#flamularants

Me onward from July 1st : looking directly at infold and papergames ceo for all the extra stress they've thrown into my life after fucking up my stress relief game:

Something about Valko's initial release has been bugging me and I've been turning it around in my head since the cancellation like I'm Benoit Blanc in Knives Out and I haven't been able to shake off this thing that's just been gnawing at me.

so don the Tinfoil hats, its time for a

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ CONSPIRACY THEORY .𖥔 ݁ ˖

**let it be known I have had to type this whole thing TWICE THRICE bc tumblr deleted my draft THRICE 🫩 new conspiracy theory, infold fucking knows im onto them **

**Please keep in mind this is just a theory a game theory and I have no solid evidence to support it, just speculation. No Witch hunts please. Don't go attacking Archosaur Games, don't go attacking people that want to play Silent Whispers, this is all just speculation **

So, word on the street back in January/February was that infold LaDS management (or dev team) changed a while ago when players noticed a dip in the writing quality of the cards. Long term players mainly noticed the change and theorized about the development - adjusts tin foil hat but what if one of the new managers/upper management for LaDS was secretly working with Tencent/Archesaur and decided to corporate espionage & sabotage LaDS bc of how successful it was and pushed around the timing for releases to completely break the game (and maybe mess with some of the code to bug tf out of the game )

Now hear me out!

Maybe I've watched too many episodes of Criminal Minds and Leverage and too many conspiracy theory rabbit holes at 2 am on Wikipedia and - ok I am totally familiar with upper management being disconnected from the target customers/audience/etc. I've had plenty of jobs where I got to witness upper management only forming bad blood with the majority of employees and alienating customers.

However, everything about valko's initial announcement was just so . . . blasé and unprofessional.

I wasn't around for Caleb and Sylus's releases, but as others have mentioned, they were heavily hinted at and referenced in the main story, hell Caleb was released 5 months after Sylus, who was released 7-8 months after the game initially launched. Why wait so long for the last and just throw him out without any main story preamble? Why take that kind of risk with the kind of investment that Valko is?

Because here is the thing, Infold didn't snap their fingers and Valko appeared. Valko was the result of 2 years of hard work from concept artists, 3D artists, 3D modelers, writers, 3D riggers, 3D animators, mo-cap actors, several voice actors, storyboarders (bc thats how game companies plan out scene visuals), etc, and so much time, effort, resources, and, most importantly, money. Not even to mention the future cards and events that the dev team has already finished that were ready to go and planned for release with Valko's debut.

So why on Earth would infold ever take any kind of risk with the drop of their next multi-million dollar product?

in any other field, any other industry, a product with this amount of resources poured into it would not be allowed to fail. The launch would be meticulously planned with marketing and PR ready for any backlash and to make the public love the product.

Now, we all know that's not what happened.

Longterm players were angry that none of the issues with the game had fixes announced. The pervasive issues with the lighting, back to back banners, lack of updates for the choco shop, lack of updates for abyssal chaos and unicorns operations, lack of updates for journal, missing content for caleb and sylus, barely any main story updates, and overall dismissal of player concerns angered many. A small but very vocal minority of players attacked infold and valko directly. The whole promo week was a complete disaster. And, aside from the more extreme reaction from the toxic vocal minority, anyone could have guessed that the release of a 6th Love interest at this time with no build up would crash and burn.

So why couldn't those in charge of Valko's release see that?

This kind of unmitigated PR nightmare of a mess could only end in disaster for whoever pushed his release through.

but the only people in control of that and banner releases and version releases would be upper management or someone in a position close to upper management. It wouldn't be hard for one of them to push Main Story updates back in favor of back to back banners. It wouldn't be hard to push back Valko's launch if you are in charge of release dates or have proximity to power. It wouldn't be hard for someone in close proximity to upper management to make suggestions to encourage uppers to ignore dev, marketing, PR, or player feedback, bc we'll 'do anything or pay any amount for another hot guy, the main story doesn't matter, what matters is maximizing the most profits'

After all a fuck up of this magnitude can only result in those responsible for the pacing and release dates and completely drop in revenue and destruction of Infold's reputation in the gaming world and real world getting fired.

Who would be willing to risk the launch of a product (character) their company poured so much time, money, and resources into for such a casual drop. To anybody that cares about this game (or their job) these choices infold made surrounding valko's release are baffling. [not even addressing the fallout, just the initial launch]

Unless you already have something lined up or a different one waiting for you to return to. . .

Now, once again, i am NOT encouraging anyone to do any witch hunts or go after any other companty mentioned here. DO. NOT.

buuuuuuuuuut

Infold/Paper games had a sordid history with 2 major players in this plot.

First with have Archosaur, the game dev company behind Silent Whispers.

And we have Tencent.

So how are they related? Archosaur recently released the PV for their game Silent Whispers back on April 27 2026. It generated hype and looked pretty good, however it didn't show much of the game, just clips of the characters and, as the elephant in the room, we got Alarik, who many critiqued as looking like a rip off of Sylus. And TBH he does look like a mirrored Sylus with blue eyes and fire powers. The other boys did remind players of the LaDS LIs, but there are tropes in otome, LaDS doesn't own the existence of pretty boys looking tragic or hot 3D men, but there were some similarities that had of a lot of LaDS players were side eyeing these details, buuuut many were excited for more hot fictional men to add to the harem and to explore the open world game. After the PV dropped, many people went about their lives.

As a side note, Tencent has a large stake in the success of Silent Whispers - 17% to be exact.

Now here is the thing, Infold/PaperGames has had lawsuits with both companies in recent years.

In 2025, Infold won a lawsuit against Archosaur to the tune of 150K RMB (~ aprox $22,000) for trademark infringement using the hashtags for 'infinity nikki' 'love nikki' 'shining nikki' etc for their game 'Life Makeover'. The Nikki dress up games series have been a popular and lucrative IP for infold for years, with the OG love nikki coming out in 2017. ((I had actually played this game for a few years F2P until my account got nuked bc I got a new phone and the facebook acct i connected it to got deleted or locked. honestly i'm still not sure bc i keep getting emails for the account i can't log in to)) The subsequent games in the nikki series have all been successful.

Infold has also won a lawsuit against Tencent in recent memory as well. And won.

Tencent also has a reputation for using 'water armies' and questionable campaigns against competitors, such as bots and online campaigns.

Now here is the thing, the general conciseness is that the overall reason Valko was canceled (from what we can gather) is that he was the target of mass waves of hate - loud vocal online toxic minority and bots making tons of posts, the safety of infold employees - the death threats, funeral flowers, and cow dung sent to their offices, and mass reporting of the game to the CN version of the Consumer Protections for fraud (mass false reports bwt). There was also the issue with the number in Xavier's story, which had been out since April and was only now catching heat. Along with a mass bullying campaign towards CN players that were interested in Valko and a mass misinformation campaign to claim that Valko SAs the MC and is a reference to a murder case. This whole issue tanked the game's rep and Infold's rep and likely generated pressure for infold to cancel his release. These are all the events we can agree on based on the turn of events.

Now, the tanking reputation among players and prospective players and betrayal we all felt actually worked well in Silent Whispers' favor, as many players claimed they were done with the game and had just per-registered for Silent Whispers.

So what if this whole series of events are related? What if an upper manager or someone close to an upper manager was secretly working for Tencent or Archosaur - tho most likely Tencent. They've been secretly sabotaging the game to leave an opening - the long breaks in between the Main Story, player discontent with Quality of Life features we've all been asking for, leaving in that number in Xavier's World Underneath story and giving it the green light to be published DESPITE it being a number that a Chinese Company making a game mainly focused on a Chinese market SHOULD KNOW to avoid, and - most notably completely fumbling Valko's release and giving the marketing and PR the green light to use certain phrases that would rub a Chinese audience the wrong way - letting a wolf into your house being a euphemism for something related to SA as as apparently well known Chinese saying, and 'not sitting in a boiling pot' seemingly referencing a real lift murder case in recent memory. These are things PR should have caught and not allowed to be published. AGAIN, Valko being an important product release for Infold and LaDS, with thousands if not millions invested in his character, the fact that these questionable choices even made it off the cutting room floor is baffling bc fumbling this release would cost Infold millions (and it hasssss) and for anyone it would result in getting fired. LaDS makes Infold SO much money. It makes Shanghai SO much in taxes. Now word on the street is that devs and likely PR tried to tell Upper management to NOT release Valko yet, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is true.

Bc of Valko's cancellation, players feel betrayed by infold. They feel like their trust with the company is broken and their consumer protections were violated. Global players feel more spurned and like their opinions on the game don't matter bc LaDS caters to the CN audiance first and foremost as they ((AGAIN the loud and toxic minority)) Many claimed they were done with Chinese based games all together, others decided they were done with infold and went running to Silent Whispers in hopes of a better player experience. Because of the controversy, LaDS also pulled out of BillibilliWorld for the safety of their players and cosplayers, which left most of the attention to the Silent Whispers booth, giving them more marketing and attention that they likely would not have gotten if LaDS was there, bc the attention would have been focused on the LaDS display like last year.

Another thing to take into account is that Asian companies are GENERALLY risk averse compared to (for example) American Companies. Rage Baiting your customers and marketing via controversy is much more of an American thing and wouldn't have the desired effect in the Chinese market. I'm not a marketing professional nor am i in PR, but this is what I've gathered from people that are in those professions.

A fuck up of this magnitude would result in whoever made this call getting fired right out of the company. A career ender for sure.

Unless that person already had something to fall back on.

Unless that person already had a job lined up to return to after the fall out.

Perhaps to another successful game company

Perhaps to another (projected future) successful otome game or another game company owned by another large and successful parent company who has previously had beef with Infold?

I'm calling it right here right now, this whole mess is a resault of corporate espionage and sabotage! ((plus many poor choices on infold's part, we not letting them off easy either))

So i keep getting posts from a group that is opposed to valko recommenced to me on reddit

Only reason I haven't muted them yet is bc i wanna see them freak out when valko returns.

Annnnnnyway i just got a post from them pop up and its about one of the users freaking out bc a player on twitter did a little divination reading with some bones.

Now bone reading as divination is a thing thats been around for a WHILE.

and this poster was calling it disturbing and promoting the use of "dark magic" and rituals with 'disturbing objects" and 'this is why people are calling your community a cult' and bro i am waaaaaaaay too old and into 'spooky' things for me to take this shit seriously, and this group throws around the term 'cult' far to casually for my own liking, given their own echo chamber.

What year is this, 1644?

is it the satanic panic again?

PLEASE spare me the good christian values for a game where you can romance a merman, a dragon/vampire/fiend, an alien, and def engage in premarital sex.

So to balance out their weird negative energy, i encourage everyone to get a pack of tarot cards and use them so they get used to your energy!

That PV was released in April.

It has been 2.5 months.

I may not be a professional game dev but I do know a few things about the game and animation industry and abt how long it takes to do certain things and how many things need to be done to animate a 3D model bc I did learn how to 3D model and make SIMPLE animations back when I was in college. Again, not a professional but I have an ear on the industry.

Now to start off, LaDS began development back in 2020, its global release was Jan 2024. The game was in the full dev stage for 3 years. Because of the work, time, and money that goes into a project like lads, certain things would be planned during that dev stage, like how many love interests there would be, their general/rough character arcs, design concepts, backstory development, overall storyline, what game mechanics to implement an plan for, etc. and that's not including the visuals of the game, just writing stuff and game direction.

For those that are unfamiliar, 3D modeling has a lot of stages and takes a lot of time. While it is quicker and more flexible than 2D in a lot of aspects, 3D models require a lot of set up. Once the character design is finalized or their first main design has been greenlit by higher ups, modelers have to build the model. Then there may be some custom sculpting to get things just right. After that the model needs to be re-topologized - this changes the topology of the model to make it more friendly for whatever rendering engine the model will be used in. For example, older games have simple topology bc older consoles could only render so many polygons before the graphics card sets itself on fire. (LoZ ocarina of time vs BotW) Over time consoles and rendering engines have evolved and developed to support more polygons, however, bc a ot of video games render in real time bc of the interactivity among other things.

Once the topology is good, a rig and bones are set up to move about the model like a puppet.

Once thats good, the basic model wil be UV unwrapped. This helps distribute texture on the model. This alone is a pain in the ass and has to be done carefully or it will need to be redone. several times. and if it needs to be redone it will be very noticable. Once that is done, texture is applied.

Then things like hair and clothes get modeled and the same treatment.

Now the thing about LaDS is that the dev team also went though a lot of work developing programs for the skin texture and hair texture/physics for the characters. the guys are also animated by mocap, which involves a human puppeting the model and acting for the model.]

then there's actually animating the scenes. According to an interview/article i can't find rn, the dev team spends about 3-4 months making the animations for the game aka the kindled scenes. this isn't to say anything about even doing he lighting, lip synch, and the troubleshooting that goes hand in hand with 3D modeling.

so considering there must be at least 2-3 teams working on different banners simultaneously in order to crank banners out at the speed infold is going, valko was not a spur of the moment thing to rip off silent whispers.

valko's character would have been in development for at least a little while in order for infold to model him, animate him for his trailers, make his animated bond story(ies), make his free 5* cards that would be in the standard pool, make all his cafe animations, claw machine animations, battle animations, standard myth animations, at home animations, the recording and voicelines for him and his falling for you and secret time stories, etc.

like sorry to burst your bubble guys, but Valko couldn't be a petty retaliatory pawn just bc Silent Whispers also has a werewolf character.

Is his reveal sudden and without much foreshadowing? yes. is infold flawless? absolutely not

There is just so much work that goes into everything for this game. infold has PLENTY of issues with the game they need to correct, but I know valko's existance is not one of them. his delivery and pitch to the players? yes. His concept and character? nope!.

And they just boggle my mind.

------ warning, this is mostly a rant/vent, so feel free to ignore -------

-----------------or join me and complain abt this ish in the comments -----------------

((and also I've been rambling about this all to my irl friends and I think as this point they may be getting sick of me bringing this all up so Imma just get this out of my system here))

ya know how i said 2 weeks ago i'd be barely around for just the 2 weeks.

yeah thats gonna be longer bc life threw a new mess into my lap.

lowkey wishing i had a competent fictional pretty boy to help me with the mess and stress, but ya know, that's life ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I do have like 3 or 4 wips in my notes app tho so maybe expect something soon maybe?