as a chinese player who has more or less witnessed the entire drama ever since infold announced the addition of the sixth li, valko aka ao yin which started bc people were complaining about the slowness and incompetence of infold in things and how they sometimes don't respond clearly quick enough to user demands and requests and whatnot, which is understandable cause as consumer and player, we absolutely hv the right to complain.
but what i'm about to say next is prob something that non-chinese people shouldn't comment on bc this is not your history. so what escalated this entire thing of deleting / removing ao yin was that people found out about this serial number 0731 that was being used in one of the chapter lores. and if you don't already know what that stands for, it is likely a subtle reference to unit 731, or better known as one of the many worst crimes that imperial japanese army did when they invaded china and said unit did countless inhuman experiments on chinese people that they captured. you can read more on this (please read up on this), wikipedia is a good start.
while infold never officially stated that this part of their lore is referring to unit 731, it is clear enough bc that lore was telling stories about unethical medical experiments that ever group did on humans and whatnot, so naturally that could mean unit 731. many believe that this is infold's attempt to bring more light onto such tragedy especially to a global audience bc jp has never admited their atrocities nor apologized for it.
now you may ask, why didn't infold just make it clear officially? bc a lot of these historical things in china, especially ones that involve such a heavy topic and tragedy during the invasion of jp, have to go through tons of paperwork and approval process from the official departments aka the government, this is so that the history is treated right and with respect, as this is still a very painful tragedy that still hurts chinese people very bad. plus, infold is merely a gaming company, to admit right away that they're mocking jp with how they did with the lore would quite quickly turn into a whole another drama, since they do have jp server and jp players are around too.
and then jp server caught onto this too, bc they also started a petition to remove/rework this "0731 serial number" part of the lore, with the shameless excuse that unit 731 makes jp people awkward and uncomfortable bc they're being accused of something that never happened.
so what happens now is that these cn players who are fighting to get ao yin removed, suddenly caught onto this and the fact that infold never made it official that they were just trying to bring more awareness to the unit 731 tragedy, so they are now saying that infold is downplaying the entire tragedy by including it into the game.
they are even more offended now that infold decides to change the serial number, which they are saying that infold is catering to the jp server's shameless request, which was not the intention at all. and then at first infold changed it to "0611" which is another random set of number, but it was also the date of another battle that took place and lives were lost fighting against imperial jp army.
mind you, there were endless battles that took place during all the years of jp invasion onto the chinese land. lives were lost every day. infold hadn't meant to disrespect the heroes who fought and the victims that were sacrificed. so at the end infold removed the serial number altogether.
the problem now isn't that infold wasn't sensitive enough, the problem is that the girlies who started complaining were being absolutely ruthless in spreading misinformation and baseless rumors.
what started as calling out infold to do better and treat the five LIs better first before introducing a new one out of nowhere turned into calling infold (and the rest of us who still think infold's intention was good when they initially put the 0731 part) sinophobic and that we're siding with imperial jp.
granted not all cn server is like this, but they were the loudest and craziest. mind you, lads was one of the few games appointed and praised by official departments for cultural export of chinese culture constantly, there is zero reason for them to be on imperial jp's side (especially when majority of the profit made by infold from lads is still from cn server solely) or even jp server who was being shameless in their request to remove 0731 bc according to them "it never happened", and they are now exceptionally happy bc they think infold has finally admitted that unit 731 is baseless and something that chinese people conjured up to play victim.
so you see, even if the complaints made by the cn girlies were good at first, but this part of history is not treated right any longer? they were calling our own people sinophobic and insensitive, and calling other female players as misogynist and a lot of other misogynistic terms. and the only winner in this is imperial jp. so this is why i wanted to bring up how insane this entire thing is, both sides are wrong, and infold could honestly do so much better, but i do think they shouldn't be treated this way.
more EDIT below now that i'm awake enough
there's people saying that this entire shitshow was made worse than the several other dramas that happened these few years with lads and infold, bc we all know there barely is any competitors in the market for otome games, esp for 3d otome games so lads is always the one at the top ever since it came out
and this entire shitshow has been manipulated or influenced or made bigger by other competitors (bc the players that initially complaint, some of them turned out to be that they were never lads players). not to say everyone is like that or that some concerns raised in these complaints weren't valid, but that entire 0731 lore has been around since april, so why wait till now to spin the sinophobic and imperial japan stance against infold? people were initially trying to raise concerns about infold's treatment of their players like how they're slow or how they barely update the main storyline, and they should address those before adding a new LI. how has that taken a wrong turn so fast?
it's believed that some of these players who complained and their initial (mostly, depending on what exactly we are talking about) well-meaning complaints are being manipulated and pushed toward a direction that literally brings no benefit to anyone.
ao yin gets deleted, then what? this same thing has happened previously with the other otome game of infold, that is still ongoing now but that newly added LI atm were never seen in the actual main storyline anymore. he only ever appears in special events and merch.
a lot of people have been losing their trust in infold now, including normal players who never complained and were calling out the ones who complained with malicous rumors for their double standard. the ones who complained have already happily left the game, yet they still want the entire game server to be shut down.
how exactly does this benefit anyone?
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