Yesterday I swear I RB’d someone talking about the news of Voltage USA being liquidated soon, but it didn’t post or something so let me try this again.
So yeah, we’ve all heard. Due to low profit, Voltage no longer sees its U.S. branch as worth keeping alive, meaning Lovestruck is possibly being shut down in the near future. I say possibly because who knows if they’ll shut down the serves immediately or what may happen to the content already within the app, but one thing seems to be clear- the content drought was intentional, and was a sign of things to come.
I’m angry, and I’m hurt. I have been a dedicated fan of Lovestruck since 2017, and the stories and characters mean a lot to me. As a little 14 year old baby queer who didn’t know how to be comfortable with that queerness, Lovestruck gave me a safe, private outlet to experiment with the idea of WLW relationships. Altea Bellerose was the first ever WLW route I ever read, and I cannot understate how important to me her route is. I’m not the only one who thinks these stories are important.
And that’s why this pisses me off. We got no warning, no statement, nothing directly from Voltage or Lovestruck’s PR team. No, as always they kept us in the dark, pretended nothing was amiss and then bailed right as we’d all find out the news. I cannot see this as not deliberate.
What’s most infuriating is that if they had just told us, maybe this could have been prevented. Nyx Hydra fans may remember when in The Arcana, Portia’s route was under performing. The Arcana’s social media accounts posted a warning, and a plea for people to read more if they didn’t want her route canceled. And? It wasn’t canceled, we were able to change the fate of a route with our action. Had Voltage had tried the same thing, just been straight with us saying “Readership is down, and if we cannot increase revenue we may have to stop producing content”. Seeing just how many people are furious over this outcome makes me confident that had they have warned us, we could have come together and prevented it, even if Lovestruck lost many fans after the strike. So many of us remained, even if we became way more critical of Voltage’s business practices, we still loved the stories.
It feels like I am losing a little part of my youth. Watching something I once adored slowly fizzle out has been hard, but knowing it may be all gone soon is just difficult.