Love and Deepspace fans demand canceled Valko love interest be restored

More than 46,000 Love and Deepspace players signed a Change.org petition demanding that Valko, the game’s canceled sixth love interest, be brought back after Infold said no additional love interests will be introduced. The push has turned a cut character into a live-service flashpoint, with fans treating Valko like a content drop that was taken away after being promised.

Valko was originally planned to arrive with Version 6.0, before Infold pulled the plug after his reveal trailer sparked backlash. The criticism centered on his design and characterisation, especially from some players on the CN server, while other fans were furious that a sixth romance route had been removed from a game built around collecting and bonding with love interests. In a mobile otome title that launched globally on January 18, 2024, that kind of character demand is not small talk. It is a direct signal about what players will show up for, spend on, and organize around.

The petition numbers kept climbing. The campaign reached 160,000 signatures by July 1, 2026, then grew to 228,970 signatures, while a separate iPetitions effort titled Bring back Valko to Love and Deepspace! showed 243,069 signatures. That kind of scale matters because it shows the argument is no longer about one unpopular trailer. It is about whether a large, highly engaged audience can pressure Infold to change course after a roadmap decision has already been made.

Fans also moved beyond signatures. A tribute and mourning gathering took place outside Infold HQ in Shanghai, where supporters showed up to bid Valko farewell. At Anime Expo, community organizer Kurina helped explain how a tribute project came together, giving the campaign a visible public face beyond the usual social media churn. That kind of coordination is exactly what live-service publishers watch closely: not just how loud the backlash gets, but how organized it becomes.

Infold’s refusal to add any more love interests may settle the issue for now, but it also hardens the risk. Valko’s numbers show there is still real demand for new romance content in Love and Deepspace, and the longer a publisher ignores that kind of response, the more it signals that even a successful mobile game can lose control of its own content roadmap.