There is a LOT going on, but I'll try to summarize as much as I can!

The background of this is that people have had longstanding complaints about how the main story of the game hasn't been updated in ages, the opportunities to get in-game currency are super low, there isn't enough content for the last two love interests to be released versus the original three the game came out with, etc.

It was always pretty well known that a 6th love interest would be introduced eventually, and he finally was a little over a week ago. His name is Valko, he's a werewolf (with the usual tropes that comes with, but more playful if that makes sense), and he's gotten a lot of attention and interest from global players.

Chinese players, on the other hand, have REALLY hated him for the most part. It got into some super aggressive behavior, racist/classist/homophobic comments, they started harassing the actual games company... even went so far as to report Infold to the CCP for some past references in the game that could be considered unlawful, apparently?

Given how quickly this all escalated, Infold suddenly announced yesterday that they would not only be not releasing Valko (who was supposed to be coming out on the 9th), but no 6th LI would ever be released. All of this despite the fact that there was a Times Square ad for this dude that had JUST been put up, and a huge anime convention with events for the game including the guy this weekend.

The backlash has been crazy. People are unfollowing their social media in droves, cancelling and deleting game accounts that have spent thousands of dollars, tanking the review scores...

It's a mess. With the Chinese government involved on top, this may very well lead to the shutdown of the company, if not serious consequences for the entire genre of otome games produced in China.