Seeing ads related to video games at Cologne Airport during Gamescom is nothing new, but when these ads have been put there by fans instead of game developers and publishers, things are certainly different.
Yesterday, August 29, 2026, I was waiting to check in my luggage in Terminal 1 of Cologne Airport, after a rather eventful Gamescom 2026. As usual, following three days of back-to-back preview appointments and interviews (you can expect to read and see that content over the following days), I was really exhausted, so when I looked up at one of the large advertisement screens, I didn’t immediately realize what I was looking at.
I saw some imagery that I recognized from the free-to-play Otome game “Love and Deepspace.” It was on my radar as I met representatives of its publisher, Infold Games (also known for Infinity Nikki), at Tokyo Game Show last year to consider coverage. Otome games are simulation games, after all.
Two minutes later, the ad rotation repeated, and I finally noticed that there was something peculiar about the ads. They weren’t official ads published by Infold. In fact, they appeared to be directed at Infold.
They portrayed a handsome young man in various poses with the message “Bring Valko Back” in English and “The whole world loves Ao Yin” in Mandarin, signed by “The Valkyries.”
You can see for yourself in the clip below, which I snapped myself. Similar ads were being broadcast in other areas of the airport. There are plenty more reports that more ad space and even advertisement trucks have been displayed all over Cologne within the same timeframe.
I was somewhat familiar with the controversy related to the character “Valko” (originally named Ao Yin) in Love and Deepspace.
The character was initially announced for Love and Deepspace by Papergames (Infold Games is the Western brand of Papergames, and isn’t new to controversy) in June, and then canceled a few days later following a massive local controversy that spilled into the media and beyond.
To offer a bit of context, Love and Deepspace is a free-to-play mobile Otome Game, a love simulation game primarily aimed at an audience of ladies, focusing on romancing five handsome male characters. Valko was supposed to be the sixth.
When Ao Yin was originally announced on June 22, a sizable part of the Chinese fanbase pretty much revolted, flooding social media with complaints aimed at the character’s appearance, design, and more, which were seen as a departure from what Love and Deepspace had offered until then, possibly aimed at pleasing the global playerbase.
Yet, while the fan backlash was already massive, it did not end there, as local media also jumped in, conflating the initial complaints with customer trust-related issues, like the fact that other characters had gone without new content for a long time, while Papergames was spending resources on creating a new one.
Things became even louder when they started focusing on trailer material that showed the wolf-like Ao Yin entering a woman’s apartment, associated with the idea of “inviting the wolf inside,” which sparked criticism connected with the safety of young women living alone.
As usual, with this kind of backlash, critics look for everything that could be even remotely associated with something negative to pile onto the mess, which is where the “A-0731” file number was brought into the spotlight, allegedly referencing a Japanese chemical warfare research unit operated in China during World War II.
As you can imagine, this is an enormously sensitive topic for the local audience, media, and even the government, so things went from bad to worse despite the fact that Papergames clarified that the number made no intentional reference to the Japanese unit.
Chinese media started demanding institutional intervention, while the game was widely boycotted, causing enormous financial losses for Papergames, which initially seemed to hold its ground by arguing that its intentions and actions were misunderstood, and then did a complete about-face, apologizing, canceling Ai Yin/Valko, and promising that they would never implement a sixth love interest in the game.
This is actually a simplification of the massive rabbit hole of backlash and censorship (and yes, self-censorship to mitigate backlash is absolutely still censorship), but you can find an extensive and laudably well-put-together report of the whole timeline by X user Al | アルパカ if you’re interested in going deeper.
Yet things did not end there, since there were many, especially within the Global audience, but not limited to it, who actually liked Valko / Ao Yin and were excited for his release, starting a wave of counter-backlash that culminated in what we saw yesterday in Cologne.
The community came together and started a series of viral actions both online and in the real world; for instance, at Anime Expo, turning events into platforms to advocate for the return of Valko.
They also started boycotting the game financially, refusing to buy currency and reportedly causing millions in lost revenue. They launched a variety of online petitions that gathered hundreds of thousands cumulatively (for example, this one on Change.org has almost 23,000 verified signatures, while one on iPetition has over 250,000).
Laudably, part of the effort by the fanbase also went into charitable initiatives, among which $29,800 was donated to the New York-based Wolf Conservation Center and $78,852 in favor of the Mexican NGO Extinción Cero, which named a newly rescued wolf “Valko.”
It’s worth mentioning that those who would like to see Valko / Ao Yin reinstated aren’t limited to the global community of Love and Deepspace, but there are also many fans in China, although their voices have been partially drowned out by those who protested against the character and their extensive media support.
Unfortunately, for now, the voices raised to ask for Valko’s return have not received any official response from Infold / Papergames, which is likely hunkering down, hoping that the situation will normalize at some point.
Yet, the Valkyries (a collective name that the community created around Valko gave itself) are not giving up, and appear to be escalating their protest further into the public eye.
If there’s one thing that over 25 years in gaming journalism taught me, it’s that you don’t mess with the Otome Armada.
