So, with regards to LADS, I've been feeling steadily more cynical as I noticed the writing quality drop after last year's management change. Even before the Valko decision — which, by the way, is an astonishing master-class in how to ruin your own intellectual property — I'd decided to financially disengage from the game.
Aside from all the other problems others have identified, it'd become quite apparent that the company's priorities had shifted significantly from creating art with genuine passion to churning out as much click-bait content to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible. The game has obviously suffered from it, and it's understandable fans would start feeling dissatisfied — that original spark is only occasionally there, these days.
That said, I think there's lessons that can be learned in all of this. One of the brilliant things about fandom is the democratisation of characters and the worlds they live in. Most fan creators aren't doing it for the money, they're putting in time and effort purely for the love of (pardon the pun) the game. And it shows. Love lingers wherever it's left. It's humanity's handprint on the cave wall and that passion can be a guide if we let it. Even if Infold deleted the game and wiped their content, they can't take away the characters that now exist in our heads, and I think that continuing to create for the joy of it is maybe the biggest 'fuck you' to the current push to reduce human connection to engagement statistics.
There's hope in this, and it's found in each other.
So make art, not content.
And don't let a company's shitty upper management take away the community you've built.