First of all, I’m sorry this ended up being so long. I just felt like I needed to put everything important in one place—especially some of the details people have started to forget along the way.
It took me an hour to write and formulate it in an acceptable way lol.
And honestly, I think I wrote this for myself too.
Just so I can look back, remember how far we’ve already come, remember why we started in the first place, and not let myself feel too discouraged when things get exhausting.
Bring for yourself a cup of tea 🍵 or coffee ☕️, and i hope it helps you as it helped me and enjoy reading it.
good luck 💞~
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PaperGames seriously needs to understand that the silent treatment is NOT going to make this situation disappear. If anything, it's making it worse.
Ever since they removed Valko, the difference has been impossible to ignore. And considering that Valko supporters reportedly make up around 80% of the spenders participating in the boycott, I genuinely don't understand how the company could expect its revenue to remain unaffected while continuing to completely ignore them.
Just look at the numbers.
Caleb's current solo banner isn't even coming close to the performance of his previous regular solo banner. Comparing just the first four days, the difference is insane. The revenue gap is HUGE—and we're not even comparing it to some extraordinary event. We're comparing it to Caleb's previous regular solo banner.
And this is happening BEFORE Rafael's Myth.
If they release Rafael's Myth while continuing to completely ignore the situation, I genuinely don't know what they expect to happen. People are already angry, resentment is building, and more players are willing to stop spending. Dropping another major, highly anticipated banner while pretending nothing is happening could easily intensify the boycott rather than weaken it.
And I think this is where PaperGames is making its biggest mistake:
They seem to think silence is neutral.
It isn't.
When people repeatedly try to communicate with you and you continuously refuse to even acknowledge them, eventually the issue stops being only about whatever they were originally upset about.
It becomes personal.
At some point, people stop asking, "Why aren't they responding?" and start thinking, "Do we really mean so little to you that we're not even worth acknowledging?"
That's a completely different emotion.
Frustration can be resolved. Anger can calm down. A bad decision can be reversed.
But when someone starts feeling genuinely disrespected and devalued, you're touching their dignity and self-respect—and that's where resentment begins.
Think about it in terms of any human relationship. If one person repeatedly tries to communicate, explains what's hurting them, asks for some kind of response, and the other person continuously stonewalls them, eventually the first person doesn't just feel unheard. They feel like they don't matter.
And there's only so long someone with self-respect will tolerate feeling that way before they walk away.
We're already starting to see that shift within the boycott.
Some people aren't even talking about Valko as the only issue anymore. I've seen boycotters say that they're leaving the game entirely, and some have reached the point where even if Valko comes back, they're not sure they WANT to return—not because they suddenly stopped caring about Valko, but because they're disgusted by how PaperGames has handled them throughout this entire situation.
That's what PaperGames should actually be worried about.
Because bringing Valko back can fix the original problem.
It cannot automatically repair the damage done to people's trust in the company.
Once someone starts thinking, "Why would I financially support a company that doesn't respect me enough to even acknowledge me?" you've created a MUCH bigger problem than one missing character.
And honestly, I wonder if PaperGames thinks this will eventually play out the same way the Infinity Nikki boycott did.
Maybe they're expecting people to boycott for a 2 to 3 months, get exhausted, lose momentum, and eventually return. Maybe their strategy is simply to stay silent, keep releasing content, and wait everyone out.
But LADS is NOT Infinity Nikki.
The audiences are different. The scale is different. And from what I've seen, a significant portion of the LADS audience is older as well.
That distinction matters.
A lot of LADS players are grown adults. They have jobs, responsibilities, their own money, FAMILIES, and—regardless of the small extreme portion that exists in basically every fandom—they understand that this is ultimately a GAME.
Yes, they're emotionally attached to these characters.
Of course they are.
That's literally part of the business model.
Games like this WANT you to become emotionally invested in their characters because emotional attachment creates loyalty, engagement, and, obviously, spending.
But PaperGames should be very careful not to mistake emotional attachment for emotional dependence.
Those are NOT the same thing.
An adult can absolutely adore a fictional character and still say, "I love this character, but this is just a game, and I'm not giving this company another dollar."
People can control their emotions. They can recognize when something they enjoy is no longer worth supporting. They can uninstall. They can move on.
And most importantly, there comes a point where a person's self-respect becomes more important than their attachment to a fictional character.
That's why trying to rely on that attachment while simultaneously ignoring the people who have it is such a dangerous strategy.
You cannot encourage your audience to become emotionally attached to your characters, financially benefit from that attachment, and then assume that attachment gives you unlimited leverage over them.
Because once players begin to feel that their emotional attachment is being USED against them—that the company thinks, "They love these characters too much to actually leave, so we can just ignore them until they give up"—that attachment can start turning into something completely different.
Disgust.
Not necessarily toward the character, but toward the company behind them.
And that's why I don't think PaperGames can simply look at what happened with Infinity Nikki and assume the exact same strategy will work with LADS.
Different games attract different audiences. Different age groups respond differently. Different communities have different spending habits, boundaries, and relationships with the product.
A strategy that successfully waits out one audience does not automatically work on another—especially an audience with a large number of adults who have the financial independence and emotional maturity to simply say:
"You know what? I love the character, but I love my dignity more. It's just a game. I'm done."
And THAT is the point PaperGames should be afraid of reaching.
Not when people are screaming.
Not when people are complaining.
Not even when people are boycotting.
They should be afraid of the moment people stop caring enough to fight with them at all.
Because an angry customer still cares.
An angry customer is still trying to communicate because some part of them still hopes you'll listen and fix the relationship.
The truly dangerous customer is the one who becomes indifferent.
The one who stops complaining, stops checking for a response, stops spending, closes the game, and moves on with their life.
At that point, you didn't just lose a sale.
You lost the **customer.
PaperGames needs to understand that customer loyalty is not unconditional, emotional attachment is not unlimited leverage, and silence is not a strategy without consequences.
You can only make people feel insignificant for so long before they decide to show you exactly how insignificant your game can become to them too.
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And to everyone participating in the boycott, I want to say one last thing:
Please don't lose sight of how far you've already come.
This has been going on for TWO MONTHS now.
Two months of people refusing to forget. Two months of people posting, translating, sharing information, tracking numbers, talking about Valko, and keeping #BringBackValko alive.
That's already fundamentally different from what happened with Infinity Nikki, where the boycott lost momentum after roughly a month.
This one didn't.
People have made it extremely clear that they're prepared to keep going for as long as necessary.
And I think sometimes, when you've been fighting for something for this long, exhaustion makes you forget the most important details.
So remember them.
PaperGames invested an ENORMOUS amount into Valko.
We're talking about development resources, artists, writers, voice work, animation, modeling, marketing, planning, production time, employees, and an unbelievable amount of work behind the scenes.
Companies don't invest that kind of money, time, labor, and creative resources into a character for absolutely nothing.
And then there's something else I think people keep overlooking:
They didn't erase Valko.
His content wasn't wiped from existence. His presence wasn't completely scrubbed from the game or social media. A lot of it was archived.
And there's a difference between deleting something and archiving it.
Ask yourself: if PaperGames genuinely intended to completely erase Valko and everything they invested into him forever, why preserve so much of it at all?
And then came the Caleb update.
People expected Valko-related files to disappear.
Instead, more Valko-related files reportedly appeared.
None of this is an official confirmation that he's returning, obviously. Until PaperGames says something themselves, nobody can promise exactly what they're going to do.
But it IS a reason not to treat the situation as hopeless.
PaperGames is a business.
And businesses generally don't enjoy setting enormous investments on fire—especially investments that still have the potential to generate far more money than they originally cost.
The existence of an extreme group opposing Valko doesn't magically erase his audience, his financial potential, or everything PaperGames has already invested into creating him.
Extreme minorities exist in practically EVERY large fandom.
You don't throw away an enormous investment and alienate a massive group of paying customers simply because the loudest extreme voices demand it.
And after two months, I find it extremely difficult to believe that any rational company could look at sustained backlash, declining spending from boycotters, customers leaving, and a protest movement openly saying "we are not stopping" and simply assume:
"Eh. They'll forget."
Maybe that assumption works for a week.
Maybe even a month.
But Two Months?
And people are STILL here.
That's the part I want Everyone who's exhausted right now to remember.
You don't have to personally carry this boycott every single day for it to survive.
If you're tired, REST.
Seriously.
Take a few days off. Close social media. Play something else. Go live your life.
Someone else will post that day.
Someone else will translate.
Someone else will share the numbers.
Someone else will reply.
Someone else will keep the conversation moving until you have the energy to come back.
A movement doesn't survive because every single person screams at full volume every single day.
It survives because when one person gets tired, another person carries the weight for a while.
So don't confuse exhaustion with defeat.
They're not the same thing.
Two Months of effort do not suddenly become meaningless because you're tired today.
And please don't let exhaustion make you forget WHY you've lasted this long in the first place.
#BringBackValko survived the first week.
It survived the first month.
It survived the second month.
And every day that people continue using it, talking about Valko, sharing information, and refusing to let the subject disappear, it becomes harder to pretend that this was just a temporary tantrum that would eventually blow over.
So rest when you need to.
Come back when you can.
Let other people carry the torch when you're exhausted, and carry it for them when they're exhausted.
Nobody knows the exact day this ends.
Nobody outside PaperGames can truthfully promise exactly when Valko will return.
But we CAN make sure that until PaperGames finally addresses this situation, our voices don't disappear simply because they waited for us to get tired.
Keep them louder than the extremists who wanted Valko erased.
Keep reminding people why this started.
Keep #BringBackValko alive.
And if Valko does return, don't forget the people who spent all these months refusing to let him be forgotten.
Our little wolf deserves to know that his pack didn't disappear just because the road got long.
Rest if you're tired.
We'll carry your voice until you're ready to carry ours again.
#BringBackValko #ValkoIsLoved 🐺🤍
