Writing on the Sina Weibo microblogging site, a feminist blogger who goes by the user handle Always-bebrave, criticised the game for “forcibly associating women with emotional fraud”.
“Real anti-fraud education should make people see how power can harm relationships, rather than teaching people how to hate a certain gender,” she said.
“This is what happens when a video game relies on manufactured conflict, fabricated storylines and playing the victim card for clout,” said another female gaming blogger on Weibo by the handle Qiufengyuan.
TAPPING INTO SCAM PARANOIA
Ongoing social anxiety about scams, combined with polarising discourse around gender inequality and dating culture in China are some reasons the game went viral, according to Shen Cuihua from the University of California, Davis.
“No matter where you stand on this issue, a polarising and emotionally charged story usually gets people worked up, and it can be highly shareable – perfect for short-form video platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu,” Shen said.
According to a report by China’s Supreme People’s Court published in March, around 40,000 cases of telecom fraud, involving 82,000 people, were recorded in 2024 – marking an annual increase of more than 26 per cent.
Love scams, including pig-butchering schemes, are classified under telecom fraud – an umbrella term for scams that exploit victims through digital communication tools.
Pig-butchering, or “sha zhu pan” in Mandarin, refers to a common scam tactic in which victims are “fattened up” through weeks or months of developing an online relationship.
Once trust is established, scammers strike – defrauding victims of their hard-earned savings, effectively “slaughtering the pig”.
The game’s developers said they drew inspiration from real-life experiences, insisting that the storylines were intended to explore broader and more complex gender themes – with no intention of vilifying women.
But as outrage grew and online backlash continued, the game’s Chinese title was changed from Lao Nǚ You Xi, meaning “Gold Digger Game”, to Emotional Anti-Fraud Simulator.
Its English title, Revenge on Gold Diggers, remains unchanged.
Many took offence at the usage of the Chinese term lao nǚ, often used in a derogatory manner to describe scheming gold diggers who take advantage of men for their personal gain.
Sun Jing, a game scholar and associate professor at the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, said the game was “clearly male-oriented” and also “reinforced prejudice against women” – showcasing women as “dominating, manipulative gold diggers” while portraying men as “innocent victims and brave avengers”.
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