So this game originally started with 3 love interests for the player. After a year, they added a 4th and then added a 5th later. These were characters that were mentioned and/or seen in the early chapters of the game's main story. This 6th love interest was always hinted at via the game's UI and some believed in him and some didn't think any more love interests would show up.
Well, he did and everyone's first impression was that they didn't like him. A good chunk of fans started to warm up to him after his second trailer going more in depth with him.
The Chinese side of the fandom, all girls, were extremely unhappy with his design. As some of the screenshots say, he was "too western", "for the men" and "too tan". The Chinese taste in men appear to be more pale, feminine, pretty boys, as you can see with the other characters. They hated his jaw, and apparently in China, a guy who is 'too muscular' belongs to the gay/yaoi/boy love genre since most of that genre has their men overly muscular and hairy. Granted, Valke, this new love interest, doesn't fit the 'bara' (what they call gay men in Japanese fiction. It means bear) archetype but at this point they're looking for any excuse to bash him.
The game has had several "gay scares" because the Chinese fandom is unhinged. The company that makes this game (Infold or Paper Games) has asked players to not make gay fanart of the love interests and have to assure the Chinese player base that the men are straight.
The "too tan" is kind of a retarded take but it is well known the Chinese are pretty racist against anyone with darker skin than them. Several Chinese fans have called Valke a 'nigger'. Which is ridiculous as you see he hardly qualifies as tan. z
They tried bringing up other reasons, like Valke appearing on the player character's balcony and coming inside of her home. However, all 5 other love interests have done something or are just as problematic so its a show of a fake morality cry to get their way.
They're also upset Valke is a CEO of a company that is linked to an evil company in the main story.
The reason why the CCP may be getting involved is due to some shit they made up. Those who are into WW2 understand that the Japanese did some pretty horrific stuff to Chinese people and China is extremely sensitive about that. Quick context, there is a section in the game called "The World Underground" which are little short stories you can read that are related to the love interests and the lore of the in-game universe. Sometimes they're vague, sometimes you can connect the dots easily.
Back in April of this year, they updated that section of the game with new stories. One of them is about the cousin of one of the original 3 love interests getting tricked into letting himself get experimented on pretty horrifically. He was called "subject" or "unit" "731".
WW2 and Unit 731 should spell it out for you, but just for those who don't know, Unit 731 was the Japanese unit who performed horrible human experimentation on Chinese citizens.
We're not sure how or where the connection of this number and the new love interest began but some retarded Chinese girl figured they could use this to their advantage in getting their way and claim that Valke is connected to Unit 731 and started questioning Infold's politics. The CCP, as you may know, takes that stuff pretty seriously. This comment, despite it being objectively false spread like wildfire and became weaponized by the angry mob of Chinese foids and possibly caught the CCP's attention.
The CCP's involvement is still not completely confirmed as of writing this, but its likely true due to a few factors:
The CEO of Infold is confirmed to be in Beijing (apparently he doesn't reside there normally and never gets involved with his company's games much) and there is talk that the CEO of another upcoming otome (girl's game basically. Pronounced 'oh-toe-may' if you care) game's CEO was called there as well.
Apparently otome games are already walking a thin line in China as they believe that they contribute to women not finding a real man and making babies.
The more sane complaints are that introducing a 6th love interest pushes back the stories of the 4th and 5th love interest further back. To explain, Infold very rarely updates their main story. They focus more on the gacha scenarios, naturally. They update the main story maybe twice a year and since the release of the 5th love interest, they set up a formula where you get two-four chapters each main story update and one or two chapters focus only around the player character with a designated love interest. So two love interests get focused on in the main story at a time each update. The next main story update would focus on the 4th and 5th love interests who are already behind on content as they were added at least a year after the game originally launched. (Which is a no brainer but apparently they want more focus on those two so they can catch up to the original 3 love interests. But if they did, they would complain that they would have no time to save up for the banners and all that crap. This fandom is a retarded mess.) Both the Chinese players and Global players shared this sentiment.
Infold responded saying "Don't worry, the main story with the 4th and 5th love interest is coming up soon after Valke's introduction, trust. Also Valke is important to the main story so we're keeping him."
That's when the Chinese foids got even more angry and started sending cow dung, funeral wreaths, curse banners and ritual items to the Infold company building and started a mass online campaign that made the game's social media accounts lose a million followers.
That's when Infold folded and said, "Fine Valke is cancelled and we won't be adding any new love interests to the game ever again. Look forward to the main story update in September-October".
Turns out this also was a very unpopular decision because there are a chunk of Chinese fans who were looking forward to Valke's addition and a huge margin of Global players were looking forward to him as well. There was a small group of Global players who were mad about Valke and didn't want him because he apparently "stole" scenes from other love interests. (example, the 4th love interest will bite the player's hand in an interaction and the trailers had shown Valke doing it as well and apparently that's just stealing)
So now the Global side is fighting to add Valke back and are boycotting the game while Chinese foids who are bypassing the great Chinese firewall are mocking Global players on twitter/X and a lot of wahman are starting to realize just how nasty these Chinese fandoms truly are. They're claiming only Chinese fans get a say in it and Global players are broke since the game gets most of its revenue from them.
Ignoring the fact that the in-game purchase items are extremely cheap compared to global prices, the merch runs and irl events are locked to China and using a proxy service to get merchandise from them is extremely expensive.
Love and Deepspace also has a VIP program where if you spend X amount of money, you get an exclusive merch package sent from the company along with handwritten letters from the love interests. For a Global player to reach VIP status, they have to spend around $7,000 USD. (Not all at once, just for as a total for how much they spend on their account). While Chinese players only have to spend $600 USD.
But that's neither here nor there.
Petitions are being made, boycotts are being made, global players are now looking to report Chinese twitter/X users to the CCP for using VPNs to bypass the firewall. People are worried the main story is going to be chopped since now they have to erase Valke and his impact on the story so suddenly. Official subreddits, discord servers and the like are censoring any mention of Valke.
The team that designed Valke and worked on his story are heartbroken, a whole writing team quit Infold because of this.
The entire Infold/Paper Games company is at risk now. (They also own the Love Nikki series)
Leftist really thought the CCP could be 'reasonable'.
