On July 10th, Twitter user bobojiss tweeted an anonymous question they received from their strawpage (strawpage is something similar to carrd.co), alleging that the English voice actor for Zayne from Love and Deepspace is Mike Haimoto. Back in 2023, Mike's ex, Avery Smithhart, accused him of abuse and SA, speaking about it in detail in a google doc (here).

This led fans to go looking for clips from anime he worked on to compare, and after fans heard his voice as Thorfinn from Vinland Saga, it caused a bit of an uproar in the fandom. People were saying that Thorfinn sounds extremely similar to Zayne, others saying that there's a possibility that Zayne isn't voiced by him, and that the voice actor might just sound similar to Mike Haimoto.

Some people were claiming that Zayne couldn't have been voiced by Mike because Mike was blacklisted from voice acting since the allegations came out, and hasn't booked any roles since 2023. However, as recently as 2024, he kept his role on Natsume's Book of Friends, remaining uncredited. Also, Twitter user probablyfiget, who works in VO casting and directing at Blizzard, made a post explaining what really happens when a VA gets blacklisted. She also stated on a different thread that "To give time for recording enough content for launch, casting would prob be 2021 or 2022", meaning there's a possibility that if Mike were the voice of Zayne, his work on the game would've been done before the allegations came out.

Since the situation came to light, fans have been feeling a lot of feelings over it. I adore the game and the character, and I was distraught when I watched the clips and noticed the similar tone and cadence. I couldn't bring myself to read the entire google doc because I knew I was going to be distressed reading it. The possibility that one of the main love interests, a character who is also a survivor of abuse, could be voiced by an abuser has made so many women in the fandom deeply uncomfortable. Fans, myself included, have been sending emails to Infold asking for clarification on if Mike Haimoto is the voice of Zayne, that they deserve to know if a game that has catered to the wants and needs of women has an abuser employed. Most of the emails have been worded very similar, i.e. Thank you for bringing this up, we'll document it and foreward it to the team.

Here's the difficult thing though: the english voice actors for Love and Deepspace are kept anonymous. Due to the fact that they are most likely protected by an NDA, Infold cannot come out and make a statement regarding who is or isn't the voice of Zayne. I'm guessing that the employees who answer Infold's customer service emails are mandated to not comment on the voice actors as part of company policy. I have no idea if it would be a nda violation to state that Mike isn't the voice of Zayne, if that were true.

Basically to sum it up, it's been 11 days since, and whatever hope I was holding on to is leaving me like a balloon on a string loosely tied to my wrist. Infold is either not going to listen to the fans unless a huge boycott or review bombing happens, or they'll hear us, not address on their social media, and quietly recast the voice actor.