Cow Dung, Death Flowers, and a Canceled Wolf Boy

"We have decided to cancel both the launch and any further development of the new love interest. We also commit that no additional love interests will be introduced in future content plans."

That's Infold Games, developer of the mobile action dating sim Love and Deepspace, announcing on X today that its newest character, a werewolf tech executive named Valko, is dead before arrival. His July 9 launch date now belongs to nobody. But the statement only makes sense once you know what preceded it: reports of cow dung mailed to the studio's offices, funeral chrysanthemums and curse banners piled around a Valko display outside the building, and a fanbase revolt that allegedly cost the game close to a million followers on Chinese social media.

None of the real-world protest details have been independently verified, but the studio reportedly tightened security in response. Reports aggregated from Chinese social media and surfaced on Reddit describe players dragging their anger offline in ways that go well beyond angry tweets. Ritual cleansing items. Death flowers. Actual cow shit through the mail. I've covered a lot of fan backlash over the years, and this is comfortably the most unhinged response to a character reveal I've ever seen.

What Sparked the Revolt

Valko's problem wasn't really Valko. The werewolf boyfriend was a lightning rod for frustrations that had been building for months. Players accused Infold of neglecting the five existing love interests, some of whom had reportedly waited over 500 days for a new story chapter, while pouring resources into a sixth character nobody asked for. Free-to-play players felt the game was becoming increasingly hostile to anyone not spending money. There were also more specific controversies circulating on Chinese social media: a tagline in Valko's Chinese promotional material that some players believed referenced a real domestic violence case, and a theory that the character's appearance and Chinese name resembled Infold CEO Yao Runhao.

Infold acknowledged in a separate apology on June 27 that "the way information about Valko was presented did not give sufficient consideration to your expectations and concerns," but that earlier statement clearly wasn't enough to stop the bleeding.

The cancellation post lays out a roadmap that reads like a peace offering. Rafayel gets new Memories and a new Companion in July, Caleb gets a main story update in September, and Sylus follows in November. The Home 2.0 update and AR Photobooth that were originally bundled with Valko's launch will still arrive on schedule. Everyone who logs in over the next 30 days gets a free Deepspace Wish daily, totaling 30 pulls.

Here's where this gets messy, though: Valko had fans too. The Love and Deepspace Discord is now flooded with "Bring Back Valko" posts, and the replies under the cancellation announcement are split between relief and outrage. One fan's response captured the problem perfectly: "This sets a precedent with your game that if people are mean enough, bully other fans, and just generally throw a large enough tantrum, they can do whatever they want." I think that fan is right. Infold just taught its most aggressive players that mailing excrement to the office works, and that's a lesson no studio should be handing out.

A gacha game built entirely around romancing hot men pledging to never add another hot man is a bizarre overcorrection by any measure. The roster is now permanently frozen at five love interests, and Infold has boxed itself into a corner where every future content decision will be measured against the precedent it set today. Valko's trailers remain online on the game's official channels, a strange monument to a character who existed for exactly eight days between reveal and cancellation. Love and Deepspace is available on iOS and Android.