Light and Night Suddenly Announces Cancellation of Collaboration with Hushang Ayi!

A Collaboration That Lasted Three Hours

Word of Hushang Ayi's latest tie-up had been building for a while. The tea brand had already hinted at the news through its official Weibo profile picture, suggesting a collaboration would be revealed on December 14. Around noon yesterday, the romance mobile game Light and Night made it official: a co-branded limited-edition product line was set to launch on December 17.

Then, just as fans were getting ready to queue up for the collaborative milk tea, screenshots surfaced showing Hushang Ayi store staff insulting Light and Night and its players. The moment that news broke, the topic shot to the top of Weibo's trending list, and the related hashtag has now accumulated over 450 million views.

About Hushang Ayi

Public records show that Hushang Ayi is a new-style fresh fruit tea brand. The "Hushang Ayi" brand was formally filed with the Trademark Office in 2013 and belongs to Shanghai Zhenjing Industrial Co., Ltd., with Shan Weijun and Zhou Rongrong as its founders. Like most new-style tea brands, Hushang Ayi expands through a chain franchise model. By October 2022, it had opened more than 5,000 stores across over 200 cities nationwide.

About Light and Night

Light and Night is a highly immersive interactive romance mobile game developed by Aurora Studio. It entered public testing on June 24, 2021, and on November 9 this year it rolled out a major new version.

Where It Went Wrong

Screenshots circulating under the trending topic show that staff at one Hushang Ayi store responded with open hostility when customers asked about the co-branded products, showing not even basic courtesy. One employee asked, "Do you really want to know whether that widow-scam game is fun to play?" When the customer pushed back — "What do you mean by widow-scam game?" — the reply was, "That's not what I meant, it's just been trending online lately." Other staff went further and insulted the game's characters outright. That chain of behavior is what pushed Hushang Ayi to the top of the trending list.

It is understood that, earlier on social media, there had been rumors that because Hushang Ayi was teaming up with the romance game Light and Night, co-branded products needed to launch simultaneously and promotional materials had to be delivered to stores in advance. That advance delivery, however, led to negative reports that some store employees were selling the materials early.

The Collaboration Is Terminated

Between noon and 3 PM — a span of just three hours — Light and Night issued another statement announcing that, in light of store staff insulting players and the game's male lead on the day of the announcement, it would immediately terminate its cooperation with Hushang Ayi. Netizens dubbed it "the shortest collaboration in history."

In its official statement, Light and Night laid out roughly how the cooperation had unfolded: several months earlier, Hushang Ayi (referred to as "the partner") had approached the studio on its own initiative, and after several rounds of negotiation the two sides agreed to proceed, setting the public announcement for December 14 and the official launch for December 17. Starting on November 24, however, a series of negative incidents involving the partner's staff began appearing across social platforms, including early leaks of materials, the spread of false information and the private sale of co-branded giveaways. Then, on the day of the December 14 announcement, came the insults toward players and the game's male lead.

When the early leaks and false information first surfaced, the Light and Night project team immediately demanded that the partner investigate thoroughly and propose a remedy. After the partner submitted a plan and issued a public apology, the team accepted the apology out of respect for the partnership. But the behavior on announcement day — insulting players and the male lead — crossed the project team's bottom line.

Apology and Public Reaction

Hushang Ayi then issued an apology of its own, stating that in response to what happened at individual authorized stores during the collaboration, the company had immediately organized its internal departments to carry out a detailed investigation, followed up on the confirmed misconduct, seriously reprimanded the stores involved and confirmed that those stores had already dismissed the employees responsible.

Netizens and players, however, said the apology was not accepted: "However you look at it, I think it's very rude. Jokes should be made according to the occasion, and directly deleting comments from the official Weibo is also very disappointing." "This is obviously emergency PR to silence people." "This is a forced explanation." Many netizens even said they would never buy the brand's products again. Of course, some felt it was simply the fault of individual employees.

Conclusion

Now that the incident has happened and has genuinely hurt many players, should Hushang Ayi be asking how to win this wave of consumers back? Or how it should change so that something similar never happens again? What is your take on the whole affair?

Image source: Internet

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