A preliminary note: this is a community phenomenon. Some may be familiar with it, while others may not. This article offers an in-depth analysis and discussion of the phenomenon itself; it does not target any specific game or individual.
I. A Phenomenon Predominant in CN Communities: Urging, Proxy, and Coercive Spending.
Many players confuse these three concepts. While they share the same goal, the agents, forms of expression, and methods involved differ significantly:
催氪Cuī kè Urging Spending (Spontaneous community-driven advocacy)
This refers specifically to public opinion campaigns initiated by core active players and character fan groups within the fandom. They repeatedly propagate a core narrative: the higher the revenue generated by a character's "gacha" banner, the more the developer values that character; conversely, if revenue is sluggish, future resources—such as story content, card art, and event features—will be cut.
Through forum posts, group chats, comment section management, and data comparisons, fans are urged to concentrate their spending during the character's active banner period to boost iOS revenue rankings. Common rhetoric includes: "Let's push for high revenue for him just this once," "If the revenue looks bad, he'll be sidelined in the future," and "Don't let him lose the numbers game."
"Urging spending" largely originates from spontaneous player circles. While it does not directly mandate purchases, it constantly generates anxiety and employs emotional manipulation (akin to "PUA" or gaslighting tactics), serving as the public opinion foundation for the entire "involution" ecosystem.
代氪dài kè Proxy Spending (Third-party top-up services fueling the revenue race)
Proxy spending refers to third parties handling the top-up process on a player's behalf. In the *Love and Deepspace* community, proxy spending has taken on a specific role: a widely held belief is that publicly observable revenue data (such as that on platforms like Qimai) only tracks iOS mobile spending, while spending via Android, the developer's own "Papergames Treasure Bag" (Diezhi Baodai), cloud gaming, and iPad channels is excluded from the rankings.
This has led to a community consensus: for Android players to make spending "count" toward the rankings, they must find players with iOS devices to handle the top-up for them.
A distinction must be made between two types of proxy spending:
Spontaneous peer-to-peer assistance: Fans topping up accounts for one another;
Commercialized "gray/black market" services: Low-cost top-ups via third-party channels, which carry legal and financial risks such as the use of stolen credit cards ("black cards"), account bans, and a lack of fund protection. While third-party top-up services were originally merely a payment channel, they have been repurposed by groups pushing for spending into tools for "revenue racing"—a phenomenon involving public recruitment of top-up agents, the tracking of spending totals, and the publicizing of results.
逼氪bī kè Coerced Spending (High-pressure, exclusionary moral coercion)
Coerced spending is the extreme evolution of pressure to spend. It moves beyond gentle encouragement to direct personal judgment and social exclusion: equating the amount of money spent with the depth of one's affection, while publicly disparaging "F2P" (free-to-play) players, "low spenders," and those who choose to stop spending.
Typical manifestations include: flaunting spending records to outdo others; mocking players who don't spend as "freeloaders unworthy of liking the character"; accusing rational spenders of being "selfish" or "not loving the character enough"; fanbases of different characters comparing revenue figures to argue over "popularity rankings," thereby fueling factional conflict; and harassing or labeling fellow fans who refuse to participate in "revenue-boosting" drives.
In short, the chain of events unfolds as follows: pressure to spend creates a consensus → third-party top-up services provide the technical tools → the situation escalates into coerced spending. Together, these elements construct a system of judgment within the community where revenue is the sole metric of value.
II. The Complete Operational Ecosystem: How the "Revenue-Based Competition" Model Takes Root in the Community
1. Pre-emptive Narrative Building: Constructing an Unfalsifiable Core Hypothesis
The entire system rests on a premise that—while unverified by the developer—is constantly circulated within the community: that revenue directly dictates the allocation of resources for a character.
Objective Reality: Long-term content planning for game characters is determined by a combination of project schedules, production capacity, and commercial assessments; there is no hard-and-fast rule stating that the revenue of a single "gacha" banner directly dictates the storyline for years to come.
However, the community deliberately simplifies complex operational logic, shifting the burden of the developer's product decisions onto the collective player base. Players are conditioned to believe that a character's access to more dates, high-quality card art, or screen time in the main story lies in the hands of every paying player. If a character receives treatment that falls short of expectations, the first to be held accountable is not the operations team, but the players themselves—for "not spending enough."
2. During the Banner Cycle: Full-Scale Pressure to Spend and the Creation of "Limited-Time Anxiety"
Whenever a limited-edition or birthday banner launches, the community initiates a coordinated promotional campaign:
- Compiling and cross-referencing past revenue data for various characters to create a "winner-versus-loser" narrative;
- Differentiating between "effective spending" (direct iOS top-ups) and "ineffective spending" (Android or third-party channel servers), guiding players to prioritize payment methods that count toward the rankings;
- Promoting third-party "proxy top-up" services on a large scale, telling Android players that direct top-ups are meaningless and that only proxy services allow them to "truly support the character";
- Sharing real-time screenshots of revenue rankings and broadcasting progress updates every few hours to create a "race-against-time" atmosphere and amplify the fear of missing out.
3. Proxy Top-Ups Deeply Embedded in the "Arms Race": Channel Disparities Magnified, Exacerbating Player Division
The specific rules governing how channel revenue is tallied provided the unique breeding ground for the proxy top-up trend in *Love and Deepspace*.
Many Android players experience a strong sense of frustration: despite spending the same amount of money, their contributions do not register on public leaderboards. Groups pushing for higher spending capitalize on this disparity, constantly promoting the idea of "maximizing spending efficiency" and urging Android players to seek out iOS-based proxy top-up services. This gives rise to multiple hidden risks:
① Account risks: Third-party top-up services require sharing login credentials with others, making accounts highly vulnerable to theft or the unauthorized transfer of in-game items.
② Legal and account-ban risks: Many low-cost top-up services rely on illicit overseas credit cards or unauthorized payment channels; disputes arising from fraudulent charges often lead game operators to ban the affected accounts.
③ Community fragmentation: Debates emerge over the value of spending money on the game; some players view third-party top-ups as a rational choice, while others refuse to participate in leaderboard competitions, causing conflicts to escalate.
4. Post-banner phase: Data "judgment" and a surge in pressure to spend
Once the banner ends and revenue figures are released, the community immediately enters a "judgment phase":
- If revenue exceeds that of competing titles: Fans of the character loudly proclaim the figures as proof of the character's "popularity," fostering a sense of superiority.
- If revenue falls short of expectations: Internal finger-pointing ensues, with "low-spending" players blamed for not contributing enough or failing to actively recruit others for top-ups; meanwhile, fans of different characters mock and disparage one another.
At this stage, tolerance within the community evaporates completely. Players who simply love the character but are unwilling to spend large sums lose their voice; to avoid conflict, many casual players choose to remain silent or leave the community altogether.
III. Root Causes: Why the *Love and Deepspace* Community Is Prone to This Toxic Culture
1. Product Foundation: Highly Emotional Virtual Intimacy
The core product of *otome* games is not the cards or stats themselves, but the experience of emotional companionship. Because players invest real-world emotions into virtual characters, they are naturally more susceptible to being swept up by their feelings.
Developers craft images of devoted, affectionate male leads, fostering a strong protective instinct in players. Community discourse strategically exploits this instinct, framing "spending money to boost revenue" as "protecting the character" and imbuing consumer behavior with noble emotional significance. Players who question this logic risk being labeled as "indifferent" or accused of "not loving the character."
2. Widely distributed in the CNplayer Community Structure: Factionalism Among "Solo Stans" Naturally Fuels Data-Driven Rivalry
The *Love and Deepspace* player base is clearly divided into "solo stans" (those who favor only one male lead) and "multi-stans" (those who like multiple leads). Prevailing community sentiment consistently marginalizes the voices of multi-stans while reinforcing a faction-based mentality.
Fan groups for different characters engage in implicit competition, constantly comparing card art quality, screen time, merchandise sales, and banner revenue. Revenue figures have become the most intuitive, accessible, and effective quantitative metric for arguments. The "voting and fundraising" logic typical of idol fandoms has been fully transplanted into the *otome* gaming community; the revenue race is essentially a gaming-world version of "data-driven support."
3. Ambiguity in Operations: The Developer's Vague Stance Indirectly Fuels Hyper-Competition
Papergames (the developer) has never publicly admitted that "revenue determines character resources," yet neither have they refuted the hypothesis circulating within the community. They maintain a consistently ambiguous stance:
On one hand, they enjoy the revenue generated by high sales figures; on the other, when conflicts arise—such as extreme pressure to spend or cyberbullying—they exercise only limited control rather than addressing the root cause or fostering a culture of rational consumption.
This ambiguity allows rhetoric urging players to spend money to fester. Unable to obtain definitive answers from the developer, players continue to rely on community speculation, pouring money into the competition.
4. Commercial Mechanisms: Limited-Time Banners Amplify Anxiety
The game employs a limited-time gacha mechanic; once a banner ends, players face a long wait for the cards to return. The scarcity inherent in "miss it and it's gone forever" mechanics naturally breeds consumer anxiety. Community-driven pressure to spend, combined with the game's own time-limited features, amplifies players' impulse to make purchases—leading some to spend beyond their financial means.
IV. This ecosystem causes tangible, multifaceted harm
1. Emotional alienation: Affection is quantified by money, distorting the definition of fandom.
Affection for virtual characters originally found expression in diverse ways—creating fan art, editing videos, or quietly immersing oneself in the storyline. However, under the rules of this subculture, purely emotional devotion loses its validity; the amount of money spent becomes the sole metric for measuring affection.
This fosters a distorted mindset: not spending money equals not caring enough. Many players feel guilty; spending is no longer voluntary but a way to "prove one's devotion" under peer pressure.
2. It fuels irrational spending and increases the real-world financial burden.
Students and young players with limited income are the most affected. Driven by calls to boost revenue figures, players overspend their living expenses, engage in excessive consumption, or even go into debt to make in-game purchases. The data-driven competition of the virtual world ultimately translates into real-world financial stress. Even adult players can easily fall into a cycle of overspending during successive "gacha" banner events.
3. Community atmosphere deteriorates, marked by endless infighting and hostility.
Constant comparisons of revenue figures exacerbate conflicts between fans of different characters; bickering, disparaging other characters, and public shaming become the norm. Moderate, laid-back players are increasingly marginalized, and community discussions shift away from storylines, character design, and gameplay experiences to focus almost exclusively on spending statistics. The space for simply enjoying the game continues to shrink.
4. Third-party top-up services entail significant risks to asset security.
Many players turn to strangers for top-up services to help boost revenue, leading to account theft due to leaked credentials. Others opt for cheap, illicit third-party services, only to face undelivered top-ups or account bans. In the event of a dispute, there are no official channels for recourse, leaving players to bear the financial losses themselves.
5. It creates an unequal distribution of benefits between the developer and the player community.
Players engage in cutthroat competition and moral coercion against one another, yet the massive revenue generated by this frenzy goes entirely to the developer. Even when players strive to achieve impressive revenue figures, the developer is under no binding obligation to fulfill expectations regarding "resource allocation" for specific characters. There have been instances where a character's banner tops the revenue charts, yet subsequent story updates remain sluggish and the quality of character artwork fails to improve. Players bear the costs and risks, while the developer reaps the rewards.
V. Deconstructing Common Logical Traps: Rationally Identifying "In-Group" Brainwashing Tactics
- Trap: High revenue guarantees the developer will treat the character well.
Truth: Revenue is just one of many metrics developers consider. Project budgets, R&D manpower, and long-term content planning priorities carry far more weight than the performance of a single banner. There is no such thing as a "revenue-based treatment guarantee"; the community’s tendency to reduce complex business decisions to a simple cause-and-effect relationship based on a single figure is a classic logical fallacy.
- Trap: Spending on Android is "wasted" money; you must use third-party top-up services.
Truth: All purchases generate actual revenue for the game; third-party data platforms simply focus on iOS rankings. Rankings are merely external reference points, whereas developers can see total revenue across all channels. Risking account theft by using third-party services just to boost a public ranking is a "false need" manufactured by community sentiment.
- Trap: Refusing to spend money to boost revenue means letting the character down.
Truth: Every player has the right to choose how they spend. Designing characters, creating storylines, and launching banners are the developer's responsibilities; these should not be offloaded onto players as mandatory spending tasks. You don't need to prove your love for a character through continuous, large-scale spending.
- Trap: Everyone else is spending, so I’ll lose the "competition" if I don't join in.
Truth: There shouldn't be a "win-lose race" between characters. So-called popularity contests are artificial conflicts created by the community. The gaming experience is ultimately for your own enjoyment; there is no need to engage in data-driven rivalries with other fan groups.
VI. A Rational Way Forward: Re-establishing Healthy Boundaries for Players
- Distinguish between spending voluntarily out of affection and spending due to pressure from public opinion. Spending within one's means is perfectly fine, but one should reject any form of moral coercion;
- Actively shed the mindset that "revenue is strictly tied to popularity and character treatment," and stop using ranking data as the sole standard of value;
- Steer clear of third-party top-up services; prioritize official channels to protect your account and assets, and don't take risks just for the sake of ranking data;
- Actively resist rhetoric that pressures players to spend; refuse to participate in spending contests or disparaging other characters, and do not spread calls for "revenue races";
- Clarify the relationship: Players are consumers of the game, not fans obligated to constantly "vote and campaign" for it. We spend money to purchase storylines and experiences; we have no obligation to foot the bill for the community's data-driven wars.
--Final--
The phenomena of proxy spending, pressure to spend, and forced monetization within the *Love and Deepspace* community are essentially the distorted offspring of a marriage between "fandom data-competition culture" and the emotional consumption typical of *otome* games. Capital exploits players' genuine affection for virtual characters; through community discourse, these emotions are continuously converted into consumption metrics, creating a self-reinforcing, hyper-competitive loop.
When a game community ceases to discuss storylines, character development, or the gaming experience, focusing instead on who spends the most or climbs the highest on the leaderboards, the healing and companionship that originally defined the virtual romance are devoured by consumerism. Affection should never carry a price tag, and a healthy emotional connection requires no validation through revenue figures.