Popular Gacha Game Love And Deepspace Navigates NSFW Restrictions with Stick Figure Scenes

Love and Deepspace, a mobile gacha game, has hit a quirky snag with censorship in China during the promotion of its latest event, “Lingering Lust,” due to the country’s stringent regulations on NSFW content. After the event trailer faced censorship not once but twice, the developers turned to a creative solution: stick figures.

There’s a lot of mixed information swirling around this situation, likely complicated by language barriers, but here’s what I gathered: Recently, trailers and teasers for the bathtub-themed Lingering Lust event began to surface, showcasing the female protagonist enjoying some playful moments in the water with the game’s romanceable characters.

If you’re curious about what the uncensored trailer looks like, it’s actually pretty mild, but maybe don’t make the same mistake I did and watch it without headphones. Interestingly, the Instagram post is too risqué to embed, so here’s a text-based version of the censored trailer.

Now, it seems the main trailer has been completely censored in China. From my research, the developers released two censored versions, cleverly using steam to obscure the more suggestive visuals. The first version didn’t quite hit the mark—still deemed too steamy—so the second iteration added even more steam, making it look like a couple was hotboxing in a car.

However, this third version was still considered too provocative. While I couldn’t find it on any official Chinese social media, a version is still accessible on the Taiwan Instagram account.

Interestingly, the main trailer isn’t the only one that faced censorship. Five separate “PV” (Player View) teaser trailers were created for the Lingering Lust event, each spotlighting one of the five romanceable characters. Like the main trailer, these were also taken down, leading the developers to replace the characters with stick figures.

Honestly, it’s hilarious; the community is loving the stick figure trailers, and some are even suggesting this should be the new norm for all future trailers.

But believe it or not, even these stick figure versions were deemed too risqué for Chinese social media. The only reason we know they exist is that the developers were so amused by them that they shared them on all their social accounts outside of China.

So, what’s China getting instead? Text on a black screen. As seen on the Taiwan Instagram page, the stick figure trailers have been swapped out for some suggestive text on a black background, accompanied by the audio from the trailers, which is arguably more suggestive than the visuals. In fact, the developers have even resorted to using these text teasers on billboards in China.

As the Lingering Lust event just launched today, it’s still unclear if the actual content of the update has been censored in China. Given that the developers have had to censor in-game content before, it wouldn’t be surprising if the event has been altered in some way.