FPS Game Calabiyau Under Fire After Changing In-Game 'Bro' to 'Friend' Following Weibo Backlash — Community Erupts

An FPS gacha game, brought to its knees simply because an in-game character called the player 'buddy' in a letter? That's right — we're talking about Calabiyau. This move left the NGA community absolutely baffled.

According to screenshots from the original post, a character in the game addressed the player using the Chinese colloquial term 'gemenr' (哥们儿, roughly 'buddy' or 'bro') in an in-game letter. This quickly drew criticism from certain Weibo users who deemed it 'gender-insensitive.'

Faced with the Weibo backlash, the Calabiyau dev team wasted no time — they changed 'buddy' to 'friend.' Players captured the change on January 6, and a dedicated Bilibili post was even created to document the incident and prevent future historical revisionism. Even more absurdly, as the original poster later noted, Bilibili moderators began deleting discussion comments about the matter, making the situation look even worse.

Once the news hit NGA, the comment section erupted. One highly upvoted reply delivered a withering take:

Another player offered this biting commentary:

On the use of 'buddy' itself, more level-headed players pointed out the core issue:

While this reasoning sounds neutral, the fact that the devs already made the change means they effectively chose a side. As one commenter put it:

Others analyzed the issue from the perspective of the game's actual audience:

This viewpoint resonated with many. Another commenter added:

Some even speculated that internal changes at the company might be the real culprit:

Beyond the naming controversy itself, some players raised deeper concerns about the game's direction.

One veteran player unloaded a lengthy rant:

Some players also brought up Fire Emblem's character Alois — who calls everyone 'brother' regardless of gender — as evidence that casual masculine terms for the player are completely standard in anime-style games.

Additionally, commenters pointed out that this isn't the first time a gacha game has caved to similar pressure:

The debate over Calabiyau's esports ambitions also resurfaced, with one player lamenting:

As of now, the developers have yet to issue any further response. The butterfly effect from a single word — 'buddy' — is far from over. After all, when players discover that the devs will rush to change dialogue over Weibo pressure but won't fix actual bugs, that's a debt that will eventually come due.