What’s really going on in Love and Deepspace right now? Wolfgate2026: The Valko controversy.

Valko — the now cancelled Love and Deepspace character.

Papergames — the Chinese company who produce the incredibly popular otome game Love and Deepspace — have had a tumultuous week.

With the announcement of a sudden surprise “Supermoon Watchparty” livestream on the 22nd of June — announced only 5 hours before it began — players from both China and around the world flooded to Youtube and Xiaohongshu (the Chinese social media app known in English as “Little Red Book”) to see what the devs had in store.

Many held strong hopes that the livestream would feature long awaited Main Story updates for the two newer characters Caleb (Xia Yizhou) and Sylus (Qin Che). The wait time on these updates has been a cause of much unrest among fans of these characters, who can often be seen spamming official game announcements with the number of days it’s been since the last main story update. In the case of Caleb it’s been more than a year and a half since his last Main Story update.

The livestream featured many pauses on a static view of the full moon, presumably designed to build suspense (but really served to annoy the viewers). Occasionally the stream would cut to a newscast about a beast spotted near the in-game city of Linkon and it became clear to players that this livestream was to announce the sixth love interest in the game.

With a countdown featuring frantic music, when the timer hit zero there was a dramatic “AWOOOOOO” and Valko (Ao Yin) was revealed.

Excitement amongst global players was palpable. A nerdy, red-haired, playful werewolf with a body type deviating slightly from LADs’ default aesthetic of a slim figure and tiny-waist was exactly what many players had been hoping for.

The reaction from Chinese players was somewhat less enthusiastic. Xia Yizhou (Caleb) is extraordinarily popular in China, and a sudden announcement of a new character with no buildup over the expected Main Story announcement was the source of deep fury for a player base who has already been feeling ignored. Some players also objected to the overall look of the character, calling him ugly, “too Western” and “not suitable for the Chinese aesthetic”.

Papergames made one more deadly mistake: making this announcement during the school holidays. According to some Chinese players, the game has faced similar controversies during the school holiday period.

Many Chinese fans mobilised quickly, hitting the company with a boycott, a spend-stop and a list of demands that included immediate removal of Valko as a love interest, as well as an immediate release date announcement for the main story update. They also had some demands that proved more baffling to western players, including demanding that the devs confirm that every love interest is purely heterosexual.

Some Chinese players claimed that the look and body type of Valko matched too closely with popular gay male aesthetics in China, accusing the company of neglecting female players’ needs in favour of courting gay players to join the community.

Papergames’ response to the unrest left much to be desired, responding to players’ concerns with light-hearted teasing such as “But look at this little wolf! Don’t you want to pet his fluffy tail?”. This tipped the scales from anger into action.

Scouring the game for anything they could use against the company, players finally stumbled across their (if you’ll pardon the pun) silver bullet. In one of the in-game stories, there’s a scene featuring human experimentation. Unfortunately for Papergames, the serial number chosen for this scene was A-731. For those unfamiliar with Unit 731, this refers to the biological and human experimentation facility run by the Imperial Japanese Army between 1933–1945. The vast majority of experimentation victims were Chinese. Understandably, this is an extraordinarily important issue to Chinese citizens.

The anti-Valko contingent leveraged this in-game reference to draw negative public attention to the game and push for a government investigation in light of the game’s status as a valuable cultural export.

Next, they used the issue of womens’ safety to draw attention, referring to the fact that Valko leaps up onto the balcony of the main character and framing this as a public womens’ safety issue. This was a cause of some discord between players themselves, with some Chinese players accusing the anti-Valko players of exploiting national tragedy and womens’ issues to assuage their dissatisfaction with a video game developer.

The Beijing Daily was only too happy to jump onto these issues, drawing even further public scrutiny to the game. Some players objected to the involvement of this newspaper, pointing out numerous gaffes they’ve made covering womens’ issues in the past — including describing a high profile drink spiking sexual assault case as a woman getting “too drunk”.

Although no evidence has been produced, some players speculated the involvement of rival companies in the controversy, given that two large rival games will be hitting the west. Otome juggernaut Light and Night recently announced a global beta, and the first real 3D competitor to Love and Deepspace, Silent Whispers, had their teaser trailer recently featuring their own werewolf character, Valen.

On the 30th of June, Papergames announced that the Valko hate campaign had been successful. Valko was to be removed from the game.

The global response was heartbreak. Both Western and Chinese players who had been simply waiting out the storm were now forced to respond, and the response has been swift. A new boycott has been announced by global as well as Chinese fans of Valko/Ao Yin (affectionately called by some as Ao Wu aka awoo), demanding the return of the “little wolf” who has already captured their hearts. As July 1st is a public holiday in China celebrating both the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, and the transfer of Hong Kong sovreignty from Britain back to China, it is not expected that the company will make any announcements on this day. Whether the new global/Chinese joint boycott run by Valko fans will see any success remains to be seen, but one thing all fans hope for is that Papergames will vastly improve their response to community controversy and toxicity, otherwise it may be more than just Valko who is in trouble.