China’s top ‘otome’ game lost 70 million hearts in 10 days

Love and Deepspace has become the center of a social media storm. Once hailed as the pinnacle of China's otome games, the title generated more than RMB 500 million ($70 million) in its first month after its January 2024 launch, per figures reported by Chinese media, and topped iOS download charts in multiple markets. Over the next two years, it won Best Mobile Game at Gamescom and surpassed 70 million players worldwide. But in late June, the sudden arrival of a new male lead triggered tens of thousands of complaints. One line of dialogue drew criticism from state media, while a plot-file number touched a raw nerve in China’s historical memory. Developer Papergames apologized and scrapped the character, but that did little to contain players' anger or stop the collapse in reputation. Otome games are romance simulations designed primarily for women, in which players take on the role of a female protagonist and build relationships with multiple male characters. What sparked the ‘Love and Deepspace’ backlash? On June 22, Love and Deepspace announced, with little warning, its sixth male lead: Ao Yin. The backlash began with the character’s suddenness. The game’s five existing male leads had gone more than 500 days without meaningful progress in the main storyline, leaving players’ patience thin. Ao Yin sharpened that frustration: with a Westernized look and a werewolf form, he seemed visually out of step with the game’s five softer, more delicate male characters. Long-simmering resentment erupted. Complaints about the game jumped from single digits to more than 20,000 in a single day on June 23, per consumer complaint platform Xiaofeibao. Facing the wave of negative feedback, Papergames issued an emergency apology. But in a June 28 livestream, the game showed a video in which Ao Yin, in werewolf form, enters the home of a woman living alone. His line: “What’s wrong with letting a wolf into the house?” As screenshots of the clip spread, players uncovered a more damaging detail: an in-game plot file involving human drug trials was labeled “A-0731.” At that point, the backlash moved beyond gaming circles into the wider public sphere. For Chinese players familiar with the country’s wartime history, the number 731 needs little explanation. During World War II, Japan’s Unit 731 carried out biological warfare experiments and human testing in northeast China, leaving one of the most painful scars in modern Chinese memory. Few were willing to accept its appearance in a plot about drug trials as coincidence. Guangming Daily criticized the livestream scene as romanticizing unlawful entry into a woman’s home, in a commentary widely reshared by other state outlets, while China Women’s News said women’s safety should not be treated as entertainment. Although Papergames issued a second apology, explaining that the number was a random placeholder with no actual meaning, many players saw the statement as evasive. On Weibo, hashtags questioning the explanation drew tens of millions of views. What began as frustration with the game had turned into a rejection of the brand’s values. By June 30, the developer announced that Ao Yin’s release would be permanently canceled and promised not to introduce new male leads. It was too late. The game’s App Store rating fell to 1.4 by July 2, multiple shopping malls halted merchandise sales, and the game lost more than 1.2 million followers across its official accounts in the week following the announcement, per third-party monitoring cited by Beijing Business Daily. How did ‘Love and Deepspace’ become China’s top ‘otome’ game? Criticism aside, the game did not become a top title by accident. In 2024, China’s female-oriented gaming market reached 8 billion RMB ($1.1 billion), up 124.1% year on year, per research firm Gamma Data — far outpacing the broader industry. Papergames had already proved with its 2017 title Mr Love: Queen’s Choice that female players would spend real money on fictional male characters, and invest real emotion in them too. The five male leads were engineered to appeal across different fantasies, with distinct careers, looks and emotional registers. That two-way attachment between character and player is the core moat of otome games. It is also why the backlash became so fierce when trust collapsed. Beyond the game itself, a stream of collaborations — Molly Tea, KFC, Fanta, intangible cultural heritage paper-cutting, Luoyang palace lanterns — turned players’ attachment into merchandise, themed cafés and offline exhibitions, with a new tie-up almost every month. This is not the company’s first crisis. In 2020, Papergames’ dress-up game Shining Nikki removed hanbok-styled items after a cross-border culture dispute between Chinese and South Korean players, triggering a player exodus and the closure of its Korean server. Players of female-oriented games scrutinize characters, values and the company behind them. The deeper the investment, the stronger the backlash when expectations break. What does the crisis mean for brand collaborations? When game content touches two red lines — national memory and women’s safety — any explanation begins to sound shallow. Three apologies did not calm the backlash; they deepened it. Collaborations rest entirely on players’ trust in the characters. Once the IP triggers a crisis, every business built around the idea of “being loved” begins to shake, and partner brands risk damage to their own image, not just lower conversion. Brands that signed deals for the game’s reach among tens of millions of female consumers now face a decision: push ahead or call it off. That is a risk-management problem, not a marketing one. Trust in an emotion-driven IP is accumulated slowly and spent fast. Traffic can be borrowed and heat can be manufactured, but once trust collapses, everything built on it has to be revalued.

China’s top ‘otome’ game lost 70 million hearts in 10 days

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag

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China’s top ‘otome’ game lost 70 million hearts in 10 days

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag