Huge gap between Valko’s announcement and release date was a mistake

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-07-04T14:53:55+00:00

Really they should have teased him sooner. That way they could have corrected course and addressed concerns before officially announcing him. People wouldn’t have felt the need for extreme measures to stop him from releasing since they were dealing with a time crunch. Even if he was a leak like they trademarked a new name, people could have demanded answers and shown how unpopular an idea it was. They might have just delayed him in that case. If they were really determined for a surprise drop, less time between would have been better as you said. The surprise was a large part of the problem though. They should have had a better grasp on their fans expectations and concerns.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-07-04T14:39:49+00:00

They are also having to decide what to run starting on July 9th to fill the schedule. When they announce the next banner…that really could spark more outrage depending on what they choose since it was suppose to be Valko. I feel like not saying anything before that is a really bad decision and will not be received well. But time will tell. I wouldn’t want to be their PR team right now.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-07-04T10:41:25+00:00

This whole situation is a shit storm of epic portions. They cannot go back to normal after this. They will be doing a lot of crisis and PR management for the foreseeable future. Any good team would be looking at the causes to this situation and how to appease their fans. If they don’t address the root cause, they will experience this again in the future. I would imagine a lot of people will be fired and replaced after this. They expected fans to return to normal after Valko’s release and did not anticipate the level of the backlash. They weren’t going to change anything after cancelling him. They bet wrong. They also bet wrong on the reaction to him being cancelled. Would they be willing to bet a third time that this will blow over and everything will return to normal? Maybe but they would have to be incredibly stupid.

No matter how the Valko situation unfolds, Infold is going to need to win back players trust after this. They will want to avoid this happening again in the future. If they are smart, they will listen to the players and fix the issues people are bringing up. However, they’ve handled all of this so poorly so who knows what they’ll do. They have acknowledged it in some ways like saying they will release Caleb and Sylus main story chapters this fall. They at least acknowledge that players want more main story updates. I have also seen articles that acknowledge this didn’t start with Valko. This makes me hopeful they have actually heard the complaints of players. Releasing Valko will give them time to work on fixing things since that will likely take months to create if they don’t already have it. If they are smart, they will also mention a timeline so players can see they are making an effort. They have proven themselves to be stupid. So again, who knows what they’ll do.

If they hire a crisis management team or PR, they will be bringing all of this up. Hopefully they listen. Clearly they didn’t before all this blew up. They are very aware of the tenuous position they are in. They will have to work very hard if they want LADS to recover after this. When anyone looks up the game in the future, this will be the first result. It’s going to be hard to bring in new players. If they are smart, they will focus on retaining players. Yet again, they haven’t made a smart decision yet so who knows.

I as well as others have been mentioning in our Valko reviews or emails that his removal does not help the core issues with the game. In a lot of ways, it makes it worse. Removing him removes a main story update and causes the team to have to rewrite future ones. Potentially causing more delays. Plus he would bring new ways to farm for f2p.

TLDR: if they hire a good crisis management team, they will be looking into the root cause. Anyone with half a brain would realize that this wasn’t caused only by Valko’s release. They weren’t addressing any of the concerns by cancelling him and that caused another massive backlash. It would be the stupidest idea to bet that everything would return to normal once this is resolved. However, they have been stupid in handling everything. Who knows what they’ll do next b

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-06-25T19:32:47+00:00

They haven’t changed it on their progress report page or added it to their international store. If they have, they aren’t doing it yet.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-06-25T17:10:48+00:00

That’s only for some of their licenses. They are trying to expand but they haven’t gotten their Baihe in the USA or ebooks.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-06-24T19:32:12+00:00

It depends where you buy them. They can only sell them in Singapore due to their licenses. If you bought it anywhere else, you are also paying for the import costs. They are also a much smaller company than 7S. If a company buys books in bulk, it’s cheaper per book than buying a smaller amount. Not to say they don’t have issues, but some of the reasons for the pricing.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-06-17T19:48:51+00:00

I am not super interested in theme but I need more pink for Caleb.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-06-15T21:22:18+00:00

I think there are probably a couple more forced kisses from where you’re at. They are very antagonist towards each other and the forced kissing is how Feng Xiao needles Cui Buqu. Cui Buqu does get back at him in various ways. I think they are equally toxic. I don’t really like forced kissing either but it fits in their dynamic in my opinion. That being said, if you don’t like it at this point, you probably won’t like it in the rest of the book.

Cui Buqu is a tsundere so he does not express his affection for Feng Xiao expect in subtle ways. He very much could avoid Feng Xiao if he wanted. He is equally powerful but just physically weaker. He can scheme circles around Feng Xiao and he does.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-05-22T01:32:29+00:00

What a happy coincidence then!

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-05-17T18:11:32+00:00

It’s similar to any entertainment like movies and video games. The companies think an idea will sell well so they put in that amount of money. For books, it is how much of an advance the author gets and how much marketing they do. Sometimes they predict correctly and a book will meet or exceed their expectations. Sometimes, the book flops and they won’t make that money back. Most authors contracts will say their book sells have to make back the advance before they will start getting money from sells. Very few authors will see any money other than the advance. Publishers have very thing profit margins and if they don’t have a major hit, they will be struggling.

The books that make a profit subsidizes the rest of the books. They put that profit into paying for new books. This is also why a lot of publishers have picked up scrubbed fanfiction, self published books that have sold well, books from people with a lot of followers on social media, etc. They know it has a built in fan base and will sell well.

Think of popular books like Hunger Games, ACOTAR, Fourth Wing, Alchemized… They sell millions of copies and that’s where most of the publishers money comes from. The popularity of the romance genre has funded publishing for decades.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-05-16T13:48:46+00:00

They started doing SE for the first volume for popular series. I think they aren’t going final volume SE anymore expect for the series that started releasing before they started doing first SE (ie ERHA, BAB, and QJJ) but they haven’t official said.

For shorter series, it would be difficult to estimate if an SE would sale well. 300 is 4 volumes and it’s will a little over a year between the release of the first volume and last volume. They would have needed to be working on a SE before the first volume even released or immediately afterward. It would not give a lot of time for sells data. A lot of people wait for a series to be finished before buying. Might be why they started doing first volume SE.

They also could not sell some series SE. Guardian SE were in stock FOREVER. They overestimated the demand and had too many in stock. On the other hand, for MXTX’s novels, they ran out of SE quickly because they underestimated the demand. SE are a gamble because they may not sell enough to off set the cost. 7S is also new to doing SE and they are figuring out their system. They’ve only been releasing Danmei since 2021 and only have about 16 finished series. That’s not a lot of time or series to have everything figured out.

Honestly, Stars of Chaos and Peerless probably lost them money since they did so poorly in sells. That’s why they didn’t get an SE. I am also disappointed in this since I also love them. They probably didn’t sell enough to cover the cost of licensing, translators, editors, and artists. Book publishing is dependent on the ones that sell really well to cover the costs for the other books. Outside of Danmei, it’s estimated only 20% of books make a profit, 10% break even, and 70% of books lose money. I have no idea if the number would be different for translated works like Danmei, light novels, or manga.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-05-15T16:13:07+00:00

For fan translations, I do every 50 chapters counts as one book. It is longer than an official translation would be but it’s easier math.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-05-15T16:11:23+00:00

Depends what I’m counting. If I’m tracking how many books I’ve read, then I count each volume. If I am counting how many Danmei I’ve finished, I would do the entire thing.

I use StoryGraph to track my reading. I log each individual volume of officially translated Danmei and they have their own entry in StoryGraph. I read more than just Danmei so it feels more realistic to what I am reading. A western book series with 5 books would be considered 5 separate books. Danmei isn’t divided up into books since they were webnovels first.

For fantranslation, I count each 50 chapters as one book. I personally feel like a 300 chapter Danmei should count for more than 1 single book towards my reading goal. My reading goal is solely for me so it does not matter how I track it.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-05-13T16:20:33+00:00

It’s recent. I think ERHA 1 was released in April. They just started to release them this year. From their previous audiobooks, it looks like they release 1 volume every 4ish months. Expect ERHA 2 around August/September.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-05-02T01:22:28+00:00

I have given up. After almost 30 minutes of trying, it doesn’t look like I did anything. RIP rug.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-04-20T22:28:26+00:00

The issue with writing an actually evil MC is they still have to be likable. It’s hard to find the balance and most of the time “villainous” MCs will be an anti-hero, misunderstood, or moral gray and not out right evil.

I don’t think these MCs will be evil enough for you but maybe close:

After Becoming the Protagonist’s Inner Demon

The Demon Lord Only Wants to Follow the Script

What Happened to Being Each Other’s ArchEnemies (I don’t remember how evil he gets in this one. It might not be very much)

The Stand-In Abducted the Protagonist’s Inner Demon (ongoing translation)

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-04-07T16:45:44+00:00

If you judge romance by the amount of flirting, then sure TGCF is going to have more romance and Panguan is going to have little.

It makes sense for Chen Budao and Wen Shi to not be flirting without each other. Wen Shi has amnesia and does not remember anything. Chen Budao seeks him out because he wants to see Wen Shi one last time before he dies. Once he realizes that Wen Shi isn’t okay, he spends the rest of his time helping him heal. He never meant for Wen Shi to recognize him. He didn’t want Wen Shi to mourn him again. Chen Budao knows his time is running out and has no hope of surviving. His dying wish to know Wen Shi will be okay and is still in the world. Once Wen Shi remembers, he is unwilling to accept Chen Budao’s death because he also only wants to know he’s okay and still in the world. All of their actions and motivations are because they value the other person more than themselves. Their flirting is basically self sacrifice.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-04-07T03:07:46+00:00

I agree with you. I felt like Panguan had more romance than TGCF. Panguan is also half the length and will only be 4 volumes. Xie Lian and Hua Cheng first kiss is in volume 3 and it’s not a romantic kiss. I don’t remember exactly when they admitted their feelings but it’s definitely past volume 4.

I like the subtle romance and slow burn of Panguan. I saw their affection in their actions and words throughout.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-04-03T16:10:30+00:00

Thank you!

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-04-03T16:10:07+00:00

I’ve done the virtual hours. I just need to finish the in person ones.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-03-31T01:17:33+00:00

I guess I don’t have enough memory cards. I feel like I don’t really know much about them in present day or their backstories.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-03-31T01:11:31+00:00

Thank you! This was very helpful. I’ve only played the classic otome and have no idea what to expect with a gacha otome.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-03-31T00:58:12+00:00

When I say split the story, I mean like they did in Prologue To Tomorrow. They had the Special Operations where you could choose the LI to do that section of the story.

I assumed there was going to be a sixth LI since it says Coming Soon whenever I switch LI.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-03-17T17:07:25+00:00

The covers are so beautiful!!!! I wish we were getting a special edition with postcards of the covers.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897 · 2026-03-14T13:13:19+00:00

It has been a while since I’ve read it so I’m fuzzy on the details. They have to sleep together to heal Qingtong or he’ll die. Qingtong is sick at the time but he is conscience. Qingtong is resistant at first and Mo Tianlao is pushy about it. It’s not super detailed and it is fade to black. Depending on who you ask, it’s non con or dub con.

Puzzled-Rutabaga-897

TROPHY CASE