Reverse: 1999's New Roguelike Mode UI Called Out as Arknights Clone — Player War Erupts, But Comments Reveal Suspected Trolls Starting the Fight

Another copycat accusation storm has hit the gacha gaming world — and this time, the main characters are Reverse: 1999 and Arknights. The trigger: during Reverse: 1999's new version preview livestream, the devs unveiled a brand-new roguelike mode. Sharp-eyed players immediately spotted that the UI layout, color scheme, and overall design look almost identical to Arknights' Integrated Strategies (IS) roguelike mode. Side-by-side screenshots are honestly hard to tell apart.

The post blew up instantly on NGA's gossip board (瓜版). The comment section split into two camps: the popcorn crowd spamming 'fight fight fight!' (打起来打起来), and actual fans from both sides going at each other's throats. Arknights players (nicknamed 'zhou you' / 粥友, from the porridge-like abbreviation) naturally cried foul over the blatant UI similarities, claiming 1999 was at it again with the 'inspiration.' Meanwhile, Reverse: 1999 players (nicknamed 'jiu' / 韭, short for '9' in 1999) fired back with accusations of 'sucking the pacifier' (嗦奶嘴) — Chinese gacha community slang meaning Arknights fans constantly insert themselves into drama for attention, like a baby that won't let go of its pacifier.

But things got spicy real fast. Eagle-eyed users dug up one of the accounts leading the charge — someone who posted 'What are you gonna do about it? Their company's in Guangzhou, they can't run' — and found that this account had a garbled/random ID, was only a few days old, had exactly 1 post and just 3 replies, all about Girls' Frontline 2 and 1999. The classic trifecta of 'new account + gibberish username + exclusively stirs drama' made it obvious: this was almost certainly a deliberate troll (反串拱火, fan-shen gong huo) — someone impersonating a fan of one game to start a war between both communities.

Other 1999 players in the thread pointed out that on the 1999 subforum, the first posts dragging Arknights into the conversation were actually people using Arknights to trash-talk 1999, and the retaliatory attacks came later. One commenter nailed it: 'New account, 1 post, about Girls' Frontline 2, puts on a 1999 fan skin and immediately starts shelling 1999 — deserves to get memed on.' The implication is clear: this isn't organic player outrage, it's coordinated trolling.

Even more revealing: an actual Arknights player in reply #16 posted comparison screenshots and said 'So what if they look similar? I'm not even mad. Stop speaking for me' — questioning who exactly decided all Arknights fans are outraged. Meanwhile, reply #12 dropped a loaded screenshot with the caption 'How dare you accuse them of copying!' (怎么能鉴抄呢), dripping with sarcasm about the absurdity of copy-paste accusations in the gacha scene.

TL;DR for this circus: The UI does look suspiciously similar, and Arknights fans have a right to side-eye it. But the evidence from the comments strongly suggests the whole fire was lit by troll accounts deliberately baiting both fandoms into a cage match. The '1999 copied Arknights' war might actually just be a handful of keyboard warriors laughing their asses off while two fanbases tear each other apart. Copycat accusations are basically a seasonal sport in the gacha community at this point — but the truly cringe part isn't whether the UI looks alike. It's that there are always people weaponizing these similarities to farm chaos for fun.