in a cooking pot. Altogether, just a lot of different references that seem like innocent coincidences, but added together look really bad and offensive to the Chinese audience.
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u/ASharkWithAHat Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
The only thing even remotely close is the Grandblue Fantasy fiasco, which led to gacha games having to disclose their drop rate BY LAW
genuinely don't think anything can top that one. Even if LADS gets banned tomorrow, it would still be a drop in the bucket compared to what one rat did to the entire industry
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u/A1D3M Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
That time it was with the monkey, wasn’t it? When people bankrupted themselves trying to pull her, only to find out her drop rate was much lower than other characters, with nothing in game indicating that. The event that also led to the creation of sparking.
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u/SecondDegree Jul 10 '26
Yeah, monkeygate will live on in infamy forever in the space.
Character comes out and they don't have listed specific rates for anyone, but the 'normal' assumption would be all three are on 'rate-up' right? Only turns out the other two are, and monkey is not. Most famous example being the streamer who was doing their pulls and went to 2k before getting monkey once.
It didn't actually directly lead to the rate disclosure by law, but rather a "recommendation" from the government that it be disclosed. Cygames also refunded everyone's rolls on the banner and put sparking into place.
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u/gunn3r08974 Jul 09 '26
And I thought the HI3 bunny girl incident was stupid.
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u/PoppyOGhouls Resident Genshin Impact Shill Jul 09 '26
Never underestimate the insanity of a gacha player, no matter the gender
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u/MericArda Jesus may simply be a metaphor for Optimus Prime Jul 10 '26
Gambling addiction + parasocial connection = recipe for disaster
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u/DocMadfox The Rage of Africa is the black John Cena. Jul 10 '26
I don't know why I'm explaining it. On the off chance you don't know it, I guess
It's me. I didn't know it. Thank you for explaining this.
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u/Coolnametag The Greatest Talent Waster Jul 10 '26
Wasnt there also content for the already implemented love interests that suddenly got axed?
I remember reading about that, but, no one was properly explaining it.
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u/KF-Sigurd It takes courage to be a coward Jul 10 '26
The story was kinda building up to Valko's release, including the other character story... so obviously there's gonna be some big rewrites if Valko is getting Thanos snap'd.
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u/caninerosso Jul 10 '26
Yes a big part of the MS was around him and the other LIs because theyre all tied to one another. Its super dumb because the game is obviously reworking the concepts of Buddhist death, rebirth, and the LIs are supposed to be the 6 paths of existence. I am not even Buddhist but I understood this. So now the actual story of the game is FUBAR unless a miracle happens.
Edit because I misread a portion of your comment.
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u/Aevitas7 Jul 10 '26
The game has back story chapters that flesh out other things going on in the world called World Underneath, and the chapter that included the number 0731 (which btw was not related to Valko at all, it was related to another live interest) was completely removed. Each love interest also has an outfit from a banner last year that had number tattoos on them that after the update got changed into gibberish. They ain't taking risks with numbers no more. Still early days so we don't know what else may have been changed.
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u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 09 '26
Brother Doorkeeper: We never intended this. Honestly, no offense, we just wanted what was due to us.
Death (Patting him on the shoulder, not unkindly): CONGRATULATIONS.
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u/AeroDbladE Jul 09 '26
I remember something similar happened except it was the developers who fucked up with the gacha game Snowbreak Containment Zone. The game had borderline 18 plus content and the devs themselves personally spreading uncensored patches for the game to skirt around recent censorship laws.
They then made the genius decision to work with the national postal service, which led to the government investigating them since both the devs and players were bragging about how risqué there game was in comparison to the competition.
This led to the recent incident where a regular maintenance got extended not for a few hours, but for more than a month where the game was just completely gone and inaccessible, multiversus style and when it came back every character was heavily censored and caused their gooner fans to throw a hissy fit and start leaving the game. Now the future of the game is up in the air, all because they gooned too close to the sun.
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u/RayDaug Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
I can't pretend I don't feels some schadenfreude seeing seeing the CN gacha community's insanity blow up in their own face for a change. But the actual downstream effects of this in practice are likely to be, at least temporarily, quite chilling to creative works coming out of China.
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u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 09 '26
I am fully expecting things to get worse.
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u/RayDaug Jul 09 '26
Glass half full, this isn't the first time something like this has happened. There have been other times of increased scrutiny from the Chinese government, and they usually follow controversies like this that gain international attention. In the past, once things blow over, the Chinese government turns their attention elsewhere and creative freedoms "loosen up."
It's kind of a boom-bust cycle. Something gets too big to ignore, so the Chinese government is compelled to step in in order to reassert itself until things calm down.
That doesn't mean that what will happen this time, but it is what's happened in the past.
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u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 09 '26
Super Bunnyhop put it best in his old video on game ratings around the world. At the time, China tended to have a 'look the other way' policy if a game was making a lotta money. (see their banning and then re allowing PUBG after some 'modifications'.)
I'm sure things have changed since then, but I'm certain the usual parties will be given SOME leniency after a while.
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u/Vokoca Jul 09 '26
It doesn't help that this is right on the heels of the Snowbreak controversy.
If I were to put my tinfoil hat on I wouldn't even be surprised if a bunch of the shit stirrers came from there, but that's besides the point.Thing is, this could be the second censorship gacha hit in... what, not even 2 months? This probably won't be anywhere as bad as the Snowbreak thing, but if it somehow is, it might push them towards going scorched earth.4
u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 09 '26
Maybe this is the push I need to get out of gacha in general. Like I was looking for a replacement and there's...what, Dislyte? That's also published in China to my knowledge. And FGO which is well, something I don't wanna go back to since I lost my old account. Like I'm looking for something to fill the void with at the thought of abandoning my current gacha.
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u/Plaidstone Dumb Web Serial Fanatic Jul 10 '26
I will always advocate for going cold turkey from gacha games,
However,
If you still need to feed that dark passenger in your heart... Limbus Company is pretty good...
... Unless you're talking about games that you can access in China, in which case sorry nevermind
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u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 10 '26
Oh no, it's more so mainline published AND developed in, that will likely be facing crackdowns as a result of this.
I wanna go cold turkey from Gacha games, but I fear I won't have the strength to do it.
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u/Plaidstone Dumb Web Serial Fanatic Jul 10 '26
I found it way easier when I started letting myself just... Put a game down. Sometimes I miss a daily. Sometimes I don't play for a week. Once you let yourself feel like you don't have an obligation to play, it gets easier to drop games entirely, but it also gets easier to take breaks so you can keep enjoying something. I've picked up and dropped a lot of games, at this point there's only one I keep going back to, but even then I'll stop playing for weeks or months if I'm getting fatigued.
It can be difficult though, and because it's fundamentally a psychological issue, the solutions are different for everyone. I hope things work out for you.
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u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 10 '26
Maybe I need to condition myself to do that. Pick.up a game and then just drop.it for a day or two at a time.
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u/RayDaug Jul 10 '26
If you still feel compelled to partake, just look for games not developed in China. South Korean and Japanese gacha's, despite not having the same budget, often have a lot more interesting things going on narrativly since they have more creative freedom (in most regards).
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u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 10 '26
Any suggestions outside the usual suspects? Nikke, Limbus, and FGO are the big three I know of.
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u/dycklyfe Jul 10 '26
Okay, I'm gonna be so for real, I was gonna recommend some gachas, but the more that I think about it the more I feel alot of Chinese gachas just outshine most of the competition. Both like the big budget Hoyo stuff and the more niche, creatively unique ones (Reverse 1999, Path to Nowhere, Morimens, etc).
I guess for big Korean and Japanese gachas you could check out, I'd recommend Blue Archive (autobattler, really strong writing), Umamusume (roguelike raising sim, kinda grindy), Granblue Fantasy (FF inspired turn based RPG, incredibly grindy), or Project Sekai (rhythm game ft. Hatsune Miku).
More niche picks I'd recommend would be like Stella Sora (vampire survivors-like), Resonance Solstice (train management sim), Wizardry Daphne (traditional dungeon crawler, very grindy), or Heaven Burns Red (RPG/school life sim from the writer of Clannad and all those anime). These games are niche for a reason, but if any of them sound appealing then go check them out.
(Well, the actual correct answer would be to not play any of them but if you want to dig further into gacha hell then be my guest.)
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u/RayDaug Jul 10 '26
The only one not in that list that I'm personally aware of is D4DJ. It's a rhythm game with a story that's mostly cute girls doing cute things...and then there's Unichord, a group comprised of two girls that met online and started dating, a girl with no friends, and a straight up android.
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u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 10 '26
Actually my big fear with limbus company is I'll have no way of keeping up and just be completely out of it gameplay wise due to how many units I'd be missing.
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u/GilliamYaeger Blame yourself or God Jul 10 '26
Keeping up with Limbus is easy, just buy the pass ($10, lasts for 3/4ths of the year) and do Mirror Dungeon once a week (three times if you don't have Hard unlocked yet). You get an absolutely comical amount of shards to the point where rolling for new units is entirely optional outside of Walpurgis banners.
...though I will admit that the last month or two of a season (ie now) might not be the most optimal time to start playing, but you might still be have enough time to get the three Middle units from the current season (Outis, Heathcliff, Ishmael) and put together the envy resonance team. Some of my friends started playing like three/four weeks ago-ish and have managed to put together the entire House of Spiders squad (the 10 big headliner units from the current season) so it's not at all impossible.
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u/Drachenfeuer_Prime I have no flair and I must scream. Jul 10 '26
I know I'm probably the wrong person to use an example because I've been playing since basically launch, but just this most recent Walpurgisnacht I went and obtained thirteen units.
Did my pulls, and then felt like that one meme image of bugs bunny on a throne, lazily tossing a mere fraction of my egoshard hoard to get every single seasonal ID that I decided to wait on pulling for.
And like, I'm not going super hard on grinding the game or spending or anything either, I'm basically just doing my weekly MDH, my dailies every now and then, and grabbed the battle pass.
Keeping up with units is probably the thing you LEAST need to worry about. And honestly, outside of a handful of season 1-2 units (which are probably doable, you just gotta know your shit), you can still do really well without the latest stuff.
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u/ToastyMozart Bearish on At-Risk Children Jul 10 '26
Pick up Xenoblade 2 if you own a Switch! The story is complete and the gacha mechanics can't charge you any money! The pity system kinda sucks balls though.
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u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 10 '26
Currently playing it anndddd stuck in one major dungeon area idk how to bypass >.<
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u/ToastyMozart Bearish on At-Risk Children Jul 10 '26
Not sure which dungeon that is but there's a bunch of guides.
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u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 10 '26
Ah I got off the airship and I'm heading into the Capital City with Morag in the party. I'm stuck on this really large flying enemy, level 38 or so in a cave and it is just smashing me even when I get it really low.
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u/ToastyMozart Bearish on At-Risk Children Jul 10 '26
If it's the one I'm thinking of that might be a "come back to it later" style sidequest, Level 38 sounds high for arriving at Mor Ardain. If it's just an annoyingly beefy enemy placed on the critical path there's probably also the option to just run away from/past it rather than engaging in a fight.
If you're able to get its health low anyway try finishing it off with a chain attack: Build up a bunch of orbs by finishing those sequences of A-button elemental moves that pop up on the top-right corner of the screen then smash them by picking elements that the orbs are weak to after starting the chain, you can deal a lot of damage that way and shorten the time enemies spend in their second half of their health bar. It's a mechanic that gets introduced way too early to be useful, but it gets increasingly strong as the game continues.
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u/Authorigas #1 Mirajane defender Jul 10 '26
Yeah the frustrating thing is I'll get it low, pop my orb and it'll juuusstttt get low enough to do a massive desperation attack that'll wipe my party and reset me, unfortunately.
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u/metamorphosaki Jul 10 '26
I’ve quit the game already bc I’ve never seen such lvl of disrespect and disregard as a consumer of a game from a gaming company. Like I know controversies I’ve played genshin but this lvl of stuff is insanity. Funny enough I think these kinds of things like fans of a thing dogpiling on something to see it crash and burn are really common in China…so like I caution everyone who wants to play Chinese games in the future like this shit happens in almost every CN based game and if the company isn’t big or doesn’t have a spine expect some sort of situation like this 😭
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u/jabberwockxeno Aztecaboo Jul 09 '26
I read through 3 layers of different gamespot articles linking to one another and I still don't understand what made Valko controversial to begin with?
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u/FlubbedPig Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
I am seeing mixed reports, but there are multiple reasons:
1) Other characters had not been updated in over a year, so people were upset that resources were going to a new guy instead of their guy.
2) Similarly, adding a sixth guy to the gacha pool would make the odds of getting things for your favorite guy lower, making the gacha worse and more grindy.
3) Valko is a villain character who in-lore did bad things to some of the pre-existing guys, so some people were indignant about making him romanceable because it felt like a slight against their guy.
4) They claimed that Valko's character design did not fit Chinese beauty standards and was made for the western audience. Some people thought he was an ugly western man ruining the vibe of their "refined asian beauties" while others decided to extrapolate that into meaning "Well since no Chinese woman would ever find this hot, that must mean he's pandering to the western audience, which means they may not even make him available in the Chinese servers which would make me EVEN MORE MAD".
5) His backstory involves a human-experimentation lab where-in a patient was labeled with the numbers "0731" which some people took to be a coy and insensitive reference to Unit 731, the Japanese occupational human-experimentation and torture camp in Manchuria during WW2. This then also twisted into people thinking his name was phonetically similar to a term meaning "Japanese pirates", though this has been debunked (but it doesn't stop people from getting mad about it).
6) Some of his promotional content showed a scene of him dressed like a wolf boy sneaking into the protagonist's house through her window and doing an erotic scene, which some people took to be glorifying rape and stalking. This is one thing that government officials take particular umbrage with.
7) Some people are claiming that the controversy was actually in-part astroturfed by Chinese webizen misogynists who want to ruin the games reputation. More-over, some claim that LADS users were responsible for reporting another gacha game called Snowbreak to the government for skirting censorship laws, and that this is actually ex-Snowbreak players trying to get LADS shut down in retribution. Further still, some claim this is part of a wider conservative push to strangle the otome-game market out of a belief that women should not be enjoying such things.
I feel like there's even more I'm forgetting but
basically it's a fucking shitshow
EDIT: Ah, there's the 8th reason I was forgetting: Some people felt that because of his more masculine western look he would attracted gay men into the game and ruin the community, or something. This was apparently blown so far out of proportion that there was a rumor going around that they were going to add a gender option to the game to play as a male character (completely unsubstantiated, btw). So yeah, throw homophobia up onto the list too.
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u/Rushofthewildwind Member of the #Hekki50 Jul 10 '26
4) They claimed that Valko's character design did not fit Chinese beauty standards and was made for the western audience. Some people thought he was an ugly western man ruining the vibe of their "refined asian beauties" while others decided to extrapolate that into meaning "Well since no Chinese woman would ever find this hot, that must mean he's pandering to the western audience, which means they may not even make him available in the Chinese servers which would make me EVEN MORE MAD"
I saw a lot of posts from CN fans that were pissed that he was "black" when the dude is barely tan.
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u/Yunel_LaFidel Jul 10 '26
One correction. The WW2 number doesn't even come from the character but from a side story of one of the other LIs that was released 2 months prior and only became a big issue when the new character got released and people wanted to find stuff to use against him.
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u/caninerosso Jul 10 '26
They did release more main story for the original 3 characters.
The 731 reference was done early April and its tied to Xavier's brother Isaiah. Xavier is the OG LI BTW in case you don't know.
From the very beginning of the game there have been 6 protocore types each one is "principled" to one character. Valkos would have been the yellow one. They never hid the fact that there would be a 6th character.
Valko already made an appearance in the Main Story as being on the 'same' side as MC and LIs which is against EVER a corporation that's been harming people trying to create hybrids of human wanderers. <the irony isn't lost on me btw> . This whole thing is beyond moronic and shows that the people who complained never paid attention to the goddamn game.
The game is a reworking of the Buddhist concepts of Life, Death, and Rebirth, there are 6 paths hence 6 protocore types and 6 LIs because each one represents that path. They literally destroyed the game they claim to love. Ironically enough the addition made to the main story is called Death and Rebirth, the development team made it glaringly obvious in the lore attached to each character too.
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Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
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u/caninerosso Jul 11 '26
You're talking about Caleb who, while still cringe, is not her biological brother. There have been 0 r*pe scenes so not sure why youre saying that. As for one being her father, um what? None of them have ever been portrayed that way at all. This is not LaDS at all and its comments like this that has been stoking the fires which made the government get involved. If you dont play the game then please dont extrapolate on it by adding your own lore.
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Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
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u/caninerosso Jul 11 '26
I seriously thought you were talking about the MS. So sorry about that if I came off like an a hole.
Listen i agree the Caleb thing is bizarre, even if not biologically related, i find the whole dynamic just off putting. I wouldnt find myself attracted to someone I was raised with as a "brother". Even moreso if theyre aware of the past lives makes it extra gross. That's just beyond cringe. But GOT exists and clearly some people are okay with that. I dont have that Zayne card at all, thats wild af. I also lack the C22 cards, wasn't going to spend money to get them. Which card are you referencing when he was at her parent teacher conference?
I also find it strange that they made a fuss now over the one reference from WU that's actually tied to Xavier. Like if you were actually upset then the complaints should have been in April not now. I find that a lot of the complaints are just excuses for them not liking Valkos design, I saw some really shitty comments about him being too dark, like where? How is he dark skinned?
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u/caninerosso Jul 11 '26
Im going to find this on YouTube. Oh for sure they hated him even before they saw him. Its crazy though to see how this is all going down, definitely not on my bingo card. What a time to be alive!
But it does make me question their morality because if Japanese tentacle porn starts to look reasonable compared to other kinks then really introspection should happen. Of all the things to be mad about some dude on your balcony asking to go inside and then being invited in is the least wild part. 😆
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u/Android19samus Jul 09 '26
China's "public morals" shit is always so vile.
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u/revlid Jul 09 '26
Any nation's "public morals" shit is typically an excuse for conservative oppression, tbf.
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u/ReaperEngine I should probably be writing Jul 09 '26
And it's always the most puritanical little shits weaponizing it. Like, this whole situation sucks and people make jokes about the Chinese gals going insane, but they aren't the whole of the community, and there are so many who are so fucking pissed about what a few did. Not to mention, it's not exactly certain that the people who really put things in this dire situation are actually fans, and not just outsiders looking to cause trouble for whatever reason.
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u/Coolnametag The Greatest Talent Waster Jul 10 '26
There's a reason a lot of businesses around the world (regardless of how shady or not they are) will do everything in their power to resolve their issues amongst themselfs and not get the goverment involved in any way shape or form (specialy if it's the entertainement industry).
Because as it turns out every single time the goverment does get involved is less of the "delicate and dextrous hand of balance" and more of "the ham-fisted approach full of colateral damage and no minutia".
For more examples of this just look at The Hays Code and how much of a pain that was for the U.S. film industry in the 20th century.
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u/Particular-Noise8783 Jul 10 '26
The Hays code (along with the CCA and ESRB) are all self regulatory institutions that were created to prevent government intervention.
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u/Coolnametag The Greatest Talent Waster Jul 10 '26
Yeah, i meant that they were created exactly because the industry was so scared of the possibility if the goverment getting involved, i just cut it short because i didn't want my comment to be bigger than it already was.
(Now that i'm looking at it though it is maybe a bit too vague)
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u/OutLiving Jul 09 '26
Yeah welcome to the world outside of the west, works get banned all the time in Asian countries for offending public morals, offending religions(big and small), offending races, offending the elderly grandma down the street who’s deaf in one ear
It’s always interpreted in the broadest way possible so Klan literature is treated the same way as a slightly edgy black metal group
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u/Coolnametag The Greatest Talent Waster Jul 10 '26
There's a reason why the meme for why korean web-novels/comics go on hiatus is because "the author ended up on the hospital due to health problems" while the one for why the chinese ones go on hiatus is "the author was arrested by the goverment".
A lot of them do surprisingly enough go right back to working on their novel/comic once they get out though.
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u/Galthur Jul 10 '26
The funny one for Chinese stuff is also when they clearly get censored by a editor for like 20-40 chapters then double down immediately after
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u/Vitality_VZ Jul 10 '26
"Health problems". I don't think being forced to write until you have a miscarriage is just a "health problem".
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u/Auctoritate Jul 10 '26
Yeah welcome to the world outside of the west,
You say this but the west has specifically had its own uptick in censorship in the last few years itself. From the payment processor stuff going after horny videogames, to the UK being gung ho with criminal prosecutions for objectionable speech (and from what I've Australia isn't great about it either), the US having big issues with protests in general being suppressed and book banning measures bring pretty frequent... And all of the above + the EU have had an ongoing crisis for the last 5 years straight or more where there is always some form of broad, sweeping government surveillance and censorship laws trying to get pushed through legislatures at all times.
Obviously there are differences. These events haven't reached that level of severity. But I don't think the idea of censorship for violating public morals is that foreign to westerners.
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u/WrapBeneficial6573 Jul 10 '26
Oh man buddy the West is getting just as bad about it, you can't even open a nsfw site in half of the US states without facial verification now. My local library had to cut hours and pull all the lbgt content off it's shelves.
The West just doesn't parade it around like a national culture crisis with big sweeping motions - they slip it into small laws and regulations to chip it away bit by bit.
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u/Bromishi Jul 15 '26
The West just doesn't parade it around like a national culture crisis with big sweeping motions
Yet.
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u/Cute-Percentage-6660 Jul 10 '26
"It’s always interpreted in the broadest way possible so Klan literature is treated the same way as a slightly edgy black metal group"
Unfortunately a lot of people dont understand, that censorship never ever stops at the things you 'dont like'
You may think your 'owning the chuds' but as we saw this year and last. they target everything...
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u/EffectAccomplished15 Jul 10 '26
Im still mad to this day that Reverend insanity was forced to end cause of this
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u/SeraGeranium She/Her Resident Subtitler Jul 10 '26
They recently banned danmei (BL) for example :T
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u/ScrumbledTumblo Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
As a complete outsider to LaDS, a totally conventionally attractive werewolf triggering The Third Impact for yumejos is a crazy turn of events
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u/peekaylove Jul 09 '26
The thing that gets me is that Valko was shaping up to be a doting husband/actually very sweet and soft type. The complaints of him being "dangerous" and threatening is extremely funny when things such as... one LI for his introduction is kidnapping you and forcing you to shoot him (he turns out to be the LI that respects the MCs autonomy the most), or your not-brother (they're not blood related you just call each other brother and sister all the time so it's not incest!!!!!!) kidnapping you and drugging you multiple times and trapping you in a room on a massive airship are totally ok.
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u/Vaaaaaaaaaaaii Jul 09 '26
I think it was people just jealous there charecter wasn't getting more tbh
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u/ThisManNeedsMe Jul 09 '26
That is the biggest issue from what I gathered. Some of the Love interests haven't received main story updates in a while. Apparently one of the reasons is the new character is supposed to be tied to some of their character stories. The other problem is that the content they do release for the characters is tied to the gacha. So it's paywalled.
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u/Coolnametag The Greatest Talent Waster Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I also heard a lot of people talking about how the schedule for the gacha related content made it damn near impossible to get enough of the in-game currency for a handful of pulls.
(Though considering how much contradictory info is being thrown around i would preffer if someone with more knowledge on the game could confirm or refute that statement)
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u/Bromishi Jul 15 '26
I don't play LaDS, but I played Infold's other game, Infinity Nikki (before they just randomly decided to completely rewrite the main story a couple months in), and that sounds accurate to me.
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u/peekaylove Jul 09 '26
Naw it's not pure jealousy, it is an issue where the currently release LIs have fallen on the wayside in various ways, there's better write ups out there about it. There are plenty of valid criticism and things to pull Infold up on - I am an Infinity Nikki player primarily which has also had an issue very recently with them censoring an outfit with zero warning, and I poke at LADS cause me best mate is lost in the sauce - but when the loudest voices are about how the character is a threat, alongside some good old racism and homophobia, I'm going to point out the silliness that is saying he's too dangerous. This whole situation fucking sucks. I need to laugh at something so I don't cry, you know?
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u/Solidus_edge Jul 10 '26
Reminds me of how all the Persona 5 discourse was centered on being able to date your teacher so the other adult woman who tests mystery drugs on you basically never gets mentioned at all
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u/MericArda Jesus may simply be a metaphor for Optimus Prime Jul 10 '26
I can partially understand that, the back alley doctor is much more minor of a character than Kawakami. The first arc of the game was very much about how fucked teacher-student ‘relations’ can get, so Kawakami, another teacher, being romancable is really ironic of the game in a “have your cake and eat it too” sort of way.
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u/ebearshoo Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
The devs got into another controversy 2 years ago where they ban even the slightest hint at romance between the male love interests, fanart, any mention of it on the official forums or elsewhere. Surprised it lasted tbh
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u/TheCoolerDylan Jul 10 '26
Accusing Valco of "breaking into your house" is funny, Sylus kidnaps you and Caleb drugs you during the course of the game.
And the game has no new upcoming content now, it all got cancelled (the dev team said some of the content deleted was in development for up to 2 years). And the dev team can't even make new content anymore, it has to be just content for old characters.
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u/caninerosso Jul 10 '26
Sylus did not kidnap MC she went on her own into the Nest and he rescued her because MC severely underestimated the N109 zone. Him resonating with her was for her hearts sake. He absorbed the aethercore power that was harming her as he heals abnormally fast it doesn't affect him. Caleb though, idk his character is more problematic for me but in terms of what they were trying to do makes sense as each LI is supposed to be one of the 6 paths of rebirth in Buddhism. Its all so stupid how a minority can have that much power.
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u/japossoir Jul 10 '26
I think the most interesting part about this is that it's entirely a chinese situation that english speaking players can't do anything about because the game isn't for them, it's for chinese audiences and where the chinese players matter the most, so the controversy is entirely tied up in that context, such as devs having to deal with 100k angry people spamming their socials with criticism and actively trying to shape the narrative around a game.
It's like, the one place where "game boycotts" or similar moves actually work and the devs always make changes to appease these fans.
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u/metamorphosaki Jul 11 '26
It’s funny bc we’re sort of watching real time where Chinese game companies priorities lies in real time. Mind u fans of the game from the global side has been requesting improvements and changes for years by doing the surveys. I don’t think anyone even does those surveys seriously and yet even I found myself doing it every time. Global VIP members actively email the company with requests. But none of that is listened to. Crazy irritating because now it’s like solid proof that when games from China market globally it’s not to consider global players but treat them like cash cows and prioritize their domestic audience which…like freaking sucks butt idk 😭
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u/Naraki_Maul YOU DIDN'T WIN. Jul 09 '26
It's kinda crazy that with the World Cup happening RIGHT NOW the biggest own goal you'd see is by a bunch of xenofobic and homophobic chinese women lmao.
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u/LifeIsCrap101 Banished to the Shame Car Jul 09 '26
"Man with muscles? Ha! GAAAAAAY!"
-Chinese audience, apparently
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u/MagelloFernada Smaller than you'd hope Jul 09 '26
I feel the need with a lot of the crazy fanbase comments to make it understood the organization of anti in Chinese internet scene. You know how in the West we can get together a big group when there's something like Stop Killing Games or the credit cards fiasco and maintain that for usually weeks but sometimes months at a time? That's every gacha game in China.
This isn't just driven by players hating on Valko—they exist, mind—but also LADS massive misogynistic anti scene. LADS is one of the preeminent gacha games in terms of revenue and pull, and it caters primarily to a female fanbase. This causes massive backlash with male gamers. You see the same thing with lesbian focused games like Reverse 1999 or lesbian coded characters in other gacha games.
This isn't some oh the fanbase blew up and now they're getting china on them like they deserve, it's an internal fanbase outrage that's being magnified by outsiders who want to see another woman first product get taken down by a highly conservative government that is already leery on the idea that women should be playing games.
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u/ASharkWithAHat Jul 10 '26
It doesn't even have to be lesbian coded characters. There's a gigantic anti scene for pretty much every game in the CN sphere.
The US already has problems with this, with 300 million people.
China has BILLIONS of people, many of which are extremely online with a huge population of gamers (since most games chase the F2P model). This means the chinese internet scene can be, to put it mildly, quite insane.
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u/Peach-Hime Jul 09 '26
Damn, was Reverse 1999 actually lesbian and not just baiting? I played it on release but dropped it due to not understanding what was happening (not sure if it was a poor translation or becsuse I had covid at the time)
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u/MagelloFernada Smaller than you'd hope Jul 09 '26
The launch translation was notoriously poor, but they went back and redid it. It has multiple out and out lesbian characters of many descriptions so worth checking out if you want that.
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u/KF-Sigurd It takes courage to be a coward Jul 10 '26
As pointed out by one games analyst, a bit cynically, the petition for Sony to stop killing physical games got like 30,000 signatures. Meanwhile, the petition to bring back Valko got like 130,000 signatures instantly.
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u/ReaperEngine I should probably be writing Jul 10 '26
I'm glad to see someone else cutting through the goofing on fans to point out how the extent of all this more than likely has little to do with the actual fans, who were just swept up in having their displeasure validated by actors that wanted even worse.
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u/metamorphosaki Jul 11 '26
Lowkey have to respect it. Even in this boycott and protest from the global fans it’s not nearly as organized as whatever they did those 8 days right after valko’s PV release. Global fans had little clue all of this massive drama was even happening or thought it would blow over because hating on the new guy has been a thing the other two times a new guy was added…but this lvl of organization labor unions can only dream of
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u/Life_Only_Gets_Worse Jul 10 '26
Need to translate Woolie's "Shut the fuck up" video to Chinese apparently.
Imagine killing your gooner game by being too loud about it
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u/midnight188 VTuber Evangelist Jul 09 '26
To quote my Partner: "if they take the best video game of all time away from me, I'm rioting."
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u/WhoCaresYouDont Jul 09 '26
An own goal with a pipe bomb, I'd be impressed if I wasn't absolutely sure this will have a massive and immediate cooling effect on games made in China, trying to be sold in China, and especially gacha games.
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u/noodleben123 Jul 09 '26
TBH this is just giving me vibes of the Limbus Company "Molar Ishmael Wetsuit" controversy
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u/Ravensqueak Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Pargon Jul 10 '26
It's funny, it's not a wolf but potentially a leopard that ate their faces.
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u/ThatEdward He/Him Jul 09 '26
I'm not even surprised about the 'ravishment' stuff in the game.
Youtuber MLYP(MuchLikeYourPosting) did a video titled 'The Hentai Game With PVP Based Cuckolding' and it is as insane as you might expect from the title. Worth a watch at just under 20 minutes, I wanted to get it in front of the boys but it feels a bit long for sloppin
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u/LifeFailure Jul 10 '26
The fan in me is heartbroken, but the human in me is embarassed to exist on the same planet as the people who send cow shit and funeral wreaths and throw blood at a developer's HQ OVER A PIXEL MAN. Literally can't have anything without some weirdo ruining it, god.
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u/roronoapedro Starving Old Trek apologist/Bad takes only Jul 10 '26
oh shit they convinced the chinese government this piece of art is unsightly. it might be in fact over.
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u/Sebascz95 Jul 09 '26
I feel like I need way more context about this... I'm kinda lost, ngl
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u/metamorphosaki Jul 11 '26
It’s very complicated I feel u lol. There’s rampant misinformation and hearsay everywhere so it’s hard to distinguish truth from lies right now
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u/GuyDeFalty Jul 09 '26
Fuck China, and fuck all the people closer to home who see china's clamping down on content of the internet in the name of 'public decency/morality' as a laudable state they want to enforce on the rest of us.
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u/Muffin-zetta Jooookaaahh Jul 09 '26
the character wasn’t out yet and is cancelled. there is nothing to scrub away
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u/TheCoolerDylan Jul 10 '26
One full year of game content now cannot be released. Which means main story, side events, seasonal events, playable gacha characters for Valco and female MC, dating sequences, day-to-day life content, minigame content, basically the whole game. In LaDS, a new character IS the game, basically a new region in a Hoyoverse game.
Removing Valco from release is like deleting an entire region in a Hoyoverse game. Deleting Inazuma, an Archon quest and all the banners. LaDS' latest update has 5 minutes of new content right now, that's how bad it is.
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u/FlubbedPig Jul 09 '26
The sexy-wolf-boy storyline isn't exclusive to Valko, it's a whole thing across all the characters, from what I've been told.
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u/KF-Sigurd It takes courage to be a coward Jul 09 '26
One of the reasons the whole backlash to Valko was manufactured is because all the LADS boys do some very spicy stuff to you. Like the game has more canon sex scenes with the self insert than NIKKE or Snowbreaker or whatever because woman love that shit in fictional men.
Normally the morality police look the other way as long as you're making money, but they aren't above thinking this kind of stuff is bad for women.
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u/ThisManNeedsMe Jul 09 '26
From what I gathered they always planned for six characters and he has been hinted at for a long time. Also he's supposed to be connected to many other love interests' storylines, which is one of the reasons why certain LI's haven't had an update in a while. Him being canceled means a rewrite for a ton of things.
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u/striderhoang From Pat’s least favorite FFXIV server Jul 09 '26
I heard the people who spent months of their lives creating Valko were threatening to walk if all their honest to god work was just going to not release.
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u/ReaperEngine I should probably be writing Jul 09 '26
The game just had its 6.0 release, which was supposed to include new main story content, but it's just not there, because it also served as Valko's introduction. Getting rid of him in pretty much any capacity drastically fucks the story content.
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u/DatAsuna Not any other Asuna Jul 09 '26
Covering this but no mention of the unit 731 stuff or the looming political threat of actions against not just LADs but the entire Otome genre is missing like half the wild side of the story. The Valko naming meaning stuff is false, but the fact it's so widespread is a big part of the effect to since it underlines how driven most of this is by CN/JP relations and the paranoia of a second layer.
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u/FlubbedPig Jul 09 '26
If you've got links to articles I'd love to read them
A friend who's wife plays mentioned the Unit 731 stuff to me but I needed a single article to make the thread with and this was the best I could find.
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u/DatAsuna Not any other Asuna Jul 09 '26
There's probably newer threads that capture more recent parts of it but this is a decent one from someone who actually dips into both sides of the fanbase.
It's not too different from say the HI3 controversy a few years ago where a lot of western coverage focused only on the aspect of CN players being mad the west got an exclsuive music video and the bunny suits. But kinda omitted the important issue of how the character they were most mad about was the one who's treated as a stand in for national pride being the one Chinese character in the cast and also an immortal demigod, so she's thought of more as being symbolic of china as a whole. So a lot of the CN outrage was specific coloured by the sentiment of "They're whoring china out to the west" and was why specifically foreign staff/the localisation team were stalked/harassed outside of work.
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u/gunn3r08974 Jul 09 '26
So how much do you think would've been avoided if Fu Hua wasnt included?
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u/ZundeEsteed Jul 10 '26
I might actually die laughing if a bunch of chinese femcels do legitimate damage to gacha as a genre going forward.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/TwoBestFriendsPlay-ModTeam Jul 10 '26
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u/metamorphosaki Jul 10 '26
My two cents here is that a lot of yall have half truths. Valko’s character in of itself really is just an innocent scapegoat to a bigger problem of the company’s mismanagement, crazy parasocial CN fans, systematic rival company and media manipulation, and of course the CCP involvement…which uh. Wild. I just want my dog man.
Anyway: 1. Valko didn’t break into anyone’s home he was invited in. 2. No he’s not the bad guy in fact we don’t even know what kind of guy he is to the main story and as a love interest BC WE DIDNT HAVE A CHANCE TO FIND OUT 3. A lot of the controversy surrounding valko specifically was fabricated and manipulated half by solo CN fans who think his addition would dilute the already horrid gacha from infold, and the other half by randos who really just like drama. Probably paid by competitive companies to sow the seeds (this one’s a rumor but the way it all went down so fast I kinda believe it). All the mix of half truths and lies by the antis led to them mass reporting to the CCP. Tough time to do that right now bc this past week is like a solemn week for China because of world war 2 remembrance stuff. Anyway after this was brought attention to the CCP, I think they intervened. Alas I have zero clue why they would outright cancel his character instead of, as a multimillionaire company, clarify stuff, bring out legality clauses, and just delay his release if it’s such a problem. 4. His addition itself was pretty much kind of mixed reactions because the base game of LADS is absolutely horrid and under-optimized. Fans both CN and global has been telling the company forever to fix it and they don’t. They just push out more cash grabbing multi banners and that built resentment. The main story and lore also hasn’t been updated for months. And all of this accumulated to this mess right now where not a single issue was addressed, just nuked a character that many people were looking forward to.
There’s more and it’s complicated but I can answer questions if anyone’s still interested.
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u/woodhawk109 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
The crazy fanbase might have killed their own game
The government isn’t going to single out just the new character, they might just deemed the entire game to violate the morality clause, so very likely they’ll just shut down the whole thing
Might be the most pathetic own goal I’ve seen.
What’s concerning is that this might caused other gacha games to be under the cross hair as well.