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As a business owner myself in the anime and video game industry and someone who has worked with multiple companies in said industry, moreso than revenue itself, customer retention and new customer acquisition are arguably the most important numbers that indiciate sustainability and growth of an IP or company.
It is extremely concerning to see that the amount of downloads for Love and Deepspace has gone from 50,000 or so at the time of Valko's announcement to under 20,000, even as low as 5,000 downloads a day. following his cancellation. Keep in mind these numbers are from the CN side, not even including global's numbers, which for some countries, the app isn't even in Top 100 or 200 or even ranking anymore.
Looking at the CN download data alone, that is almost a 90% decline in new downloads percentage, which is a huge warning regarding the game's player base and the game's sustainability.
In order for a live service gacha game to sustain and continue growth, they MUST find new ways to innovate and gain new players. This would have been possible with Valko as he is a new character that could attract customers who were previously not interested in the game to then compel them to download and try it out. It is especially important to note that releasing a new in-game character would be easy to garner audience adjacent players, aka, female players.
However, following the statement of no more new characters ever, it is going to be very difficult for the game to attract new customers with the remaining five characters. Why you ask? Well, if the current characters had not attracted new customers previously, what would they need to do to then attract more players?
I think that if Love and Deepspace chooses to not release Valko, the only way they can attract new customers is by doing collaborations with other IPs, such as Genshin Impact, Final Fantasy, Overwatch, Fortnite, etc.
However, the player base is extremely different and not always female oriented, hence why I mentioned the importance of audience adjacent female players above, so even doing collaborations will be a significant challenge for this game, especially with the current audience reception regarding the game's communication and reputation.
If they don't do new collaborations with other IPs, then they will have to push more for content creator marketing with large Vtubers or streamers, but that alone would not be enough to raise the game back to its previous numbers in the long run.
Another alternative will be to do more risque content, but seeing as China has strong censorship rules following their stick figure marketing campaigns for "Lingering Lust," even that will be difficult to push out more of that similar content. Also, they would want to avoid over saturating those types of risque content because it would feel stale after the same type of content is redone over and over.
Offering more in-game content, aside from a new character, could also possibly attract customers. However, they would have to really think about data optimization in this case because the game is simply far too large on phones. I personally think that having a console or PC version would be the easiest next step to get more customers to sign up.
If Papergames is comfortable with the current player base number and does not want to grow further, then continuing as is would be fine without Valko. But I doubt that is what they hope to achieve.
I hope they can figure out the current situation they're in and take the risk, re-release Valko, and see how much that will change in terms of revenue and new player acquisition. However, the decision ultimately lies with them.
#ValkoIsLoved #ValkoIsValuable
Astrid 𓄿(Missing MLQC)-#VALKOISMYWOLF@DianaSylus
Downloading volume from when we see Valko's first look to today (in Chinese ios) #Valko #valkoismywolf #ValkoGlobalRelease #ValkoReturnTheSame #valko6LI #ValkoStays
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