Love and Deepspace has been out for almost two years, but its player base has become increasingly irritated by an ongoing issue affecting players with dark-skinned, non-standard main characters: their characters are literally hidden.
If you’re not familiar with Love and Deepspace, it is an otome game developed by Chinese studio Papergames and published worldwide by Infinity Nikki developer Infold Games. Love and Deepspace is unique in that it is a 3D otome game with action RPG elements where players can build relationships with five different potential love interests while fighting space monsters. However, the biggest attraction is the romantic elements, with fragments of visual novels and highly detailed, fully animated cutscenes between the player character, the MC, and his loved one, presented as gameplay rewards.
Love and Deepspace has been available since January 2024, which is almost two years. During this time, it also achieved huge success – in 2025, over 50 million players played around the world. This year, it won the title of best mobile game at Gamescom and was praised for its positive tone towards women and their needs in relationships. Admittedly, Love and Deepspace isn’t exactly a pioneer on the diversity front: an MC can only have one body type, and all the available love interests are clear. However, there are many options for customizing the MC’s appearance, including many darker skin tones. This is a feature that has not been common in otome games in the past, and it has helped darker-skinned players create MCs who they feel represent them in the romantic scenarios presented in the game.
However, since launch, players have reported issues with the game’s lighting, causing MCs with darker skin tones to appear strangely dim or at times become completely hidden during certain cutscenes. The complaints date back to the game’s release and are still being posted this week, all of which go something like this:
Thank you @Love_Deepspace for giving us darker skinned players NO LIGHTING in this up-to-date tab😒 pic.twitter.com/innx60E7et
— MadameSynclair (@MoonkissedMuse) October 11, 2025
That’s… pretty bad! The issue does not occur in all cutscenes and varies depending on skin tone, but the common factor is that players whose MCs have a darker skin tone never know when a up-to-date update is released whether their characters will be apparent in cutscenes or not. Players who have experienced this issue say they have reported it to Infold multiple times, and recently IGN has received a miniature number of reports to its email aliases with tips from players concerned about this issue. So far, Infold hasn’t said anything about it at all. However, when IGN reached out for comment, Infold issued the following statement:
At Infold Games, we have always believed that our games are shaped together with the players who love them. Community feedback, discussion and inventive passion keep Love and Deepspace evolving and alive.
We’ve seen these conversations and truly appreciate everyone who took the time to share their experiences and thoughts. Each comment, whether it is about visuals, storytelling, or representation, helps us better understand how our work resonates with different perspectives and cultures.
Love and Deepspace are essentially a shared world of emotions and imagination. We hope to continue to build it side by side with our players, learning and improving together.
Love and Deepspace players are understandably frustrated with this issue. After all, the game was clearly promoted by the company for its incredibly thorough technical achievements in capturing realism in every detail of the characters: hair, skin, clothing, everything. There would be nothing wrong with this if it was a one-off problem with one card that was quickly fixed. But two years later and a complete lack of acknowledgment, darker-skinned gamers are linking the problem to long-standing problems in gaming related to racism and colorism. They claim that even if it’s not intentionally malicious, it’s all about developers prioritizing making white skin tones look good, and as an afterthought, throwing in darker skin tones without caring about making them look equally nice. How one player, StarPop, posted this tellingly on Twitter in May: :
“There have been times in the history of dating games where it was just a light/pale Mc, and black and brown players weren’t invested in the game because they didn’t see themselves. In our case, we were dating someone else or pretending to be someone we weren’t. Because of racism and colorism, pale skin meant beautiful, just as dark shades meant dirty, disgusting, unworthy of love just because they didn’t ‘fit the standards of beauty.’ In dating games that do not imply differences in skin tone, it is another way of telling us that we are not worthy of love or attention. For games that are meant to depict falling in love and being treated fairly because your love interest loves you for who you are, many potential players have been left out because of this. When Love and Deepspace came out, black and brown players got involved and it seemed like the MC’s skin tone might change.
Historically, dating games have been set up where it was just a light/pale MC, and black/brown players weren’t invested in the game because they didn’t see themselves. In our case, we are dating someone else or pretending to be someone we are not. Because of racism and colorism, pale skin-
— StarPop (@StarPop_Arts) May 20, 2025
“Not properly lighting us basically tells us black and brown gamers that they don’t care about lighting us properly and consistently,” StarPop wrote later in the thread. “Just setting the lighting to the default mc when different shades are implemented doesn’t work because not everyone has the same skin tone.”
The StarPop thread is just one person’s experience, but it reflects dozens of other comments from non-white and non-white gamers content creators that have appeared on social media on Twitter, Reddit, Discord, YouTube, TikTok and other platforms over the past two years. Unfortunately, many comments have recently begun to despair that this problem will ever be solved. While the community continues to encourage players to report the issue to Infold through player surveys, there is no real hope for change:
“I almost wrote a post about this, but I realized it’s not worth getting my hopes up or anyone else’s,” one Reddit user wrote in response to another post on the subject from three days ago. “I’m not saying people should give up on the campaign to fix this (not even make the dim skinned MCs look perfect, just VISIBLE), but considering the complexity of the lightning and the fact that they didn’t even bother to change the damage shading in Edge of Continuum (the “scratches” on my MC look like she tried to put on the wrong foundation, THERE’S ONLY 5 SKIN COLORS, BRO, NEXT), I’m giving up on it I have to submit another report about mistake that my MC looks like a shadow person and I’m just enjoying the card as much as I can.
“And if by some miracle they actually get around to it and it looks decent, I’ll give InFold the last prop in my arsenal. All the props straight to their inbox.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Her posts can be found on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Have a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
