It’s been more than a week since Infinity Nikki developer Infold Games released its 1.5 update, which introduced multiplayer, added new outfits and customization options, and put the game on Steam. Called the “Bubble Season,” the 1.5 update didn’t go over as planned: Infinity Nikki players were immediately incensed by a bevy of bugs and general game instability, and made even more angry by several baffling changes to both the story and its monetization structure.
The Infinity Nikki community isn’t boycotting; they’re girlcotting. It’s a term that’s been partially used in jest, partially to get around what some players say is Infold Games censoring the word “boycott” on its official forums and community spaces. Players globally are vowing to stay off the game until Infold Games addresses their concerns, including at least one Infinity Nikki creator who is part of the game’s partner program.
What does it mean to girlcott? Of course, it means not logging into Infinity Nikki. And if you do, crucially, not spending money. Players are also attempting to warn other off of the game; the Chinese Infinity Nikki community – as well as others – has been flooding Steam with negative reviews of the game:.“Do not play this game if you do not want to be exploited,” one user, who claims to be part of the Chinese boycott, wrote on Steam. “Our voice should be heard.”
There are some people, too, who are attempting to get the message in-game, using in-game messaging to send jestful subliminal messaging: “aGaIn in staRLight, Crystal and gOld shine TogeTher,” one player wrote.
Infinity Nikki, the latest in a long running series that's been mobile-only for decades, released in December 2024. The game came to Steam in late April, alongside the unpopular “Bubble Season” update. The game launched on Steam to mixed reviews; the complaints are also impacting Infinity Nikki’s review score on the Google Play Store. (Reviews remain high, at 4 stars, on the Apple iOS Store; a lot of the problems are tied to the Steam release and attached 1.5 update, but impact all versions of the game.)
The Infinity Nikki development team quickly issued a response to players’ concerns at the end of April, with a spokesperson writing on X, “We understand that every stylist’s love and trust in Infinity Nikki is something we must cherish and uphold with the utmost dedication.” The company said it’s working to fix the patch’s performance issues, which have caused game-breaking bugs for some players.
The message also attempted to explain some of the development team’s more unpopular decisions. You see, Infinity Nikki is a gacha game, but instead of pulling characters to play as, you’re rolling for pieces of outfits. You have to spend currency to roll for these pieces, and while you can earn currency in-game, it’s not often enough, which means players end up spending real money to get more pulls. Most outfits range from nine to ten pieces of clothing, but the new update added two 11-piece outfits. To put it simply, it now costs more to collect the full outfit from the gacha system, especially given that players often look to collect outfits multiple times, to “evolve” the outfit. To make matters worse, Infold Games’ new customization system, which lets players dye outfits, requires another, newly-added currency.
The team didn’t address the use of a new currency, but did say they wanted to “provide stylists with greater freedom in outfit design.” In response, the Infinity Nikki team also gave players some free currency, but there’s been problems there, too: Players say Infold had a bug in this distribution, which awarded players too much free currency. Instead of letting players keep that – it was Infold’s mistake, after all – they deducted the currency, some of which players had already spent, putting them in the negative.
But the community is looking for more from the studio; it wants an acknowledgement of the “dumpster fire” of a situation, as one Infinity Nikki player told Aftermath, but also wants some of the biggest problems reversed. The original statement simply isn’t enough for Infinity Nikki players; they don’t see it as true accountability for the situation.
Infold Games has not responded to a request for comment.
Despite being a gacha game, Infinity Nikki and its team has earned a lot of goodwill from its player base up until now — something that is, indeed, somewhat ironic, given the game's genre. Infinity Nikki is a gacha game; a gacha game is not inherently bad, but as Reddit user girlrevolution wrote, the monetization system can be viewed as inherently predatory. Infinity Nikki has been considered by its players less predatory because the game can be played without spending a cent. The new update pushed the gacha system much too far for a lot of players — something made more egregious by the numerous bugs and strange gameplay changes.
Several players told Aftermath that they felt Infold listens to the community, even if the community didn’t always agree with Infold’s decisions. The earlier Nikki games, Love Nikki and Shining Nikki, earned the developer a reputation for beautiful clothing and complex, sometimes wacky storytelling. “I’ve been around for a while,” Daisy, who’s been playing Nikki games for nearly a decade, told Aftermath. “I’ve put up with a lot of Infold’s crap when it came to the prices in their games.”
Another Infinity Nikki player, who asked to have her name withheld, told Aftermath that the new update pushed the monetization structure over the edge. She said Infinity Nikki’s gacha systems wouldn’t be that bad compared to other gacha games, if Infinity Nikki only had one “monetization scheme.” Instead, everything seems to cost something, so the added currency for dying outfits felt particularly bad. “[It’s] particularly egregious because it’s painfully obvious that dyes were originally supposed to be tied to resources you could collect in game,” she said. “Someone craved short term profit so much that they decided to just dump that in the trash.”
Daisy said it would take up to $300 to $400 to earn all the color options of a single 5-star outfit in Infinity Nikki. Regarding the new 11-piece outfits, Daisy believes the new items are simply a money grab. “The dresses on these banners are floor length, so the stockings added were unnecessary, and one of the dresses was shown, in earlier cutscenes, to not have stockings,” she said. “To me, they artificially inflated the suits so players would spend more money.”
Beyond the problematic monetization strategy, players Aftermath spoke with said they’re also pissed off at a major change to the start of the game. The original story set up Nikki’s transportation into Miraland as an accident that happened as she searched for a dress for a ball; the dress she found tucked away in the attic ended up sending her into the new world. But Infold Games removed the game’s original start with the update; the new intro drops players into Infinity Nikki with little context and a new, unexplained character who is supposed to be a guide as Nikki is dropped into intergalactic limbo.
Some players think this is a total retconning of the story they’ve come to consider Infinity Nikki’s lore. And it’s wildly confusing. Daisy said, “It’s honestly really, really confusing, and I have almost ten years of Nikki story in the recesses of my mind.”
Another Infinity Nikki player, Dia, put it this way: “It just feels like Infold has destroyed whatever was enjoyable about the game, story and characters; broke every promise to deliver enjoyable experience in the future; forced to release a very broken patch that is almost unplayable to a lot of people; and all of that was done just to focus on asking more money for time-limited gacha.”
The big problem for a lot of players isn't simply that they don't want to spend money on Infinity Nikki. The community at large isn't upset that Infinity Nikki is a gacha game; they're upset that the trust they've given Infold Games thus far has been broken.
"I put money in this game because I liked the product and felt that I could support them from an ethical standpoint, but that is no longer the case," girlrevolution wrote.
