Imagine that you are a fan of Resident Evil and the trailer for Resident Evil Requiem was just announced. Leon Kennedy being back is huge for you, but the announcement of new protagonist Grace Ashcroft is also exciting. You see some fans hate Grace’s announcement but you dismiss it as just that: hate and not the majority of opinions. You mark your calendar for Requiem’s release and you are excited.

Not even a week later, you wake up to an announcement from Capcom on Twitter. They post that based on fan feedback, Grace Ashcroft will be removed from Requiem and the game is cancelled. You read further and they say that from now on, there will be no more Resident Evil games. You are in disbelief. How could they just cancel the game and remove the protagonist because of that? This doesn’t feel real.

For fans of the game Love and Deepspace, that insane scenario has been real for over three months now.

On June 30, Chinese company Infold Games, the makers of Love and Deepspace. announced the cancellation of Valko, a new character added to the game, due to severe backlash from antis. This update also had a major story update that fans have also been waiting for months. From that day onward, fans of the game across the world have been boycotting the game in order to bring the character back. But this boycott isn’t just to put a character in a game. It’s a movement supporting creative freedom, condemning online hatred, and bringing community and culture across the world.

This article will discuss the leadup to the boycott, what fans have done for the boycott, Infold’s recent scandal involving poisonous drinks, and how you can join the defense to fight for creator freedom in games.

How Did We Get Here?

Love and Deepspace is a 3D otome gacha game released on January 18, 2024, the very first of its kind. In it, you play as a Deepspace Hunter (that you customize) fighting against monsters called Wanderers who are attacking Linkon City. Along this journey, you meet five main love interests. The first three you meet are Xavier, fellow Deepspace hunter; Zayne, a doctor; and Rafayel, an artist. These three were the only love interests in the game when it was first released. Sylus, mafia boss, and Caleb, childhood friend, were added into the game on July 15, 2024 and January 22, 2025 respectively, alongside an update to the main story.

Outside of hunting monsters, you bond with your love interests and collect memories and scenes with your character together using in game currency. The game exploded in popularity, reaching 50 million players worldwide by 2025. And it exploded not just because it was the best and only 3D otome game on the market, but because of one simple reason:

The game became a part of players lives.

The development team added a variety of features that invited you to login to the game to help you better yourself. For example, there was Remind Me, where you can ask your favorite love interest to remind you of something you need to do that day or in the future. There was a quality time feature, which played ambient sounds while you worked out, studied, or slept with your love interest cheering you on. Your love interest would text you and call you throughout the day and each individually wished you happy birthday. Players felt loved, appreciated, and seen, not just by the love interests, but by Infold Games themselves

Infold would use their revenue to help players with other skills. For Sylus’s birthday, Infold would partner with the China Martial Arts Development Committee to hold an online self defense workshop. Rafayel’s and Caleb’s birthdays had an art and mental health workshops for their birthdays as well. For many, many players, this wasn’t just a dating sim. This game helped them improve their lives and they wanted to support the development team that worked hard on this content. However, as time went on, support would fade and some players would move on.

Before the boycott started, there was rising discontent in the community due to lack of main story updates. At the time of writing, the most recent main story update was Death and Rebirth, released on May 19, 2025. To put this into perspective, Genshin Impact, an extremely popular game in the same gacha sphere, releases version updates once every six weeks or 42 days, with new playable characters, stories, and events to earn in game currency.

Additionally, there were a multitude of other issues with the game, including, but not limited to;

• Bugs in the game that made MCs with darker skin tone look either weirdly shadowed or invisible in cutscenes.
• Lack of permanent ways to gain in game currency
• Stark difference in free content between Sylus and Caleb and the original three love interests
• Lack of new combat trials
• Releasing cards and stories that did not connect to the main story
• Game was very buggy in general

As of November 2025 when these issues were prominent, Love and Deepspace was making $50 million a month, so none of these issues were a financial concern. To fans of the game, this felt like ignoring the players at best and laziness at worst, so frustration grew. The frustration would reach a breaking point with Valko’s announcement and promotions, and he became the target of wrath that shouldn’t have been directed at him.

The Moon Rises and Falls

On June 22, the first trailer for Valko, the sixth love interest for Love and Deepspace, was released along with the 6.0 main story update. There were a lot of fans in support for Valko, expressing excitement for his release and the main story that would be coming with said release, similar to Sylus and Caleb.

Unfortunately, a very loud minority of Chinese “players” would start mass reporting the game to consumer protection services and sending items such as funeral wreaths and cow poop (yes, really. I wish I was making that up) to Infold’s office. The reports claimed that Valko’s addition to the game threatened women’s safety by “breaking into” the main characters home in his trailer (which was false) and was a character against Chinese culture. This specific claim came from the number 731 and the phrase “Don’t bathe in the pot.” 731 refers to the Japanese unit of the same number who committed human experiments on Chinese and prisoners from other countries and “bathing in a pot” refers to a real case in 2024 where a Chinese man murdered his wife by pouring hot noodle soup on her and dragging her into a pot of boiling water. Of course, the use of these numbers and that phrase were coincidences, but Chinese “players” used it frame Valko as a character that went against moral values and who Infold’s “main consumers” really were.

Infold would release a statement clarifying those rumors and additional rumors in its marketing, but it announced Valko would still be added to the game and promised legal action against those who were spreading rumors.

However, the damage was done. The next day, many Chinese and state affiliated news outlets reported the rising controversy. They raised allegations that Love and Deepspace romanticized violence using a romantic narrative and how this breaches consumer trust and supports violent behaviors.

Faced with this backlash from antis and from its own government, the day after Infold promised Valko would stay in the game, the company would release a statement cancelling his release and the 6.0 story content that was promised. The statement would also promise that no more love interests would be added to the game in the future, ruining the long-term content plan for Love and Deepspace in the future. It was a devastating day for any fan of the game. The updates they were promised were gone.

However, fans from China and across the world weren’t going to give up so easily.

The Pack Rallies to Protect Their Alpha

As immediate as the next day, plans were already in the works to organize a movement. The hashtags #BringValkoBack, #WeWantValko, and #LADSIS6 were created and spread. People stopped spending money and logging in. Billboards were being organized and paid for. Websites dedicated to Valko’s return were being made and everyone from around the world gathered together to boycott and gather. Instead of sending cow poop and bringing wrath down on the company, this boycott had a different message:

Valko represents kindness and love.

The following actions were all done in Valko’s name:

• Billboards calling for Valko’s return were displayed all across the world, including Times Square in New York and Colgone Airport in Germany during Gamescom, led by the many Chinese fans of the game
• Funds have been gathered to donate money in Valko’s name. As of time of writing, over $100,000 total has been donated across various charities, including wolf conservation efforts and flood relief
• Letters for Valko was created for fans to write letters to PaperGames expressing their love for Valko and thanking the developers and creative team for bringing him to life. They also cleared up all of the rumors taken out of context from Valko’s promotional material
• Petitions for Valko on IPetitions and Change.org are up to 250,000 and 98,000 signatures respectively

Streamers and voice actors have also expressed their support of the boycott. This includes:

• Caseoh (Streamer, 11.1 million subscribers)
• Vivi Gaming (Streamer, 94.1K subscribers)
• Ironmouse (Streamer and Vtuber, 1.87M subscribers)
• Mujin (Streamer, 765K subscribers)
• BranOnline (Streamer, 419K subscribers)
• Alejandro Saab/CyYu (VTuber, voice actor for Cyno in Genshin Impact, Deadpool in Marvel Rivals, and Jing Yuan in Honkai: Star Rail)
• CDawgVA (Streamer, voice actor for Rasmus in Omega Strikers, Freud in Hellsing Ultimate Abridged, and host of the podcast Trash Taste)
• Chris Tergliafera (Voice actor for Capitano in Genshin Impact, Avdol in Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure, and Gundham Tanaka in the upcoming game Daganronpa 2×2)

The banner on the official Valko donation website demonstrates how different true fans of the game are from the “players” who cancelled Valko:

The cherry on top of this massive boycotting cake is how much revenue Infold has lost after this scandal. According to Gacha Revenue, in June 2026, Infold generated $38 million in revenue before Valko was cancelled. In July 2026, that number is dropped to $10 million in revenue. As of writing this article, September 2026 ended with Infold earning $19 million in revenue. Because of Valko and player boycott, the company lost $28 million in revenue. That’s numerical proof that this boycott was a success.

So, imagine you are Infold Games. “Players” of your game sent cow poop to your office. Meanwhile, a much louder group of real fans are doing good deeds and raising money using the character you cancelled. You are losing money because of this decision. If you were Infold Games, you would announce that Valko’s return and slowly but surely watch the money and players come back. Crisis averted!

Unfortunately, you are not Infold Games. Because if you were, you wouldn’t do something as short sighted as this next incident.

Drinking a Cup They Poisoned Themselves

On September 28, Infold posted drink recipes. It did not take long for fans to find out that the ingredients posted, specifically the Datura and Flame lily flowers used as garnish, were poisonous. And for the first two days for the post being live, there was no warning about the drinks being dangerous

Streamers quickly posted underneath the initial post and some made separate videos warning others about the drinks (even MoistCritikal himself commented on it, which shows you how crazy this whole thing has gotten). Two days later, after the community essentially doing their game, Infold would post this underneath the drinks:

That is barely a warning, so allow me to make it more clear:

All species of Datura flower are highly poisonous and can cause respiratory depression, arrhythmias, fever, delirium, hallucinations, psychosis, and death. Flame lilies cause numbness in the mouth, throat, and tongue, followed by severe vomiting, bloody diarrhea, abdominal pain, multi-organ failure, and respiratory paralysis. If you ingest these flowers, you will die.

I found this information in a five second Google Search, so the incompetence is clearly on display with this post. Of course, the more people talking about this the better, as we don’t want people to die. But the poison drinks highlight a bigger problem:

Infold is choosing to communicate poorly and they are able to respond. They just won’t.

Before Valko’s cancellation, Infold promised better communication to their fan base.It has been over three months since Valko got taken down. Their revenue is in decline and if this keeps up, Love and Deepspace will end its service forever. They clearly know that and they are choosing the worst options possible. They are choosing to remain silent about Valko and their decline, which reflects in their content, and silence sends another message, a message that is the real reason I wanted to write this article:

We care more about toxic fans than the real ones.

Conclusion: Protecting Creative Freedom

When we look at Valko as players, we see a video game character, a series of pixels made for a game. But behind those pixels, are the game designers who made his model and combat animations, the writers who tied his story in with the other love interests, the voice actors for five languages that recorded his lines, the animators who created his trailers and in game cutscenes, and even the signers and producers who made his promotional song. In an interview, Infold revealed that it took two years for the development team to create each love interest. That means two years of hard work and planning were sent down the drain. And since Valko was part of the long term plans for the game, every other love interests stories are affected as well. Love and Deepspace is stuck in a standstill, thanks to a small group of toxic players who Infold decided to listen to over the opinions of the fans that actually mattered.

And I can’t accept that.

This is a dangerous precedent Infold is choosing to support with their silence. These toxic players are emboldened with the companies lack of support, inspiring other fans to do the same, and force companies and artists to change their plans. Creators could to be forced to not create, to not truly express themselves and make the story they want. That’s why I’m writing about Valko: to support the creatives in the industry who suffer because of the actions of players who only want to spread hate and companies who choose to bow instead of stand.

I implore you to send a letter to Valko, to the creatives who made the character that inspired so much hope and good, and sign the petitions if you want to support this movement.

I welcome you to the pack with open arms.

What do you think about Valko, the boycott, and the cocktail situation? Join the conversation on the Boss Rush Network  Facebook  and  Discord Server

Featured Image: Game8

Source: Infold Games

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Chandler Flowers is a writer for Boss Rush Network. Her favorite video games are Honkai:Star Rail, Metaphor: Refantazio, and Persona 5 Royal. You can find her on Reddit to talk all things RPG, superheroes, and creative writing.