(Insert Witty Name Here)

The western side of the fandom is upset about the lack of content for Caleb and Sylus, lack of communication, no ways to farm diamonds sustainably, functions gathering dust (chocolate shop)

And the Chinese side of fandom was upset about the distasteful homicide case reference and unit 731 reference

And instead of addressing anything properly they just…

Kill Valko, and pretend non of the other issues exist? While pitting the fandoms against each other.

Hello anon! Yes, that's the jist of it. Though I would like to correct the former, the Chinese side is also upset about the lack of Sylus and Caleb content along with the other things.

I'm utmost certain that cancelling Valko had nothing to do with players being upset with everything else. They were very firm about releasing him regardless of the fandom opinions from the way they were operating across platforms. Introducing new LIs from a business's perspective is very profitable.

Things began to turn south after Unit 731 references were getting picked up with the other issues. News outlets in China that have government backgrounds began to report about it, this is pretty serious from a political point of view. They immediately released a statement (note: not an apology) on the Chinese side regarding getting it changed. It's very sly of them to keep this information away from the western side given the severity of it. Because up until this point, they literally couldn't care less about the players' opinions.

Unit 731 is a very horrific part of history that people take seriously. It would be similar to making a Nazi reference in the game. Paper clearly had a big scare because the whole game could get cancelled if it got out of hand furthermore.

From their perspective, it's probably easier to sacrifice him to settle the "bigger" issue as a way to shut the Chinese side up. Obviously, nobody on the non-Chinese side had a clue this was happening.