Love and Deepspace is one of the biggest games in the world. Somehow, I never saw any footage of Chinese developer Papergames’ sci-fi fantasy otome game until last year, when some of its immaculately produced sex scenes started to fill my feeds, and by then the game was already being played by over 50 million people worldwide. Now, nearly a year later, the game has surpassed 80 million downloads, and fans of its pretty boys and its angsty science fiction mystery have poured over a billion dollars into its gacha mechanics. But in the past few months, Love and Deepspace’s community has had a lot more eyes on it thanks to a controversy that got the game’s new werewolf love interest, Valko, canceled before he could even arrive.
There are a lot of reasons this happened, including but not limited to concerns from the Chinese government that the character’s promotional material glorified breaking and entering. But as the online controversy has spread, other sides of the game’s player base beyond those debating over Valko have come into focus and find themselves facing new scrutiny outside of the Love and Deepspace community.
Trouble behind the scenes
On July 10, GameSpot’s Jessica Cogswell posted an essay about how she was finally “breaking up” with Love and Deepspace’s pantheon of love interests, citing the cancellation of Valko and Papergames’ handling of it as a major factor in her decision. However, she also told a story about how, while covering the game’s second anniversary event in New York City this past January, she was asked by PR, accompanied by an employee from publisher Infold, to not include footage of any male fans at the event in her coverage, for fear that it might lead to the perception that Love and Deepspace embraces gay relationships.
Cogswell tells Kotaku that the event’s attendees were “overwhelmingly female,” but that there was still a “much smaller percentage” of men present. She says the event staff was “very sympathetic” and seemed to know that trying to put such restrictions on a member of the press “was a ridiculous ask,” and she declined to comply. After this exchange, Cogswell says she was met with “a heightened level of supervision” for the rest of the show.
“The extra monitoring involved my PR handlers essentially following me a bit closer than they had been,” she says. “Whenever I did break away, they kind of acted like they urgently needed to get back to me when other press members were not being treated the same way.”
Cogswell also says that ever since Infold started handling PR internally earlier this year following the event, she has received “far less outreach” and fewer coverage opportunities, though she’s unsure if this is related to what happened at the event.
As a gay man who has spent much of his life fawning over a digital boyfriend or two, I was frankly shocked to hear a company make such a request, but I can be charitable and say there is some nuance here. Papergames is a Chinese company, and the laws around media that depict queer relationships are much more strict in China, with some creators having even been subjected to jail time for breaking “obscenity laws.”
A self-policing community
But Love and Deepspace is an international game, and arguments about it being held to a different cultural standard get much more complicated when it is actively pushing out members of its worldwide community. It doesn’t stop at asking a member of the press to not film men at an NYC event; it’s a virus infecting other parts of the game’s community far outside China. Even in digital spaces, official Love and Deepspace community hubs and contests have restrictions on content that ships its various male love interests together. The official subreddit has a rule against same-sex or BL (boys’ love) content as a whole.
Rule 9: No BL Content
Posting and/or commenting BL content is not allowed on this subreddit. This includes images, discussions, links, etc. All posts referencing, showing, or discussing BL content will be removed immediately.
It doesn’t get much more clear than that. Yet Love and Deepspace has a queer community, one that Infold and Papergames don’t seem to want people to know about and one that is often chased off by subsets of the game’s straight female fandom. As such, some queer men who try to join the official channels are unaware that this isn’t just a cultural problem of homophobia within the community, but one that its developers are trying to maintain. At least, until they encounter it for themselves.
Kaine, a transmasc queer man, tells Kotaku that he and his partner decided to create their own discord for queer Love and Deepspace players and allies that want to discuss the game’s romantic conquests and ship characters of any coupling.
“There is a certain anxiety that comes with interacting with the fandom, especially with the main and official channels,” he says. “Because I’ve seen negative reactions to men interacting with the game, and the idea of the love interests [interacting] romantically with men.”
Love and Deepspace is a game about heterosexual relationships, and it caters specifically to women in a way that not many games do. So there is a sentiment among some of those female fans that men, even queer ones, appreciating the game and taking part in the community represent a kind of intrusion. One fan, who asked to remain anonymous because of “how ill-intentioned some [Love and Deepspace] fans can be” when the game is criticized, shared screenshots with Kotaku of a series of interactions he received on the game’s subreddit after expressing his appreciation for the game as a gay man. While he says that he publicly received some positive comments, privately, he started to get harassed.
“I was surrounded with beautiful reactions and comments and then my DMs started flooding with insults or stuff like ‘Why do you need to say you’re a gay man?’ ‘Why do you play this? It’s not BL?’ Or even a message stating that I was ‘invading’ a safe space dedicated to women.”
While he says that he wasn’t surprised by some of the homophobia, as he’d been told that some fans in the community “were a bit too much,” what did surprise him is that the Love and Deepspace subreddit removed his thread under the pretense of helping his “well-being in the community,” as the moderators claimed in a direct message that they “saw the potential for targeted behavior beginning to escalate.” He tells Kotaku that he doesn’t buy it.
“What shocked me was that the moderation team pretended to care about my safety by locking my thread and removing it from Reddit when my thread mainly received positive reactions,” he tells Kotaku. “It made me feel like this was an attempt of ‘gay erasure’ by pretending to care, and, in a way, play a narrative of being the good guy to get rid of the ‘thread from the gay guy.’”
Queer men are looking to appreciate Love and Deepspace for what it is
Plenty of people of all genders do ship same-sex couples in fandom, but the queer men Kotaku spoke to said they had no misconception that Love and Deepspace was meant to be a queer game or directly cater to that demographic. Leo, a transmasc Love and Deepspace fan, said that even if the game wasn’t going to gesture at queerness, he found ways to still bring part of himself to the experience without expecting the game to bend to it.
“I knew that I’d have to play as a woman in the game, which doesn’t really bother me, though of course I would’ve preferred to play as a man,” he says. “I ended up thinking of my main character as a trans woman, just to sort of cut through the cishet-ness of it all. It doesn’t always work, as the game is oddly fixated on your period, but other than that I was able to live in that fantasy.”
Despite the heterosexual lens, Hawke, a trans man, feels like the game is written for anyone who likes men, and has plenty to offer even if you’re not a straight woman.
“Though it’s more than a little tiring sometimes to deal with the constant she/hers and feminine outfits, at the end of the day it does feel like it’s a game written for people who like men regardless of gender,” he says. “It’s the sign of a good otoge, in my opinion. The story and lore are fascinating, not to mention the overarching mysteries about what the main character truly is and her place in this world’s future. I still very deeply love what the writers are going for, and the way all the main characters shine is one of the game’s strengths. I legitimately did a major 180 on [love interest] Caleb in particular due to the game’s writing.”
There is potential for the game to tap into broader appeal, but the effort made by the game’s official channels to dissuade players from discussing or posting M/M content suggests it has no interest in doing so. Leo says that at first the rules against BL content felt “vaguely homophobic,” but wrote them off as the company “wanting to stick to canon storylines.” Looking back, he thinks it goes far deeper.
“I wouldn’t say it affected my relationship with the game, as I generally don’t let fan drama affect the way I feel about what I play, watch, and read,” he says. “I’ve only recently realized it was way more than fan drama, and it was really disheartening to realize that I’m not just thoughtlessly excluded, which I’m used to, but that there seems to be a general vibe of disgust toward people like me.”
The Anime Expo interactive event
The reputation of both the game’s developer and its community have raised suspicion about the treatment of male fans at other public events and fan celebrations. At this year’s Anime Expo, Love and Deepspace had an interactive booth where cosplayers dressed as each of the game’s love interests were stationed, though Valko’s planned space was conspicuously vacant. Fans could have brief interactions with them similar to something you’d see at a theme park character meetup. Those interested had to sign up ahead of time and be selected as part of a lottery, so not everyone got a chance to meet and greet. However, according to attendees Kotaku spoke to, it appears that no men were selected to participate, despite the sign-up form asking for the person’s gender.
Though there was no stated rule against male participants, some speculate that asking for fans’ genders may have been part of a hidden filtering process. The official rules referred to attendees as “Miss Hunters;” however, this name is often used to refer to Love and Deepspace player characters, so it’s unclear if this is meant to imply that men couldn’t participate or if it was just a shorthand for referring to fans. Some of the restrictions for the event were communicated clearly, such as participants not being allowed to cosplay other characters in Love and Deepspace, which an anonymous attendee tells Kotaku they theorize is to prevent fans from creating any kind of shipping content between two of the game’s men. Thus far, Kotaku has not been able to find any photos or videos of male attendees having one-on-one interactions with the game’s official character stand-ins as part of the Love and Deepspace Anime Expo showcase, so we asked multiple folks who were present and got the same answer.
“I was at the booth almost every day and also noticed that I did not see any men, or even many visibly masculine-presenting attendees, participating in the cosplayer interactions,” one of the Anime Expo attendees told Kotaku.
A second Anime Expo patron who put “other” when asked for a gender on the form tells Kotaku that they were not picked, nor were others they knew of who picked the third option on the gender dropdown. They also tell Kotaku they heard stories about the booth not even letting some male fans take photos with standees, though their male partner was allowed to take one. Kotaku reached out to Infold and Papergames for clarity on the situation and didn’t hear back before publication.
Why Love and Deepspace’s fans are protective of the game
But why do some Love and Deepspace fans care so much if queer men like the game? Well, as the game is one of the few big-budget, super-successful games marketed specifically toward women, any feeling that it could be catering to a different demographic feels like a safe space being threatened. In this case, some female fans have even gone so far as to demand that Papergames and Infold “confirm” that all the men are straight, lest a boycott ensue. Hawke theorizes that the game is designed to breed this type of attachment, and that it may even be predatory considering its gacha mechanics.
“While to some it might seem obvious, the game is a lot of people’s first foray into otoges and dating sims centered on a male-loving gaze,” Hawke says. “The game is hardwired from the get go to make you fall for the boys in ways I have never seen otoges even try. From the first-person POV to the fact [characters] will message you if you don’t log on for sometimes as short as a week, to the period cycle tracking and the one-on-one conversations where you can have them introduce themselves to friends and family as your boyfriend, the game is scarily good at emotionally manipulating lonely people, particularly lonely, or unfulfilled women.
“It’s the same psychological trick host clubs use, but this time with absurdly cruel gambling mechanics (even for gacha games) and men literally too perfect to exist,” he continues. “I don’t think a lot of people realize just how damaging that is to someone, and while I’m not condoning the fandom’s behaviors, I think that there should be a modicum of sympathy. VIPs, big spenders, they’re whaling on an emotional connection that can literally never be truly fulfilled. The game is absurdly profitable because the company benefits from having a highly intimate, highly parasocial game. Infold and Papergames are now realizing the price of that parasocial Pandora’s box they created and opened.”
The anonymous fan says that Love and Deepspace’s fan devotion comes from a lack of competition, as games like it are rarely at this level of production quality.
“There’s no real competitor officially out yet,” he says. “It needs to inspire some competition, who knows maybe a western company will dare to make a worthy competitor and show that they can officially embrace gamers from all horizons.”
The fear that men might be encroaching on a women-led space extended to the backlash against Valko. Some criticism around the addition of a new love interest was rooted in fear that he was taking development resources away from the other five boys, but others felt his design was catering to a western beauty standard and was specifically meant to attract men to the game. Which, I mean, he was the only character in the game that moved the needle for me, so maybe they were on to something. Kaine says he was “happy and excited” for the character to join the roster of datable dudes, but that was replaced by disappointment after his eventual cancellation.
“The backlash, especially the referencing to MLM, was disheartening,” he says. “It made no sense. Every single character in LADS could contend with the same concept. They all have their cards that tailor to a specific ‘fantasy.’ To introduce the wolf character is no different than that. Not to mention, the reaction by fans was taken too far.”
Valko’s design getting so much criticism put some of the issues present in the community into perspective for Hawke, who says claims that the werewolf character looks like he is made for western or gay audiences don’t actually have any basis in reason, so he doesn’t acknowledge them.
“There are other criticisms that I do take more seriously, such as the lack of melanin in the characters, the same-face-ness of them, how they aren’t allowed to be under 6′ tall despite the fact their models are of wildly different heights, because those tend to be rooted in real discussions about character design and the nature of attraction to said designs,” Hawke says. “Criticisms like [him being made for western or gay audiences] aren’t in good faith, in my eyes, and don’t seek to have a real conversation about the purpose of character designs. So I ignore them, to put it bluntly.”
The anonymous fan I spoke to says that Love and Deepspace was, intentionally or not, already catering to queer men in its established designs long before Valko showed up.
“I’d simply say that [fans] should look at the actual roster where two out of them look more like baby gay twinks than actual straight gentlemen,” he says.
Papergames is caught between Chinese laws and an international audience
But as Papergames and Infold’s attempts to chase out any whiff of queerness have come under fire, they have also received some defense, with some fans arguing that the team may be trying to avoid the ire of the Chinese government. While the queer men Kotaku spoke to understand that reality, they also note that Love and Deepspace is much bigger than China at this point.
“I’d say it’s a strange catch-22,” Hawke says. “While it’s understandable they’d want to work within the framework of their nation’s laws—I wouldn’t fault them for that—if a company wants to market globally, they have to understand the global market’s desires. They can’t really win if they want a global market because fans will be mad if they do and mad if they don’t. I don’t envy the developers and other teams trying to navigate around strict censorship laws. The fact they’ve gotten away with what they have so far is frankly a miracle.”
Kaine says it’s possible to hold space for both the challenges faced by a Chinese company and the disappointment queer fans feel without minimizing the latter.
“Cultural context can explain why certain choices are made, but it does not mean queer fans have to feel completely satisfied with them or avoid expressing criticism,” Kaine says. “For me, it is possible to be understanding of Papergames’ circumstances while still hoping the game becomes more inclusive where it realistically can.”
Leo says that Love and Deepspace has previously gotten around China’s NSFW laws despite its sexual content, so it already feels like the game is playing with fire.
“I knew it was a Chinese game going into it, so I didn’t expect much in terms of queer inclusion,” Leo says. “What I also didn’t expect, though, is how willing they were to skirt censorship laws when it came to sexual content. I’d have an easier time believing it was just censorship laws and not homophobia if I didn’t just experience a five-star memory of Rafayel fingering the main character in a hot spring, going so far as to show vaginal fluid stringing between his fingers. If they can do that, I wouldn’t think it would be a big deal to show that there are male fans of the game, unless of course the company is actively homophobic.”
Is there still a place for queer men in the Love and Deepspace community?
Despite it all, queer sides of the Love and Deepspace fandom persist, though most of them are cultivating their own inclusive spaces rather than relying on official channels.
“I’ve been in otoge fandoms long enough to know that the best way to experience things is to avoid the mainstream and find your own little puddle,” Hawke says. “While the fandom as a whole isn’t super welcoming, the pockets of queer fans are all phenomenal. I’ve made some really good friends through various queer-friendly LADS Discord servers and even reconnected with old friends by chance. Same with the itty bitty roleplay community on Bluesky. Most of those who portray the [love interests] (myself included) mention on their rules that they’re open to LIxLI shipping. There’s also a (NSFW) unofficial LADS reddit (r/LoveAndDeepspaceUncut) that openly welcomes queer artists and anything else that would be banned on the official Reddit.”
While there may be some queer-inclusive spaces, Kaine still laments that the community has become fractured in this way.
“Women aren’t the only people who play the game, nor strictly 2SLGBTQ+ people either,” he says. “We need to be inclusive to everyone, and be open minded. We should support each other and enjoy content together as a team. There is no need to divide the fandom, or be hateful to any walks of life. We should all just enjoy the game together! Comments like ‘Go play a BL game if you want BL’ are insulting, considering we are understanding that LADS is a game where the MC is depicted as a female character.”
For Leo, however, there’s no going back after all he’s seen and learned.
“[The GameSpot article] was the nail in the coffin that got me to uninstall the game,” he says. “I get not highlighting us specifically, but actively erasing our presence as fans sends a clear message that they don’t want us anywhere near the game. This feels like more than just being careful around Chinese censorship law, it feels like their official stance [is] that they hate gay men.”
After the entire Valko fiasco and several instances of men either being chased out or denied entry into the Love and Deepspace community, Leo says he’s moving on, as he doesn’t believe that the game will ever acknowledge any side of the community outside of the loudest, most hostile one.
“When [Valko] was cancelled, I decided to take a break from the game until he was reinstated, because why would they throw away two years of hard work, and that’s when I started seeing the rest of the glaring homophobia and decided there was nothing they could do to bring me back,” Leo says. “I’ve seen the face behind the pretty boys, and it’s sneering at me in disgust. No thank you.”
