Love and Deepspace cancels Valko after fan backlash

Papergames has canceled Love and Deepspace’s planned new love interest, Valko, after backlash from players forced the studio into a public reversal. Valko was announced on June 22 and then shelved on June 30, just eight days later, before his planned debut in Version 6.0 on July 9.

The timing made the move unusually stark even by live-service standards. Valko was set up as the EonCore Tech chairman and the head of a werewolf clan, and he would have been the game’s sixth love interest. The complaint that gathered steam around him was not just that a new route was coming, but that existing love interests had not received meaningful updates while Papergames pushed ahead with expansion.

That backlash hit a game whose business depends on attachment as much as content cadence. Love and Deepspace launched globally in January 2024 and quickly became one of the biggest mobile romance titles in the field. GameSpot previously reported the game reached 50 million users in less than a year after launch, and that it brought in $400 million in 2024, including $61 million in December alone. AppMagic later estimated that the game climbed to No. 9 in China by gross revenue in 2025 and has generated more than $1 billion in user spend through gacha events.

That scale helps explain why Valko became more than a routine character reveal. In a game built around a small core cast, every new route affects how players read the whole roster. The last new love interest before Valko was Caleb, who debuted in January 2025, so the prospect of another major addition landed in a fandom that had already spent more than a year invested in the existing five.

The split that followed was immediate. Some players pushed for Valko to return, launching bring back Valko petitions after the cancellation, including one with more than 70,000 signatures and another with more than 150,000. Others had argued that the character should never have been added while older routes still felt neglected. Polygon also reported that some international fans wanted him restored while many Chinese players were far more hostile to the rollout.

That divide underscores what Papergames is handling now: not just a character schedule, but a trust problem inside a relationship game where every new route changes the balance of the whole cast. For Love and Deepspace, canceling Valko may cool the immediate anger, but it also makes one thing clear. In this fandom, even a single love interest can become a referendum on who the game is really for.