This Week in Mobile Games

What's Up With The Lads?

Hello, and welcome once more to another installment of the column! It has, to put it mildly, been a rough couple of weeks, particularly if you're in or covering the game industry. With new waves of layoffs and controversial (to put it mildly) corporate decision-making, the game industry - or at least its triple-A sector - is looking like a dumpster fire at the moment. 

Despite being quite a different scene most of the time, the mobile game industry is part of all that, and the news isn't all rosy on this side of the fence, either.

Maiden's Corner: Love and Deepspace's Valko is Dead, and No One Is Happy

If you don't follow much otome or mobile game news, that admittedly hyperbolic subhead might read as somewhat mysterious, but it is, in my estimation, an accurate summation of the current state of the drama that has roiled the millions-strong fanbase of Love and Deepspace for the last three weeks, culminating in the wholesale abortion of a brand-new character for the tremendously popular romance game before he even made it onto players' phones.

But let's back up to the beginning, as we'll need a bit of context to unpack the situation. What follows is a rough timeline of the event leading up to the launch of Love and Deepspace's latest update, version 6.0, on July 9th. 

On June 22nd, Love and Deepspace developer Papergames (known as Infold Games overseas) announced that the game's next playable love interest would debut with the version 6.0 update. Valko (known as Ao Yin in China and Rouga in Japan) is the red-haired, buff-bodied 26-year-old CEO of the EonCore Group of tech companies. He's also the leader of a werewolf clan, and his teaser shows him bounding on all fours through a moonlit forest, complete with a bushy tail and fluffy wolf ears sprouting off the top of his perfectly coiffed head.

It's very "Jacob from Twilight filtered through the Omegaverse," and it's clear that Papergames aimed to tap into the wild, feral appeal of the archetype. The player's association with Valko is also implied to be outright dangerous, since his company has ties to the game's antagonist faction.

Opinion was almost immediately split upon Valko's reveal, with some fans criticizing Valko's rougher appeal and bulky physique, compared with the other five men on the roster. Some claimed that Valko's look deviated from Chinese beauty standards, accusing Papergames of trying to pander to foreign fans. Some took issue with Valko's overall vibe, as well, disliking that players might be expected to find love in a man working with the game's villains, who've victimized some of the love interests in their own stories. His forceful aura also rubbed some the wrong way, given his intro cutscenes seemed to involve him barging his way into the protagonist's home to demand attention (more on that later).

Other complaints centered around the manner of Valko's introduction, which was seen as far too abrupt compared to previously added love interests. Whereas characters like Sylus and Caleb eventually joined the playable cast after an extended presence in the story or frequent mention in conversations with the other LADS men, Valko arrived with much fanfare but little background. 

In other words, while many players expected that there would eventually be a sixth love interest - the game's combat system has six "elements" and a sixth empty slot in the character selection screen, after all - they didn't expect him to arrive with little more build-up than some foreshadowing in last October's updates and an out-of-nowhere teaser stream. It was particularly galling that the reveals trumpeted plenty of Valko interactions, such as dog-themed petting and new skins, that players would have to pay to get. Lest anyone forget, Love and Deepspace uses a gacha system, and one continual sore point among its fans is the general lack of ways to earn premium currency for free, making most new content drops a squeeze on the wallet.

Things began to snowball quickly, with the complaints about Valko himself getting wrapped up in other criticisms of the general state of Love and Deepspace. Before long, Valko wasn't just a bad-boy wolf-man, but a symbol of the fact that Papergames might dedicate months or years of development resources to making a new character when updates to the main story have been few and far between (with the most recent being way back in January, and only one in the entire year of 2025). He became emblematic of the notion that Papergames would rather introduce a brand-new guy no one but the most detailed lore-readers had even heard of, while existing characters remained desperately in need of new stories and content.

Even out-of-game complaints began to manifest in the backlash. Some Love and Deepspace players complained about the perception that Papergames was "milking" LADS' wild success as the current king of high-quality 3D otome games to subsidize things like Infinity Nikki's multiplatform release, while letting development on LADS itself languish (the game does not have a native PC client or console version at this time).

Longtime fans of Papergames even found the situation similar to another misstep the developer made with a similar game, the now-defunct Mr. Love: Queen's Choice. In that game, the announced love interest Shaw drew backlash from players who didn't want to romance a villain and took issue with the character's framing, as well as his perceived impact on developer priorities.

By June 28th, Papergames and Infold had issued an apology across their social media channels and an attempt to make good with assurances of new non-Valko content and gifts, but it was too little, too late. The backlash only intensified, with Chinese players even digging up lore entries that contained the number "731" in relation to an in-game human test subject, which could be interpreted as a reference to Japanese war crimes against China in World War II. 

Two days later, Valko was dead. In an apologetic statement posted on June 30th, Papergames announced that the July 9th launch of Valko would be cancelled outright, and even went so far as to "commit" that "no additional love interests" would be introduced moving forward (though the rest of the planned non-Valko content for update 6.0 was added to the game as scheduled). The outcry from fans who supported Valko's debut was understandably anguished. You would be too, if someone had announced that the hunky dog-boy you'd been looking forward to meeting was sent to a farm upstate, seemingly never to return.

The death of Valko was, unfortunately, only the beginning of the pain, as Papergames had had a lot of stuff planned for the red-headed werewolf. The company withdrew all Valko material from its Love and Deepspace booth at Anime Expo 2026 (though fans held an impromptu vigil/protest), an in-person promotional event in Japan was cancelled because the program featured material focused on Valko/Rouga, and the entire Love and Deepspace presence at BilliBilli World 2026 (one of Asia's largest anime/game conventions) is now cancelled.

Even the government stepped in to tamp the soil onto Valko's freshly dug grave. On July 8th, China's Ministry of Public Security released a statement that aimed at Valko's marketing campaign, which took issue with the game seeming to hype up a home invasion as a "fun interaction." It warned that such things "may ultimately endanger public safety" and be subject to legal sanctions. 

And that's where we are at the moment. The folks who wanted Valko won't get him. The folks who opposed Valko were mainly doing so to get Papergames to focus on what they thought was more important, but now Valko is not merely delayed but buried. Outsiders, like yours truly, get to see the bleak spectacle of a company famous for serving a traditionally underserved audience fold fully to a harassment campaign. And Papergames itself just discarded potential years' worth of development work and a huge amount of player trust and goodwill to reduce the risk of being made an example of by the enormous power of the state.

Valko is dead, and no one is happy.

Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis Shuts Down on October 6th

The death of the wolf-man isn't the only unfortunate news affecting mobile game players lately, because we may never get to truly know Sephiroth. Square Enix has announced that Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis, its gacha FF7 spin-off, will be put out to pasture on October 6, 2026, three years after it launched on mobile in September 2023 (with a PC version arriving in December 2023). Since then, the game has been delisted on Steam for players who didn't already have it in their libraries. Square Enix also released a "final season" roadmap detailing the remaining scheduled events and content drops for the remaining players. Long story short: Folks will see some version of what they planned for an adaptation of Final Fantasy VII Before Crisis, the feature phone prequel starring the Turks that is famously unplayable anywhere in English.

In a letter to fans, producer Shoichi Ichikawa was a bit more candid than most about the reason for Ever Crisis' demise, citing "difficulty" in finding a balance between production costs and the demand for character weapons and gear. Put simply, the game was too expensive to justify continuing to develop high-quality assets for. That's a common enough reason for gacha games to shut down, but it's fairly uncommon to see things stated this explicitly. Most letters of this type simply state a vague "challenge" affecting the "level of service" and so on. 

I don't doubt that Ever Crisis was a particularly handsome gacha game, even by the fairly lofty standards of modern free-to-play productions. At its best, the graphics reminded me of the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy titles, and the game's business model meant that you could see familiar characters wearing ever-wilder costumes and gear as time went on.

Ever Crisis itself was also something of a refreshing alternative approach to the FF7 remake projects. While I absolutely love Remake and Rebirth as they are on consoles and PC, Ever Crisis seemed to preserve at least some aspect of the original spirit of the old Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, both by being a turn-based story and by promising to port over a bunch of the Compilation side stories and prequels currently left in old-game limbo.

Of course, that was the ideal. The reality was less rosy. Ever Crisis debuted strong, but over time it became clear that revenue wasn't up to expectations, players hated the general stinginess of the grind and gacha, and the quality of the game dipped noticeably as Square Enix seemed to pull back on development resources. By late 2025, the game's rendition of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children's story was a "completely incoherent" clip show consisting of disjointed cuts from the movie sandwiching a boss fight against a Bahamut variant.

I've always held the opinion that Square Enix tends to get a bit of an unfair shake when it comes to its mobile efforts. Their hit rate for free-to-play games is about the industry average, but every time one of their games shuts down, the reputational hit they take is disproportionately large, mainly because the company hasn't been shy about attaching its biggest brands (mainly Final Fantasy) to its mobile efforts. Nevertheless, axing what should have been the main mobile spin-off of your most beloved contemporary game project simply isn't a good look. 

At least we still have Dissidia Duellum, but for how long?

Mario Kart Tour Hits The Skids on September 29th

Not even Nintendo is immune to the phenomenon of mobile game shutdowns, and mobile racer Mario Kart Tour is the next on the chopping block. Nintendo has already cut off sales of the in-game Ruby currency and has extended any players with existing Gold Pass subscriptions through to the game's end on September 29, 2026, as well as giving all players Gold Pass status for free starting on August 4th.

As Mario Kart Tour is readied to join the likes of Dr. Mario World, Miitomo, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, and Dragalia Lost in the ranks of Nintendo Mobile's list of defunct titles, one does wonder what the company that came famously late to the mobile scene plans for its future on smart devices. Bar larger announcements or that unannounced Legend of Zelda mobile game the company was said to be working on way back in 2017, it seems that Nintendo is beginning to lose its taste for free-to-play live service games. I recently took a look at PictoNico!, and that game is a fun diversion that doesn't require any kind of ongoing purchase to enjoy. Meanwhile, Pikmin Bloom is an AR game that doesn't operate like the typical live service title, and Mario Run is an old classic that's a premium one-and-done purchase. Even the defunct Pocket Camp got a premium "complete" edition rerelease with the microtransactions cut out.

Then again, the company could just be waiting for the right concept to back. Fire Emblem Heroes is still a winner (though diminished from its highest heights), and the company recently released Fire Emblem Shadows as a multiplayer deduction game. Plus, Pokémon Champions is currently the face of competitive Pokémon play, as Nintendo and The Pokémon Company wind down support for Scarlet and Violet and gear up to promote and eventually release Winds and Waves. It's anyone's guess what The Big N will do when it comes to phone games, but as with console games, betting against it is rarely the best move.

Let's close out this bleak week with a few pick-me-up stories!

• The next Arknights: Endfield update, Homecoming, will launch on July 16th and bring a close to the game's ongoing Wuling storyline. And following in the grand(?) tradition of The Amazing Digital Circus,  Endfield character Perlica will board the Battle Bus as a Fortnite skin on August 14, 2026.
• Riot Games' competitive shooter Valorant may see its currently China-exclusive mobile edition (creatively named Valorant Mobile) go global soon, if rumors prove true. Riot has promised announcements at this year's Gamescom 2026 convention, and its slate features the first look at the English-language Valorant Mobile logo. The company hasn't confirmed either way, but Valorant Mobile is a major hit in China, hitting 10 million daily active players in May.
• Pawprint Studio kicked off the latest closed beta test for its monster-collecting open-world free-to-play game Aniimo on July 9th. Like Mongil Star Dive and Palworld, Aniimo is part of a recent wave of upstart games seemingly out to gun for Pokémon and Digimon's crown as the monster-collecting games to beat, distinguishing themselves with large open-world structures, free-to-play monetization (though Palworld is a premium release), and fancy graphics.
• By the time you read this, celebrations should be close to wrapping up for the 9th anniversary of Fate/Grand Order's English edition, but the game should soon after debut the year's summer event, which will see the addition of Tsukihime heroine Ciel to the playable roster.
• Last week, Cygames announced that the 1.5-year anniversary of Umamusume: Pretty Derby's global edition will bring some new features to the game ahead of schedule (compared to the Japanese original). These include technical improvements for the PC version (i.e., higher-res concert scene) and a mitigation for one of the game's biggest annoyances, the partial automation of daily campaign training. That might seriously get me to pick the game back up, I must say.
• Azur Lane is getting a NieR: Automata crossover event on July 16th, with 2B and A2 joining the game as playable shipgirls, with attendant skins that are a bit too spicy to show off here. 2B is pretty much the queen of crossover events, appearing in many other games across a range of genres, from having entire NieR-themed raids in Final Fantasy XIV to cheesecake-heavy appearances in games like NIKKE to being playable in fighting games like Soulcalibur VI and Granblue Versus Rising.
• The closed beta for Bleach Mirrors High, a new mobile game based on the titular anime, will kick off on July 22nd. The game stars two original player characters, Shirin Migishima and Shirane Sanari, and appears to use some kind of RPG-adjacent battle system. 
• It also happens that Granblue Fantasy is getting a Bleach: The Thousand-Year Blood War crossover in July, as well, featuring Ichigo, Nemu, Kenpachi, and more.
• Smilegate's Chaos Zero Nightmare just received a major update, but unlike updates that typically add new story missions, this revamps, with a near-complete overhaul of the first few chapters of Act 1, which took a lot of flak from fans for poor story quality and voice acting. In contrast to the typical stereotype of triple-A titles, which front-load the good stuff, gacha and live-service RPGs tend to have less-than-stellar opening acts, often due to the way they're developed on the fly and evolve in response to player feedback and behavior metrics. They also often get do-overs due to the nature of the service. One recent example includes Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium, which was criticized upon its release in China over writing quality. For the global release, developer MICATeam rearranged the game's core story arcs and events to make more sense and introduce familiar characters to the roster earlier.

And that's it from me! Despite the bleak news of late, there's still at least plenty to play and a decent amount to look forward to! Take care of yourselves, and I'll see you again soon.