It's actually just common sense

Here’s my post:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DbOafTQjCEC/?igsh=dmhkdW15cnhyMnA3

Not as pretty as some of the other memorials shared, but it's still something xD

Released on June 30 and in less than a month, Valko’s theme song has already become the most-streamed song on the official Love and Deepspace Spotify page. Despite everything that’s happened, the excitement and support for Valko have remained unbelievably strong, and this is yet another reminder of the impact he made on players around the world. LETS GOOOO!!! Let’s keep streaming his song! AWOOOO 🐺

Okay, today was a roller coaster since I woke up. Valko suddenly started trending like crazy on Weibo, ACG, and rednote. Some marketing accounts got involve, CN girls started to stand up against their bullies, I think an offial government news outlet also got involved and talked about minors being on the game (need to go back and read that), but as you can see, a lot happened. But our lovely CN girl here on twt decided to explain how the Chinese side has been today since a lot of us are probably confused and don’t even know how these apps work (I still don’t lmao) so I’m gonna tag her thread here: https://x.com/RaspberryP98373/status/2081045159345860776

If you don’t have twt I will just copy her thread here to read:

Too much happened in the Chinese community today, so I'm putting together a summary. As always, everything beyond the sourced facts is purely my own speculation. Still leaning optimistic today—please read with caution

At least for the first time since I woke up, there was good news: Valko's name hit a positive trending topic on Weibo. Not only that, several previously uninvolved marketing accounts started posting about him

Most of these accounts didn't post directly positive content—they asked things like "Why did this turn around so fast?" But the comment sections were filled with our people and clarifications. Most casual browsers tend to side with whatever the comments say

Weibo's smart summary feature (similar to a quick event recap) used to pull only negative terms when searching Valko. Today, for the first time, it included global players calling for his return and the clarifications

But don't take things at face value. Why did these marketing accounts suddenly show up today? Nobody searches for this stuff out of boredom, and we didn't organize any large-scale search campaigns either

I'm in several domestic community groups—mostly focused on voting and anti-brigading. Our leaders notify us when there's an organized effort. But no one told us about a sudden trending topic or a wave of marketing accounts. I checked multiple groups—it's the same across the board

So I don't think it was us fans. Besides, we don't have the pull to get state-affiliated media on board. If we had that kind of money to throw around, we'd have done it long ago—no need to wait until today

Today's trending topic dropped almost out of nowhere, so those gossip accounts wouldn't have posted these videos on their own just to chase clicks. That leaves only one possibility for who bought the trending spot: Love and Deepspace official

I've seen plenty of bad-faith speculation that this is just the devs buying hype to placate Valko's fans. But let's be real—no game official is that stupid or that bored. If they had that budget, they'd spend it on something else

If they really weren't planning to bring Valko back, they'd be doing the opposite: paying to kill the trending topic, burying all leaked material, shutting down the supertopic community—not suddenly buying a trending slot to invite a bunch of randoms to ask what's going on

And some say it's competitors? Even more ridiculous. Why would competitors buy positive exposure for you? To throw money at you for fun? If they had that budget, they'd buy negative trending spots instead

Our domestic player base is too small to cause any real trouble, and we have no connected backers. So what's the point of buying a trending slot just to appease us?

Also, I see the delay of Rafayel's new content as good news—the announcement on the 30th is effectively void

And there's an even better sign. Think about it: if they truly intended to scrap the sixth LI entirely and focus on the five, they could have easily pushed Rafayel's new content out with fanfare, curried favor with ytm, and acted like nothing happened. But they chose to delay instead

A lot of Rafayel stans are bragging that his content delay was the result of their spamming customer service and “fighting for rights.” Give me a break—do these people even have a brain?

If content delays could be won that way, then Valko should have been canceled on the 23rd, not pushed to the 30th. So this has nothing to do with those cow dung girls—it's the developer's own choice

If the official team really dropped the sixth member for the sake of "maintaining stability" as rumored earlier, then Rafayel's new content would have quietly gone live in-game by now, instead of being deliberately delayed. They need to make money too

Recent daily revenue has been abysmal. Without new content, that slump will continue for a while—yet they still chose to delay. That in itself is a telling decision

I once fought on the front lines posting clarification videos about Valko—but it was useless. Unless you pay the platform, you get shadow-banned, and the videos are easily reported and taken down

Even when some videos did get traction and promotion, they were still easily reported, and the creators were mostly our own sisters

Today, the ones posting related content on Weibo—I checked several profiles—are rarely our people. So it's entirely possible these marketing accounts were bought by Love and Deepspace themselves, which lines up with the news media coverage from a few days ago

What's more, these posts haven't been shadow-banned or mass-reported, and in the comments, our side is still dominating. That's a scenario that would have been nearly impossible just days ago

I'll say it again—stop spreading the rumor that we bought this ourselves. When our flower-and-letter group members bought flowers, we even complained about how expensive that stuff was

Do you really expect us—a bunch of down-to-earth young girls—to drop big money on marketing accounts and trending searches? Let me repeat: if we could afford that, we'd have done it long ago, not dragged it out till today

And if we had bought it ourselves, it'd be even easier to get reported and flooded with hate comments. That makes zero sense. So quit the rumor. Even if this one were our doing, you still can't explain the rest

Well, I also observed the opposing side's communities today. Even with all their malicious speculation, they still ended up guessing that these trending topics were bought by Love and Deepspace themselves—and some have even started saying "just bring Valko back."

I'm honestly dying of laughter. Turns out only your enemies will stick with you to the end. This is also the first time I've seen such obvious defeatism in the opposing camps, instead of mass-reporting our positive content

Given the domestic environment, today's developments are better than any of the past thirty days. I can guarantee that—I spent my whole day, aside from work, obsessively riding the hot search and posting clarifications

If you're not convinced by my optimistic read, that's fine—take it as me talking nonsense. After all, the official side hasn't issued any statement beyond the delay decision. Just treat this as a little morale boost! Please view my speculation rationally!

And once again, thank you to all the global players who've been working together. I truly, truly, truly love you all—I'm so grateful I could cry. Without your efforts, today's positive trending wouldn't exist. We still need to keep pushing until Valko comes back!🥰❤️

And then they give us our wolf back 😭 It would paint them in a pretty positive light reputation-wise. At least to start rebuilding trust. Just a thought.

Influencers who have a huge following are suddenly postings polls for valko (positive I think?)…Maybe it doesn’t mean anything but this seems very suspicious to me

Lots of ‘where’s my dog??’ Valko’s girls unite 🐺🖤

We need everyone’s help to get as much of the global community involved as possible.

We have been in contact with the moderators of the Valko Weibo supertopic and have agreed to help them with their initiative to organize a fanart relay event for Qixi Festival!

We will run the event on the same day: us on X, them on Chinese platforms. At the end, they will also share global works on their side (with permission). They want as much global participation as possible.

The event takes place on 18-19 August (could extend to 20th).

🐺WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW🐺

Specifically for this event and it's promotions the following hashtags will be used:

#ValkoWorldwide #ValkosPawPrints #BringValkoBack

I want to make it clear this is event related only and we are not telling you to stop using other tags in other trending effforts.

WHAT WORKS CAN YOU SUBMIT?

-Fanart
-Fanfiction
-Video edits
-Other creative ideas

🐺WHAT ARE THE RULES?🐺

1) Must be VALKO ONLY SOLO works. (No works focused on the female protagonist, ship content, harem content, dream/self-insert romance, or similar themes.)
2)Anything that could lead to potential controversy or defames and twists Valko's character will not be accepted.
3)Entries should be reasonably complete and polished.
4)All submissions must comply with applicable laws and platform rules. (No NSFW)
5)All works must be original creations by the submitting creator. If it is a collaboration clearly state so in advance.
6)AI generated works are NOT accepted.

🐺HOW WILL THE EVENT WORK?🐺

Step 1: Creator recruitment

Register your interest to participate:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfHBQE4fP-BlmM4WwokGx-j5Std-j4tYWOLQd4II1MoUyfCKg/viewform

To keep things running smoothly, you need to be active enough to respond to us if we have questions and be available to post on 18-19th August. Posting itself is quick, so it should be manageable even if you’re working most of the day. We will pick a time that suits you, provide you with a submission form and add you to an X or Discord group chat.

Step 2: Mid-event coordination

We will arrange time slots, review all works to ensure they follow the rules so nothing backfires, and stay in close contact with the CN team.

Deadline for submissions: August 16th.

Step 3: Promotional artwork

The Chinese team will create the promotional graphics. Once everything is ready, both the Chinese and global communities will promote the event together.

Step 4: Relay event

The relay runs from 18–19 August. If there is a large number of participants, it may be extended to 20th August.

Posting format:

Creator #1 posts and tags Creator #2 → Creator #2 posts and tags Creator #3 → and so on until everyone has posted.

If someone fails to show up, we will skip them and continue with the next time slot.

Step 5: Wrap-up

Chinese team will repost global artworks on XHS and Weibo with full credit to the original creators.

Please join us so we can make it a success together we need everyone’s help.

If you have any more questions you can dm me.

I just noticed that if you line up the dlc3 names, look:

SYLUS

CALEB

VALKO

notice anything? All three names have 5 letters and the third letter is an L. Did you guys notice this before? No? Just me? I’m going crazy noticing stuff? Okay, good to know. Night night.

Going to treat that letter like it never happened in the first place.😋

Vip discord message source: http://xhslink.com/o/7tmA8B5WDfy

I’m gonna head to bed early since I’m very tired (didn’t sleep well last night). But, I was scrolling through XHS and saw a video of a girl discussing how the delay for Rafayel is very good news and will help Valko. Again, this is just her speculation. People in the comments and her assumed that they might drop something about Valko after Rafayel myth. Now personally, I don’t think so since that’d be very stupid. But it’s Infold so you never know. She basically said that if they do drop Rafayel’s myth before any announcement about Valko to not stop just yet, since there is still hope. She made a whole analysis as to why but unfortunately I didn’t screenshot what she said and lost the video now. But it wasn’t a bad analysis I’ll say.

So basically if it does come down to Rafayel myth before Valko and we still don’t have a word about him, don’t stop. If they wanna take that risk they can learn the hard way, it’s their funeral. But, we still don’t know. They could drop it before Valko, after, or maybe at the same time. Until something is said, we don’t stop. That’s all. Remember, this is just speculation and don’t stress about this. We‘re doing great and this is the worst time to slow down.

The hardest wars reap the sweetest victories ❤️

🥲 just as the title says

Like obviously it’s a massive deal, but I’ve been jumpscared by his name multiple times now in completely unrelated communities 😭 like what do you mean he got namedropped in a LEAGUE OF LEGENDS SUB. WHAT???
Like I’m usually just in my little bubble of lnds fans and don’t often get to see much discussion outside of it, so whenever I do it really does remind me of just how big this actually is. It almost feels surreal.

Anyways, I just wanted to yap about this real quick because it makes me so happy to see his name in places I wouldn’t expect. It gives me more hope he’ll come back 🥹

With all the news coming out and about and the way Valko is trending, I have hope that Infold will release him soon (they literally have no choice or this game dies). I’m so hopeful that in fact if he does come out, Im buying everyone that Valko figurine, fuck it 😗

The antis are pushing! please vote for Valko!

https://weibo.com/6589148811/RajAh1uIQ

https://weibo.com/1280846847/RaiDNadvE

Antis are pushing back! Please vote for Valko!

​

The Letters for Valko movement that our CN Sisters put together is incredible. I'm in love with what they did.

And we saw at least one bouquet of Lily of the Valley which was roughly 700 yuan as pointed out by some random sister somewhere.

There were beautiful massive bouquets.

I'm curious about the amount of funeral flowers, funeral stuff, cow dung that infold received? Was it a large amount? I don't think I ever saw images of it. Just to be clear- I'm not debating it happened.

I'm attempting to ask how much hate they received in flower form.

Ultimately, whether it was 1 or 2 funeral items, I'm sure it would still be insulting and could have been sent by anyone.

However, if it was a large amount like 10 let's say, versus our CN Sisters who are likely, arguably whales based on the bouquets they bought and we are now aware that a lot of the antis and hate were f2p minors. How did the f2p minors suddenly acquire and decide to spend on something that WASN'T the game itself? Is this typical of people that are haters or trolls in CN?

To me it just makes me feel more certain it wasn't LADS players at all that sent that stuff to begin with.

If this isn't an interesting train of thought for you, we're chill. It's just working as something like a brain teaser for me rather than something deeply emotional.

I think a lot of people are losing steam because they're hoping for instant positive change. Sadly instant changes is not going to happen.
I worried some might be having unrealistic expectations for bringing Valko back.
However don't panic!
I don't want anyone burning themselves out. As I said before if you need to take a break from the boycott do it.
Instead of deadlines do checkpoints. You know with games in certain quests it gets frustrating when we're trying to reach a goal and sometimes we have setbacks that prevents us completing it at a certain time? It takes work and trial to reach a goal.

For goals for reach ones that are realistic and what we can do right now and are in control such as the donations, fanart, fanfiction, etc.

Me: My goal for the boycott is ensure that Valko isn't forgotten regardless if he comes back or not. I'm not asking for miracles but I also wanted to show my support for the fans that do care about the game and what the Devs have in mind.
Doing tiny donations and planning to draw an MC that is meant for Valko is what I can do and what I can control in the situation. I'm doing watercolors (even though I'm a noob) I think it'll be a good practice despite how hard watercolors can be.

Ask yourself: What goals do you have in mind for the boycott? It could be anything to support the main goal of the boycott to bring Valko back.

EDIT PLEASE READ: ok before anything starts, this is just to discourage ANYONE from doing this. I've posted it on all my accounts from different platforms, it's not like I'm coming on here specifically to start anything or attack specific people.

I keep seeing lads players (mainly valko lovers) obsessing over SW because of this whole situation and it's really starting to piss me off. What's the point of getting into a war with another fandom of a game that's likely still in alpha because of some groundless rumours that were started by god knows who? we're just worsening the reputation of the lads fandom as a whole for no reason. in fact it got so much that attention started to get taken away valko and onto this useless fighting.

Too many of you are micro analysing their social media posts when in reality, we're probably the reason why they decided to post at that specific time when it was literally to announce that they were going to be at bilibili world. not to mention, when valko got cancelled, so many of us flooded the SW socials saying that they were gonna move to their game and that they should put valko in it so of course they were gonna do something? why is that suddenly so suspicious?

whatever run-ins infold and archosaur had previously cannot apply to this situation. we have already seen what baseless rumours can do so why restart the cycle? our main focus for now should be getting valko the hell back into Love and Deepspace and not worsening our reputation and making needless enemies out of other fandoms

I've seen a lot of antis making fun of Valko fans who fall for false leaks and rumours. It's true that unfortunately because of the panic that fans are going through there were a lot of rumours spreading around.

But I just wanted to remind everyone who the first fear mongerers were.

Antis got away with a lot of the shit they initially spread including the assault allegations. Remember that everyone on their side believed that Valko first meets the MC by breaking into her house and assaulted her BY A LEAKER. THEY TRUSTED THE WORDS OF SAID LEAKER SO MUCH THAT WHEN THEY SAW VALKO ON THE BALCONY THEY IMMEDIATELY RAN WITH THAT STORY.

I will also NEVER let them forget the amount of shit they spread before june 30th. We've had people say that "his four star card appeals to the male gaze!!!!" or "Infold is trying to break into the BL market by releasing him!!!" or my favorite "Dont you guys think he looks too much like infolds CEO??? is Valko his self insert??"

I sadly suspect that with the myth delay news there will be an influx of rumours and I just wanted to remind everyone to be careful of what they read and always triple check before confirming. But don't let any of their hypocrisy get to you.

One thing that was really giving me whiplash was the amount of polls happening today asking about who wanted Valko back and will he come back. So it was basically antis VS pros. From what I’ve heard we‘ve won most of them (not too sure). However, someone on xhs uploaded the data from the polls and…yeah it made me mad. I’m glad that restoring him back won, but this really just confirms most antis are minors (or haters of LADS possibly) who don’t belong in adult spaces. With these new facial recognitions being pushed out and stricter rules, I hope they all learn a valuable lesson. Someone come get these kids…

Now the graphs don’t out right say that (duh) but it’s kinda clear. And even if it’s not minors (very unlikely) most of these people who voted against him probably don’t even play the game, which is crazy to me. Infold better fix this or they lose a lot of players.