Husbands in China are urging their wives to stop playing the viral dating simulation game ‘Love and Deepspace,’ with one even offering his spouse $2.8K USD to quit.
It’s safe to say that Love and Deepspace is the most popular Otome dating sim in recent memory. The free-to-play mobile game is both a romantic visual novel and an action-RPG, with players taking the role of a “Deepspace Hunter” that they can customize to look like them.
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Gameplay aside, the major draws for this title are the five hunky heartthrobs that players can choose to romance: Xavier, Zayne, Rafayel, Caleb, and Sylus. If you’re on gaming Twitter at all, you’ve probably seen some version of a reaction video with an influencer left aghast at the steamy love scenes that happen when you get close to one of these male companions.
Thanks to advances in technology, Love and Deepspace’s dreamy cast of characters are more lifelike than ever. Papergames, the development team, used 3D motion capture to make realistic movements for the love interests, which reportedly take up to two years to create.
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Papergames, InFoldA rendering of the five romanceable characters in Love and Deepspace.
They also included as many “real-life” romantic experiences as possible to draw players in, and even introduced an AI-powered ‘voice chatting’ feature that lets users hold conversations with their guy of choice. A ‘companion mode’ uses AR to place the characters in players’ real-life environments, complete with custom lighting to make things even more immersive.
Husband offers wife $2.8K to stop playing Love and Deepspace
Some players are going the extra mile to bring these love interests to the real world. As reported by kr-ASIA, a few women (Love and Deepspace’s target demographic) have used tech like ChatGPT and Chinese app Duxiang to create AI agents of these characters, which they can talk to at any time.
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“If not for ChatGPT and Love and Deepspace, I wouldn’t have realized how deeply I need to be understood and loved, or that such needs could be perfectly met,” one woman told the outlet. “But if you told me to delete the game and stop using ChatGPT now, I’d lose my mind.”
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The hype around Love and Deepspace has gotten so intense that husbands are now begging their wives to stop playing, with one even offering his wife thousands of dollars to quit.
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“I’ll give you RMB 20,000 ($2,800 USD). Just stop playing Love and Deepspace for a year,” his wife told kr-ASIA. She eventually agreed and the money was transferred to her daughter’s savings account, only for her to redownload the game when a new card for her favorite character dropped.
Other men have taken to social media to complain about the game, with one saying he felt like his wife was “cheating” on him with the fictional characters.
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In an interview with Japanese outlet 4Gamer, the developers behind Love and Deepspace emphasized the importance of giving players genuine romantic feelings for the characters in their games.
“While otome games may seem to ‘simulate romance,’ I believe their unique feature is that they allow players to experience ‘real’ romantic feelings, as if they were actually there. Captivating players in this way is one of our goals as creators,” one said.
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Papergames, InFoldLove and Deepspace is designed to be as immersive as possible, using AI to make ‘relationships’ with players hyper-realistic.
Another player interviewed by kr-ASIA was even convinced that android versions of the Love and Deepspace characters would soon be on the market, bringing their virtual ‘romance’ into real-life.
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“I believe I’ll live to see humanoid versions of Xavier and Caleb,” she said. “I check AheadForm’s new videos every now and then, and I’m already saving for one.”
Love and Deepspace isn’t the only AI taking a toll on relationships and marriages. ChatGPT has also been responsible for several reported breakups and even divorces, with one man bursting into tears after proposing to the chatbot despite having an actual girlfriend.
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In 2025, a 27-year-old woman got ‘engaged’ to an AI character she had created with ChatGPT, while a bride ‘married’ an AI agent she made after her actual wedding got called off. And if that wasn’t shocking enough, some users are getting their AI chatbots ‘pregnant’ and raising virtual ‘children’ with them.
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