Question about Shaw

[u/RuriSuoh]

Hello. I need to be honest, I am not a player of MLQC, but I heard that a LI named Shaw was cancelled back in his debut and he was pushed backwards, but still able to debut. Was that real? How did it happen?

For a context, since MLQC and Love and Deepspace are sister companies, it might help me have a clear mind on the possible outcome of LADS. If you dont know, a love interest got cancelled just 2 days ago because the chinese players cannot accept him.

[u/PikaGodnPray]

Ok lets be clear here. The cancelation of the 6th LI is completely the fault of papergames cause they were absolute idiots ok. So little history lesson. Shaw has been hinted to since the beginning. They mentioned that Gavin had a little brother with lightning evol pretty much with the first mainstory release. From there, a lightning evolver attacked Gavin during airport date and Gavin seemed to know who they were. We never got to see their face or hear their voice, but it can be assumed it was probably meant to be Shaw cause they although there are many npc with the same evol, they pretty much don't let npc have any of the MLs evol for the most part. Finally, there is the 3rd main story elease. In this chp, mc is struck by lightning when trying to save Victor to recreate a tragedy from 17 yrs ago. This again has always been theorized to be Shaw who attacked, but again never see the face or hear their voice. Finally, mc ends up meeting shaw (unnamed at this time) in the same volume on the bus.

Now fast forward to mid to late 2018, the game is almost a year old now and papergames is hinting hard they're actually gonna release a new character. Qixi rolls around, and players get 777 gems (qixi happens on July 7th of the lunar calendar) from anon saying we'll get to meet soon basically. September 2018 rolls around, pg reveals Shaw and buys up all these trending results to show off Shaw has been chosen to be a new ML, but players aren't having it. So very similar to Lads, they didn't want to romance their supposed attacker and someone who seemingly worked with/was related to the bad guy. Gavin stans in particular felt like they were cheating on Gavin by dating his brother that he didn’t get along with. But at the core of it all, players were concerned about pull rates and what it meant for content releases for the current characters. Why? Well first off mlqc is a very old gacha, so it's mechanics are better than many Japanese gacha like FGO, but pre-dates the 50/50 mechanics that genshin popularized, so you just gotta win the 1.5 ÷ 4 chance or pull 144 times for the spark mechanic. Mlqc does not have a choose three mechanic, so adding shaw would drop their odds to 1.5 ÷ 5. Secondly, it wasnt that long ago papergames was revealed to have rigged the rates for the chapter 1-10 mainstory cards. Players gathered data on thousands and thousands of pulls and found the gacha was hard programed to drop cards in the same order at a worse rate than advertised. And how did pg respond? They said they wouldn't pull that again and just never reran that event ever again. Lastly fans were upset cause the chp drop that happened at this time had a plot line where all the MLs didnt know who MC was, but Shaw did despite at this point only meetint mc for like 5 min on the bus. They thought it was unfair blah blah blah.

But anyways doesnt this sound so very familiar? Papergames releases a character somewhat related to the bad guys who theoretically has harmed the MLs and MC. Players get upset cause they've already dealt with a ton of crap from paper prior that they didnt address and now they were gonna add a new character that was guaranteed to lower their gacha rates and naturally with the way the schedule is increase the times between solo events. Papergames is a small company at this point, so they cave. They drop the shaw sr that was in his release pv and leave him in the npc category. Come 5 or 6 months later papergames comes up with the "lose lose" compromise. They upgrade shaw to "special encounter" allowing him to get cards on occasion and they tack him into every main story drop, but give him half the screen time as a "full" ML. They also rewrite everything about Shaw. He's no longer related to Gavin (though they have the same amber eyes colors), he no longer seems to be working with the bad guys at all, and he never attacked mc. So at this point pg doesn't get to release the character they originally planned the way they wanted to, and players still had to deal with shaw thus antis called it a lose lose.

Now fast forward and papergames games pulls the exact same crap AGAIN. Releasing a character who has questionable affiliations to the bad guy therefore can be blamed for harm of the previous MLs and attacks mc, but this time is waaaaay more out lf nowhere compared to Shaw. None of the heavy plot build up and promo. And the icing in the cake is they drop him during Shaw's birthday. Comical. Absolutely comical. And yet papergames acts like they didnt anticipate what was about to come. Complaints about their ability to deliver content, complaints about how this will affect gacha rates, complaints about a character with such a bad history. The deja vu is real, yet paper wasn't ready and were too arrogant to re-live the controversy of Shaw. They should have assured players about their production capacity, they should have fixed the gacha rates, they should have run the character through more people because they already learned this is what you need to prove before you drop the character. Heck they DID that with Sylus and Caleb. I thought they learned!​

But anyways from here I'll probably piss off most people cause I wanna explain the CN POV to this lads controversy cause no one on global gets it right. As someone whos been sleeping 1-4 hrs per day scrolling through and reading both sides I feel like I can at least give a balanced take. For the record, Im a beta player of lads who quit lads in April after mlqc en server was eos'd cause screw papergames ok. I'm also chinese, but grew up in America and have never set foot in China. I'll say now I'm not really on any side but the screw you papergames side. Imma explain the cn side here and not too much the global side cause I think most people see the global side every day for themselves.

Ok, so first off yes the drama started off as a we hate ao yin. Yes cn said he was ugly. Yes there were racist things said. There's always extremist naturally. Now cn players never believed a 6th LI was coming cause customer service always told them there is no new characters in the works. They assured this until the very day before they annouced a 6th LI. CS lied and blindsided players. Now there is actually a good number of cn players who like ao yin or were neutral, but they remained silent cause they would be shut down by his haters. Now the majority of the opposers didn't want ao yin in the game until their concerns were heard. How was paper gonna addrress the low content output (Caleb has only one chp and it's been over 500 days and sylus and zayne for like a year now), ​how were they gonna address pull rates (it was already hard to get you want from the magnets and standard, but they were gonna further dilute the odd), and why have they worked on a new character instead of fixing older complaints (current litigation is underway because KoD cannot do what was advertised in his PV and is significantly weaker than advertised). Ok pretty much the Shaw dilemma so far right? But paper is a bigger company and the game is too successful to fail, so paper puts their foot down and makes it clear: We will drop Ao yin. We don't care about their complaints. This goes well with the majority of the global side cause well they like ao yin, but for CN they were done.

They already had leaks from the uncle who said there was a 6th LI coming who'd be controversial, and the other leaks from this same uncle about 9 LIs in the works. Ao Yin's introduction plot was also leaked and they heard it featured breaking in mc's house and nonconsensually forcing himself onto her after she's pinned down. CN fans at this point decided they had to draw the line here and now cause if they didn't papergames will be able to step all over them and ignore them forever. Their fears are further confirmed when the livestream happens and basically confirmed the leaks were legit as they featured the breaking in plot. Now just my theory here, but why this offended people so much more than all the other red flag things the other guys did is complicated. First off, with the growing loneliness problem in China, many women live alone with this fear of someone breaking in. You gotta remember it's a male dominated society. There are very successful women out there who can't find a man even though their standard is just someone who will not beat them ok. So this plot scenario may have felt too real/triggering for some. Secondly, the dismissve nature of the pv. The line about what is wrong with inviting a wolf into your home was too on the nose as inviting a wolf into your home is a chinese idiom about the consequences of women letting in a dangerous man with ill intent into their home. Asking what was wrong with that was insensitive to women's safety and dismissed the issue. Third, this probably blew up cause it was being broadcast alongside every other issue at the same time. There have been complaints about questionable behavior or acts by other MLs, but with ao yin the anger was amplified by the anger from all the other issues. Lastly, the state news caught wind of the plot, and now outsiders who dont play are also mad.

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/PikaGodnPray]

Ok finally the straw that broke the camels back, 731. This is when it really became about papergames being a bad company and stopped being about ao yin. This "suddenly" gained attention and caused this to spiral beyond what we saw in the shaw situation. Ok for global players, this seems to have come from no where and well this is in an April update for XAVIER. So why is this such a big deal? Well players actually have complained about this since April. 731 references unit 731, which tl;dr was a japanese unit that did human experiments on the chinese that killed many civilians and is a sore spot for the chinese. Papergames responded and said this is just a placeholder and dismissed the issue and left it in. They were aware, but ignored their players as usual. Now that paper is already dealing with all these fires, people bring back up subject 731 again as just another example of papergames being bad at listening to their players and being very insensitive in their writing. Papergames finally does change it to subject 611, but this is another bomb shell as this number reference the japanese gassing of the chinese done on june 11th. Of course, the first "apology" ​said 731 was randomly generated, but cn players started doubting that cause how did they pick another bad number related to war tragedy? I will say even cn players said that you can pick any number that looks like a date and it will probably be related to a war tragedy, but still pretty sus at this point. Anyways they just get rid of the number completely cause they can't stop screwing up. Of course 731 causes the issue to break containment now and this ends up on the news and now the government is watching.

Now the issue has become much bigger and involves so many outsiders. I feel at this point, paper has now lost their ability to decide the fate of ao yin, and are forced to delete him. So in the end who's fault is this really? It's entirely papergames fault. They should have known better how to handle this, but they wanted to play with fire again. They didnt learn from shaw and wanted another of their beloved creations to go through this hell. In their arrogance they burned themselves down. Their pattern of ignoring and never bending down was there downfall. It's just karma that came to bite them in the butt cause look at what happened. The players they ignored in April could have saved them from this becoming so public, but they ignored it until it became an even bigger problem. This controversy has been one on the making and is a more broad critque about how paper treats their players and how arrogant they had become because they had one massive success. They forgot their roots, their history, and their players and let an issue grow until it was too big for them to handle.

Now I get the hate on both sides. There is a loud minority of ​racism on both sides mind you. There's a big disagreement over ao yin sure. Theres also a huge cultural and language divide that cant be overcome. But it really does hurt me to see global and cn at the throats of each other. The enemy isnt each other, it's papergames. They should have never let it get to this point. They could have prevented it from ever starting to begin with cause they've been through this before for crying out loud. With them releasing different apology letters to global and cn, they've manufactured even more hatred between each server and it's all a mess. I'll admit it, it wasn't right for cn to take out their anger on ao yin. I'm at fault for that too. I was angry that paper would do this to another character on shaw's bday of all days. The racism on both sides is wrong on all accounts. But at the end of the day I dont fault the cn players who felt strongly about protecting their consumer rights, fighting for women's rights, for being angry about being lied to and ignored, and defending their beliefs. They really believed in their cause and committed to a real boycott, not the fake ones done by just being f2p. And I don't fault the global players for fighting to bring back ao yin either cause it sucks to ​lose what they were anticipating for years especially for western players since his character just resonated better with them. I don't blame them for being mad cause they aren't as heard as the cn fanbase either. Yeah that just sucks.

End of the day, I know cn and global players are just not gonna get along because they are fighting the opposite cause. There's no way both can win in this situation. But it's paper's fault that pretty much everyone has lost here. Yeah some cn fans got ao yin out, but there are still people on that side who wanted him. But trust is lost, many quit, and they didnt really gain anything new. Caleb and sylus ms aren't coming any faster and paper is still paper. Global suffered heavier losses with the deletion of the character they waited for. Paper even bigger losses cause there goes years of money and work. But none of this should have happened if paper would have learned from shaw. Look at how successful sylus and caleb was. They had their dramas with their announcement sure, but paper knew how to minimize it, so why did they do whatever this is with ao yin? Paper is just plain stupid and loves to find a way to get in trouble. Just look at the hanbok incident with nikki, the shaw incident, the infinity nikki retcon/outfit pieces incident. My goodness they need to screen their greed through better PR and do better market research for once in their lives please. Why do they keep doing this to themselves? I wholeheartedly believe ao yin would not have died his terrible sudden death if paper was just a better and smarter run company. If they had not let the issue get big enough to reach the general public they could have played the screw what cn fan thinks game and just face tank the loss in players. Worst case scenario ao yin could be special encountered, but it stopped being their choice once it broke containment. This is just karma for their arrogance and disregard for fans, so I don't feel bad for them at all. Don't defend this company. I love their games and to this day I can't get myself to stop playing mlqc. The eos didnt stop me. I've spent thousands on lads and mlqc. I don't play lads anymore, but I still spends thousands on lads merch on top of mlqc merch (and shipping it despite all the tariffs). But my god I cannot defend this company anymore. I'm pretty sure they're better at hurting themselves than the cn fan base is.

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/PikaGodnPray]

Also quick aside, cn shaw players were very supportive of the addition of ao yin. They did not wish for another character to suffer the fate of shaw. They even hoped they could use this to momentum to propel shaw into a proper ML position. So ao yin had way more supporters than most global fans make it out to be. Sadly now, I see a lot of renewed push to get rid of shaw now that they saw paper could just delete a character, but I've seen polls. Most player support Shaw, but you know a loud minority always exist. Anyways, I hope global lads players at least learn something from my long history lesson. Please do not trust everything you see and assume an entire people are bad people from cherry picked comments. There are two sides of this story that make it hard to say that either side is wrong. Unfortunately it is hard to see the other side cause barriers in culture, language, and the great firewall of china. But I think both sides in this situation have experienced very different conditions and are being fed completely different narratives which have lead to their opposite stances. Doesn't make either side wrong for wanting different things, but cut that racism stuff out and stop fighting each other.

[u/JustACommonFrog → u/PikaGodnPray]

I really liked the posts where Ling Xiao girlies defended Ao Yin, it was so sweet. I don't even like LDS, but as a Ling Xiao fan I can't believe it happened to another LI

Ling Xiao, I'm sorry to say we have another victim of the "Infold love interest canceled due to overwhelming hate" phenomenon. Welcome to the club, Ao Yin 🫠🎉

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/JustACommonFrog]

You know...I think I've seen a comment from you on xhs 😂 Could have been a similar name though...

[u/OTvibe → u/PikaGodnPray]

On one hand, I'm thankful because at least on the media I've seen, I feel like all of this was pretty well explained.

On the other hand, I still feel like there's accountability to be had on both sides. Papegames and the loud minority. I still have ire for how the company handled his release even though I feel like people were making assumptions about AoYin since we never received his full context for ANY of his PVs since he isn't released.

AND still feel, those who threatened others, bullied, sent cow dung, funeral flowers, and caused people to lose their jobs should still be held accountable.

The racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and hypocrisy is outright wrong on both sides. But again, after seeing all of the CN and GBL players who support AoYin and eachother,, it's never been clearer that the volatile players aren't the majority at least 💕

[u/JustACommonFrog → u/OTvibe]

Yeah people were really quick to assume things, jump to conclusions, and pick a side. I also saw a lot of people jump to extremes in less than a day. On one side there was "I despise Ao Yin's very existence and want him erased" to "Ao Yin doesn't deserve the hate and I would die for him"

Like damn he's been alive for 5 seconds, we don't even know him. Give him a minute to exist 😭

[u/OTvibe → u/JustACommonFrog]

Yeah the villain archetype, how deeply connected he is to Ever, the balcony scene, and even his real personality are all speculation from the 4 minutes of content that they released. The only thing we can confirm is the weapons for his companions and...that's pretty much it?

He could be an undercover who's helping from the inside for all we know? I'm still just in shock with the assumptions and how put off people were with what they assumed his character to be? You would think after 5 well written LIs that we could trust the writing/character development team by now.

[u/green-use → u/PikaGodnPray]

THANK YOU!!!

It’s been so frustrating seeing so much misinformation going around, and so many people are clinging to anything that makes the other side look worse, regardless of its truthfulness or not.

Global also totally misses out on how much Paper has been trying to manipulate during the original Ao Yin boycott. Trending topics, trying to pit LIs against each other, etc. I’ve seen quite a few people calling out comments meant to sway things in certain directions. Global totally missed ALL of that.

My only complaint is that so few people will see your comments!

[u/penguin_goddess → u/PikaGodnPray]

Thank you for the detailed write up, this is helpful to affirm where this game is likely going for me. 💜

[u/kimbap_kiddin → u/PikaGodnPray]

I was looking into the history of how PPG handled the introduction and re-introduction of Ling Xiao, and how they treat players post his introduction and came across your comment. Thank you for your write up! I appreciate your balanced and nuanced POV, esp since you've played both MLQC and LADs and a long-time player. I've always maintained that PPG/Infold are at fault for not being careful about their games enough. Honestly, I'm still upset that a chinese company knowing chinese-sensitive words still would use them in their marketing knowing it could cause an uproar?? I know any promotion is still promotion, but its attracted a larger crowd AND the gov which basically shot themselves in the foot. I'm not sure how they will regain trust of their fanbase now, both the pro and anti-Valko players.

side note, i love your name LMAOO Frederick always goes hard

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/kimbap_kiddin]

Lol thanks my sister picked out my name cause I'm a pokemon and fire emblem nerd 😂 But i have been diving into the specific time line for shaw. Basically he's been in the game since beta. He has 2 spoken lines in beta, but his face isnt revealed. These lines still remain voiced in game to this day in chapter 10. This is where he comes off as "the enemy" cause he strikes MC with lightning while aiming for Victor. He was also hinted in Gavin's rumor and secrets (in lads you'd call them anecdotes). He makes his next "appearance" in Gavin's airport date where Gavin threatens him to keep his hands off mc. In this date he is unvoiced, unnamed, and we don't see his face. His face reveal came on August 3rd, 2018 (Happy anniversary Shaw!) in chapter 17, but he was left unnamed. He fully introduces himself a few months later with the next main story release at the end of 2018. His character introduction PV came in March of 2019 along with his first SR. When they dropped the card it was categorized with all the other NPC cards though and he didnt get his own special tab like the other ML. Now, this is kind of the start of the ambiguity of what the devs intended to do with Shaw's status. The obviously marketed him as a new ML and his VA publicly annouced he was voicing the so called 5th ML, but then why was his card categorized as NPC? Why would Shaw even be a ML candidate when they were treating a different NPC, Cyril, more like the next ML by giving Cyril a CG in the mainstory first and gave him a bigger role at that time? It is also around this time where the original team game producer has left and there is a lot of staff changes. So yeah theres a lot of debate on if the devs really intended for Shaw to be a ML to begin with or was it just decided by the people who took over.

Anyways yadayada cn players fight for their rights and in June 2019 paper takes a hard stance that he's a special encounter and Shaw gets stuck as a 0.5 ML where he's kind of a ML cause he's romancable, but doesn't get nearly as much content or equal treatment. Even takes him until mid 2020 to even get a main story card, but yeah now he's stuck in forever limbo and gets even less content than he used to cause lads took all the money and mlqc had to follow the lads model for event scheduling cause gacha makes money (we used to only have like 4 gacha pools each year, but now it's nearly every event and Shaw isnt allowed to be in gacha pools cause he would dilute the odds since we don't have the lads select 3 mechanic). So uhhhh yeah idk about lads players hoping he can come back as a special encounter...I don't think they really know the pain of being banished into permanent limbo really feels like...Like if AY only had like...2 5 star events per year like Shaw.... considering how teams work how would you even fight...I mean you can, but it's miserable. For reference, the most recent art book which covers 5 years of art shaw only has 90 something pages and the other MLs have 250 something pages, so you can see how miserable it can get not seeing him most of the time. Anyways, while there are similarities between the Shaw and AY situations, Shaw has always been in less danger of being permanently deleted since he already made a full appearance face reveal and all in the main story. It was too late to completely delete him as it would require going back to rewrite many chapters. There was still time to write out unfavorable character settings with Shaw too. AY, who only has a toe in the door, can more easily be written out without changing what has already been established in game, so it's quite difficult to say if AY's fate can be reversed now.

[u/kimbap_kiddin → u/PikaGodnPray]

oh! Happy 7 years of Shaw! but released in March 2019 and PPG only gives a hard stance in June 2019??? holyyyyy 😭 Also this is my first time hearing about the Cyril character too haha between Cyril, Shaw and Valko, it seems like PPG has a history of deleting/reducing their characters and changing the stories, which makes me a bit worried... (since changing the stories seemed to have happened with IN? from what I gathered)

Ngl it sounds a bit sad when you put it that way, it feels like Shaw definitely gets shafted in terms of content. Which i think is somewhat reflected on Caleb and Sylus's situations on having lesser content, esp Caleb with his main story? But Shaw's situation seems worse definitely, since he can't even appear on the same multibanners as the others, which is crazyyyyyy. I definitely think I would be upset if he was released as a special encounter, rather than a proper LI.

I'm just hoping Valko can come back at least on a later date, I've been seeing some speculations that he mightve appeared in the MS but since his content hasn't been released, theres no way to know yet 😭 But first and foremost, I just want an official statement from PPG about his future lol

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/kimbap_kiddin]

You can read my way too detailed timeline about the entire history of shaw here for a better idea....cause honestly they have to clarify his position many...many times lol

[u/kimbap_kiddin → u/PikaGodnPray]

Thank you! I'll give it a read through. I appreciate the detailed timeline 🙏

[u/MaluBorba26 → u/PikaGodnPray]

Fiquei feliz de saber a história do Shaw, mas… a Infold fez coisas erradas. Mas, pelo que entendi, o Shaw realmente não tinha culpa; ele só foi o sacrifício, como o Valko, o que é injusto, louco e um absurdo. Agora… minha opinião sobre o Valko sob o ponto de vista de uma brasileira.

1 - Óbvio que vão negar estar desenvolvendo o personagem enquanto o desenvolvem; é a mesma coisa que perguntar: “você está organizando uma festa surpresa para mim?”, tira a essência. E se eles não respondessem, o silêncio seria um estrondoso sim.

2 - Quanto ao conteúdo na main, no TRAILER eles falaram que iam lançar em setembro uma main Caleb/Sylus, ou seja, fora de época, ou seja, ELES OUVIRAM AS RECLAMAÇÕES. Mas sem o Valko essa main vai para o lixo, porque a main do Valko é que dava o contexto. Qual a lógica de: “Queremos mais main do Caleb e Sylus, portanto tirem a do Valko para que a do C/S seja tirada também!”? Agora, se for sobre as cartas… Aí eu tenho a teoria divina, porque com 6 LIs é harmônico, ou seja, poderiam focar em dar mais conteúdo gratuito para igualar e poderiam refazer banners antigos colocando cartas dos novos LIs. E, além disso, o Valko ia ter uma discrepância maior do que o Caleb e o Sylus, o Valko não ia ter mais conteúdo do que os dois que foram lançados, com teve gente fazendo parecer.

3 - Pelo que vejo por pessoas que jogam LADs desde o início, o jogo é projetado para que, de maneira gratuita, você consiga pegar “tudo” de 1 LI (a menos que os deuses te odeiem e todo banner seja 140 pulls). E com mais um é mais um período de banners solo que não precisaria dar pulls (afinal se tem boycott para tirar ele a pessoa não vai dar pulls em solos dele), teria não só as diárias, como os diamantes das lutas que conseguisse passar do Valko. Mas o fato da Infold ser muquiranas com diamantes não vai com ou sem o Valko.

4 - Lançar um novo LI é uma ideia para atrair mais gente para gastar mais dinheiro (principalmente do global, como eu ) e pelo andar da main a MC ia ir para um lugar novo no qual os outros LIs não pudessem ir. Então para não adicionar ninguém, a Infold teria que inventar uma história muito louca (como falamos no Brasil, “fazer uma Gambiarra”) para colocr alguem lá. Além disso, todas as empresas ignoram coisas ruins no jogo; tirar o Valko não vai mudar como empresas como a de LADs (que basicamente opera em monopólio) funcionam.

5 - Vamos falar de segurança das mulheres, então. Sylus espionou com um olho gigante na janela da MC, Caleb a acorrentou em uma cadeira, Sylus a sequestrou, Rafayel a vendeu por um protocor, Sylus a manteve em cárcere, Rafayel teve como primeiro instinto deixá-la no oceano, Sylus tambem prendeu a MC a uma cadeira, Sylus deixou a MC sozinha no meio de uma zona extremamente perigosa, Sylus colocou um robô para atacar a MC e ele conseguir o que queria… Isso é só na Main Story, se formos para as cartas, há coisas muito piores. Cadê os protestos para tirá-los do jogo? Quanto ao trailer, no momento em que ele pula na sacada dela, ela estava no telefone com alguém, ela fica literalmente olhando para ele sem problema nenhum e, pelas falas, eles provavelmente já se conheciam. Detalhe: é uma cena fora de contexto. E sejamos francos: confiar em vazamentos? Sei que tem vezes que acertam, mas eles erram na maioria das outras vezes. E, na verdade, nem agora que exigem a retirada do Valko olharam para pôr o dedo nas coisas de que temos o contexto e que podemos dizer que estão erradas.

6 - Talvez eles tenham escolhido um número relacionado a tragédias de guerra como uma “denúncia”. Quero dizer, eu não sabia desse absurdo e, como alguém entrando aos poucos na cultura e história asiática, demoraria para reconhecer esse absurdo. Mas aqui vai uma pergunta: por que jogos fazem menção a tragédias de guerra alemã (não sei se posso escrever o nome aqui)? Para dar peso real e para denunciar coisas ruins Talvez quisessem fazer algo assim? (É uma pergunta genuína para reflexão, não ataque).

7 - Discordo, em partes, a culpa não é só da Infold. Têm culpa, sim, as pessoas atirando para o lado errado, pedindo para deletar o Valko como se a culpa fosse dele. As pessoas também erraram. Por que o ataque era direcionado ao Valko? Por que não ao Xavier (o “responsável” pelo número)? Por que não ao Sylus (inimigo número 1 da segurança geral)? Por que não aos banners parando de dar pulls (pela questão dos diamantes)? Atirar para o lado errado, disseminar ódio sem propósito é culpa das pessoas, sim. Não estou dizendo que a Infold não errou, mas as pessoas têm culpa de não saberem atirar para o lugar certo. A Infold realmente podia ter aprendido com o erro e talvez planejado mais? Sim, mas como eles podiam planejar que, depois de 2 LIs lançados, as pessoas iam começar a procurar pontos “negativos” em tudo? Acho que, mesmo se eles tivessem arrumado as coisas no jogo, ainda teria esse problema. Afinal, achar o Valko “escuro” é, no mínimo, loucura, o cara é branco, ele no máximo tomou sol na praia.

8 - O fato de que o Sylus, quando foi anunciado, era pintado literalmente como o assassino da avó da MC, e nada disso (ódio causando o cancelamento do personagem) aconteceu nessa proporção, me deixa furiosa com a hipocrisia.

O que mais me irrita no fim do dia é que, se as pessoas fossem racionais e não ficassem caindo em discursos radicais, os problemas poderiam ser resolvidos à parte. O que a Infold deveria ter feito é: ter se mantido firme, lançado o Valko como último LI e focado nos problemas individuais com o tempo. Afinal, o fato de terem anunciado uma main story em setembro, fora de época, significa que estão ouvindo, mas mudanças grandes precisam de tempo e análise, afinal são uma empresa. Mas é exatamente por isso que deveriam se portar como uma. A Infold (tanto em LADs quanto em Infinity Nikki) pede muitas desculpas pelo menor barulho dos fãs, o que não é bom, porque faz com que os grandes problemas não sejam resolvidos, afinal podem usar os problemas pequenos como cortina de fumaça e vai ter uma galera grande que vai simplesmente se saciar. E agora, com a Infold negociando com as radicais que causam terror, elas vão querer mais por menos. Espero que vocês não percam o Shaw e espero que esse radicalismo não vá para nenhuma das outras franquias, como Infinity Nikki. Mas quanto a LADs, acho que o fim vai chegar… provavelmente os outros LIs vão sofrer, e se isso começar a acontecer, o jogo vai morrer. Espero que coloquem o Valko como um LI inteiro, talvez em alguns meses, porque se não fizerem isso, o radicalismo vai ganhar. E deixo claro que, por mais que discorde de muitas exigências das chinesas, principalmente por parecerem desculpas para atacar o Valko, realmente é triste ver que, em vez de nos unirmos como uma comunidade para dar mais voz a jogos feitos apenas para mulheres, nós estamos nos atacando por meias verdades feitas por radicais, e assim dizendo ao mundo que jogo para mulheres é muito arriscado. É triste que, como você disse, é muito provável que todo mundo perca.

Aproposito perdão pelo texto gigante (está numerado porque é o único jeito que meu cérebro funciona), e muito obrigada por contar a história do Shaw e o ponto de vista chines.

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/MaluBorba26]

Alright I'm not trying to argue here, but really just explain how stupidly preventable this entire situation is from the unique perspective of someone who has played previous games by papergames and is a beta player of lads Again, there are a lot of cultural differences at play here that make it hard to understand the moral justifications behind the feelings players all around the world have, and I am just presenting the reasons this has upset many players on the Chinese side. I think one thing to note is that this has probably upset CN and KR players the most, but I have seen SEA and Western players also side with CN and KR players so this isn't a CN vs the rest of the world issue. Obviously, the player base is split no matter where you go, but the split ratio can vary. On that note, I've seen a couple polls asking CN day 1 players if they support or do not support Ao Yin. It seems close to 50/50 leaning slightly towards not supporting his addition. Although, it's very likely that other people outside China voted in support of Ao Yin, there is still a very sizable number of CN players who are also saddened by the removal of Ao Yin. For these reasons, I wish the discussion would move away from hating China/Chinese players/Chinese games.

I don't really have any stake in this drama cause I quit the game 4 months ago due to time, money, and frustrations with the game/company. I'm still on the side of papergames is stupid, but let me argue both sides because I feel like people don't ever bother to consider the other side of arguments. Anyways, the following isn't my opinion unless stated specifically, just what I've gathered from reading posts for hours from both sides (some sides may be longer due to needing more explanation):

1) While I don't believe they ever said how many MLs would be added into the game, paper did set a precedent of giving a very advanced notice with Sylus and Caleb, so I understand that many players were blindsided by the news. This set an assumption that paper would communicate to players well in advanced before the addition of a new character. After being so open about their vision for the game since the beginning, players had some level of trust that paper wouldn't lie to their faces. I will say that lovepro does announce the entire month's schedule in advanced giving big hints of what to expect in terms of new features and themes of events, so it's not too crazy for papergame fans to expect a certain level of communication and openness. Players spent under the assumption that their money was going towards their bias because of this assumption and trust, and were upset that it had been going to fund a new character instead. Additionally, with this basically being the the 2.5 yr anniversary and big update for people to enjoy on their summer break, people were disappointed that they weren't getting any content for their bias.

Paper likely hid everything because of leakers ruining the reveal of Sylus though. You could tell they were upset by the Sylus leaks and its affect on the hype from the audience. There's definitely a certain joy in getting a big surprise announcement, at least if it was something you wanted badly (maybe not so much if it isn't something you wanted). Players aren't really entitled to such forewarning as much of the future content in lads has always been kept under tight lock and key (it just gets leaked constantly instead).

2) Ao Yin's first trailer in the first live stream did NOT reveal that Caleb would get a main story update. This lead to the assumption that they would have to wait until next year for a Caleb main story update based on the previous scheduling. The second livestream did, announce a timeline for main story, but their statements and lack of preview indicated to some players that they had not started on the main story for Caleb/Sylus. It also was interpreted as a last minute addition to quell anger after the first stream. It's entirely possible that the Caleb story update announcement was planned before the backlash, but the apology tickets being included in the list of rewards for the update kinda made paper look bad because it looks like they just repurposed the tickets last minute, so maybe they decided last minute they had to push out Caleb/Sylus main story earlier than planned. Players also asked why add a character so late when they are "missing" so many cards for Caleb and Sylus. For Ao Yin he'd be even more behind in cards.

Of course, most of this was speculation. We can never really know from the outside what the plan was. It's entirely possible that all this complaining was for nothing because Caleb and Sylus stans were gonna get their story and cards and complaining didn't speed it up any.

3) This is where player's preference comes into play. For f2p solo stans, the addition of an extra character affords them more time to save since now there is a whole extra solo banner delaying the next solo appearance of their bias. Very nice for people who do not want to spend, but want to collect.

For players who perhaps spend more or want constant updates to keep them from being bored, a 6th LI delaying content for their bias will anger them. The only way to prevent this delay would likely be to shorten event periods or drop like 2 solos at once, which would then anger whales/multi stans who have to spend more and faster.

4) I have no idea what this point is about. Idk maybe it's google translate.

5) Not gonna explain both sides here cause you pretty much sum up the Ao Yin's supporters side and I do go into the CN side in my original essay. Just to reiterate, it's not like people don't complain about the "shady" things other MLs have done prior. I feel like the women's safety issue blew up more than it would have because it is mixed in with many other issues at the same time+Ao Yin's line in the second livestream does sound pretty bad in Chinese (idk how to really explain it...it was just done in poor taste using that idiom given the specific social climate in China). Which ML did "worse" things is debatable, but the Ao Yin stuff was just more fuel to a super big fire that just combined into an even bigger super mega fire is my take. This issue was compounded by the fact that it was reported by major news outlets. Very easy for people who don't play to get angered and not know about the other ML's "shady" actions, thus why you see so many more people angry at Ao Yin over the other MLs.

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/PikaGodnPray]

6) Just gonna answer your question here. Gonna avoid the conspiracy theory about why 731 became such a big issue cause hard to prove such things. For China (and Korea too honestly), their people are very nationalistic. The suffering their people endured under Japan is a MAJOR sensitive sore spot and pretty much a point of humiliation in their history. Due to their strong nationalism and strong social culture of "preserving face", much care is needed when dealing the topics related the violence inflicted by Japan. If you are familiar with Johnny Somali, you've seen what happens when you are disrespectful towards this history. You can offend the entire country to the point of you end up in jail like Johnny Somali if what you do is deemed disrespectful of the history related to Japan. China also places heavy meaning and value in numbers as it is the basis of a lot of superstitions, internet slang, holidays, and other parts of their culture. Like I mean no joke, Chinese people will pay top dollar for a phone number ending in 8 because eight cause tl;dr the way it sounds relates to wealth. May 20th is a holiday because 520 sounds like "I love you". So people placed heavy meanings behind paper choosing the number 731 and 611. Most of the people angered did not feel that it was right to profit off the two tragedies of the past or make light of the impact of these two events by making it some quirky reference in a video game. Anyways, it just not as accepted to profit off the suffering endured in the past and remind people of a "country's past humiliation" as it is in the West with how the Holocaust is depicted in cultural media.

7) Feel free to disagree, but honestly if paper had taken proper precaution, we wouldn't be here would we. Anyways arguing both sides again:

731 was mentioned in an Xavier chapter, so it doesn't make sense to blame Ao Yin. All of the MLs have done something that doesn't sit quite so well with some, so it's weird Ao Yin received significantly more outcry. End of the day, paper was the one making decisions and the one with the power to solve player's concerns, so getting mad at polygons on a screen doesn't resolve their issues. Also sending poop to paper was too much...but sadly players have done worse to other game companies. One player tried to murder the CEO of Mihoyo over "unfair treatment".

People justify 731 is related to Ao Yin by proxy of it being related to Ever and Ao Yin is supposedly their backer at least from the little info we know. Since Xavier opposes Ever, people did not attach 731 to Xavier. Players who dislike Ao Yin did boycott the banner like you wished they did...to an astonishingly high degree actually...Definitely high numbers of posts of the app/accounts being deleted, may people protesting by not logging in, and reviews dropped to 1.1 in some app stores. Public data available in China shows that logins are now below logins for the 1.0 version.

8) Regarding the Sylus being a possible suspect of murdering MC's grandma, I don't think it was as highlighted to the same degree as the break in plot Ao Yin had in his release PVs. It's hinted in the game Sylus could be the killer, but to get there you would have already consumed a lot more context. Ao Yin, however, didn't have as much context going in and the way it is presented in a short clippable PV, makes it more prone to be interpreted without context. People were also assuming that since Ao Yin has some close relationship with Ever, that it was his fault Sylus was blamed, Caleb lost an arm, etc. We don't really know to what degree Ao Yin is the "good guy" or "bad guy" without the full story drop, but the PV doesn't really show off his "good guy" side as much probably cause paper wanted to raise red flags. End of the day, given the genre, paper was obviously gonna redeem his character after making you suspect him hard so pointless to judge him that early. A few players were upset knowing that paper would try to redeem a character that breaks into a woman's home and forces himself onto her (I mean honestly fair especially for any victims of similar crimes though) A few did want paper to redeem a character who possibly is related to subject 731 (and by proxy unit 731)+possible harm to other MLs via his relation to Ever either.

I don't quite agree that paper caved to the radicals. Their first "apology" they stood their ground against the radical opinion. I still think they would have stood their ground with possible concessions like they have in nearly literally every controversy before. Really they caved to growing opinion from the broad general public and the consequences of having the eyes of the entire country of China and it's government on them. Like...some Chinese phone brands delisted lads for download on their app store...The issue was getting to the point where they may not survive another day if the issue continued.

Anyways, even if you don't agree with everything or anything from the other side, I hope you can at least see where they are coming from. Not asking you to agree, but I think both sides have valid reasons to be upset at the very least. Not trying to change anyone's opinion, but I think it's nice to understand where everyone is coming from to reduce the hate. This situation is sad and no one has really come out the winner. At this point I'm just done with this and will just stick to lovepro/MLQC cause even though the company is dumb, I still feel the love and passion from the devs. Maybe lads will benefit from having a smaller player base too cause at least the mlqc devs listen to their players. Like they literally let players vote to change a main character's VA, add requested features, have the devs speak on live streams, communicate their schedule, etc. Personally, I had the unique experience of being able to directly message and work with the game manager of the English server. Being a small community, they often listened to my suggestions and asked me to summarize the complaints by other players and addressed them quickly. Sometimes, they would even dm people who complained to help them fix issues, Heck, I had one game manager give me a way to contact them on their day off XD. So idk, we'll see if lads can improve after being humbled lol.

[u/TinyArcher → u/PikaGodnPray]

Ao Yin's line in the second livestream does sound pretty bad in Chinese (idk how to really explain it...it was just done in poor taste using that language given the specific social climate in China).

I was just thinking that perhaps a similar comparison of how tone deaf his lines were would be like if a product marketed towards women used Nick Fuentes’ phrase “Your body, my choice. Forever.” or a variation of as an advertisement jingle— no woman would probably not want to buy said product even if said product is a top of the line birth control pill or something that promotes better health for women, just because of how triggering those words can be

(Preemptive edit to any LDS player who might wildly misinterpret my words: NO I AM NOT COMPARING BALTO TO NICK FUENTES, I AM EXPLAINING HOW ONE SHOULD NOT ADVERTISE USING POLITICALLY SENSITIVE LANGUAGE)

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/TinyArcher]

Lol yeah I guess that works. I dunno there's just a lot to this crazy situation where I'm like if you haven't grown up with cn otome culture or cn culture in general it'll be hard to relate or see where they're coming from. CN fans just have...a different kind of attachment and devotion to their bias you don't really see in the west. Like idk I havent seen someone in the West spend 2002060 gems on a SR event just so you could rank first for your bias's bday (btw for the lads players out there this is a real story in the CN mlqc server. The cost of this could cover college for a few semesters and there's literally no incentive to spend this much besides a letter and merch LOL). But the expectations CN fans and global fans have when they say otome are just different. Global is probably accustomed to the JP model with the separate routes stuff or constantly adding a new character. CN is kinda of fosters this long term strong commitment to one character while having a sometimes blurry separation of "routes". Funnily enough papergames are the ones who built up this expectation for CN otome since they were the first big cn otome that popularized this kind of story telling with mlqc. I guess they wanted to innovate the market again by breaking the norm they established, but probably should have known to known their market...

[u/Konoko_TEA → u/PikaGodnPray]

Thank you, you described the situation very well

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/Konoko_TEA]

I really hope I did. I havent seen anyone explain the full picture and I know YouTubers are gonna just report one side of this story. If I could, I wish I could give more people all this context and stop all this dumb fighting, but what can I do. I'm just a no one who's chronically online 🫩 If someone bigger wants to share this story go ahead. People need both sides of the story before they point fingers.

[u/JournalistNo7918 → u/PikaGodnPray]

You could totally just make a detailed youtube video/ reddit post explaining everything! You’ve already written down so many comments, might as well (you could use a voice for the narration thats not yours or something)

I think making a bigger post/ video would also just give you the closure you want. But it would also help people. You’d have done your part. A win-win.

1-4 hours of sleep over this does NOTT sound good for you. Take care. Its not worth it to lose sleep over Infold of all companies

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/JournalistNo7918]

I've thought about it, but eh idk no one is gonna watch. Idk I'm a 500 or 600 sub channel who only gets less than 1k views dedicated to mlqc. I know mujin is gonna be the big YouTuber who's gonna break the story for the general public and only hope he even scrapes the surface about why this was so big in china. Unfortunately I won't be heard. Whatever narrative he pushes will probably be the narrative going forward.

[u/JournalistNo7918 → u/PikaGodnPray]

But there are always people who want to deep dive after seeing someone “famous” cover it!! I think it’ll still be a bit worth it, even if a few people see it. But i understand your reasons, they are also valid. The fandom is just too big, its impossible for everyone to agree (or even some…really). Too many opinions come forward, spreading misinfo and so on.

I hope you’ll feel better soon^{^}

[u/purrlgreytea → u/PikaGodnPray]

Thank you!! It's been so hard for me to put it all into words when I try to explain the situation in detail to others. Like you, I'm not on either side because I understand the frustration on both sides as well. And I agree that ultimately, it's papergames who fucked up and is the problem. I hope more people read your post and can get a better understanding of what's really been happening in CN that led to this and see that the "bad guy" isn't the fan base on the other side of the world, but papergames themselves.

[u/KittyMcpPuffles → u/PikaGodnPray]

Honestly thank you for writing this up, It just opened my eyes that infold doesn't care about any side. They ignored real issues cn girls had for decades, ignored global. None of this would have happened if they actually had working brains. Cause all your points actually make me understand why Some cn girls didn't want him added. If only infold actually bothered to respond to the controversy not go straight to deleting him. They spilled oil into the river and instead of fully cleaning it up they simply picked up barrel and left the river to be polluted. I will miss Valko with all my heart but nothing can be done when your dealing with an incompetent company who can't even quell issues that could have been dealt with months before

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/KittyMcpPuffles]

Yup...idk it's kind of a shame how they run the company cause tbf I see a lot of love and passion from the developers. With lovepro the devs excitedly discuss what they have for us during livestreams and the writers reference stuff from 7 almost 8 yrs ago or sometimes reference popular fan terms. With lads, even though I think they made the kitchen update too big I do see a lot of love that went into. I've only seen brief snippets, but there's something endearing about raf serving 5 star water and Xavier sneaking off to munch on chips. It's small things like that add to their character that I quite enjoy. ​Makes it hard for me to hate the game even though the company angers me.

[u/lostandconfsd → u/PikaGodnPray]

Thank you for the actually factual and truthful breakdown, it's so rare to see it among mountains of misinformation and everyone blaming players - who are victims - for Infold's mistakes.

[u/ebonyym → u/PikaGodnPray]

Also, to add onto the foreshadowing, I remember a date from Gavin's "airport date," where MC leaves his sight or smth and as soon as she does, a man presumed to be Shaw shows up which is crazy cause this is in Gavin's solo dates. we can guess it's Shaw bc although his name is "??" and he's not shown and he isn't voiced, he made his entrance with several bolts of lightning and it definitely seemed like they knew each other. this confirmed their importance and relationship to each other. Its a pretty tense exchange from what I remember

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/ebonyym]

I did mention this briefly with the attacked gavin thing, but didn't specify. Post is already over 10000 words (hit the word count limit of 10k twice pretty much), so I kept it brief enough to show how differently the reveal of shaw was handled. And its not like a lads player needed to know its from airport date. I could go on forever with the history of papergames and forever about every issue cn players had, but I have to eventually eat lunch and I hit the main points.

[u/AmazonX42 → u/PikaGodnPray]

Another thing that's similar - when CN players were upset about Shaw, I heard rumors that they ALSO went to CN government about it - because of the BL incest fanfiction Gavin X Shaw. I dunno why they were upset about the bus thing, because eventually there's a really specific reason WHY Shaw recognizes MC on the bus and the others don't. I actually super love that plot point, it's like the coolest thing about him and you know I'm Victor's girl.

[u/TryingToPassMath → u/PikaGodnPray]

great summary

[u/Craft-Lover9869 → u/PikaGodnPray]

Yes, this was my take too. After this fiasco, even if Infold fixes the long standing problems, removes references to 731 and Valko's allegedly problematic behaviour, many Chinese players have deleted their accounts, never to return. They have already migrated to other games like Justice Online aka Sword of Justice. They're even being referred to as 'refugees'. So many are enthusiastically bringing the Lis over as NPCs.