The Girls' Frontline 2 community in January 2024 was never short on drama — but this time the battlefield expanded from the game itself to the gaming press. A media outlet called Chuapp (触乐) published an article titled 'Who Are We Empathizing With and Why Are We Angry? — On the Expectations, Empathy, and Rage Around Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium,' which players immediately branded as a PR hit piece. A Bilibili creator responded with a lengthy point-by-point rebuttal, and the NGA community dubbed the whole exchange 'dueling at mid' — a FPS term for both sides peeking out and shooting each other head-on, no cover, no running.
The phrase '中门对狙' (zhōng mén duì jū) literally means 'sniping at each other through the mid doors' — a classic Counter-Strike scenario where two players face off with nowhere to hide. Here it perfectly captures the vibe: Chuapp fires a PR salvo, a player fires back with facts, and the community grabs popcorn.
The most inflammatory line from Chuapp's article, which NGA users zeroed in on, went like this: 'Players don't deny that their methods are extreme, but they believe that while their actions are wrong, their goals are justified — they feel they had no other choice.' In plain English: players admit they went too far, they just think they were right to be angry. Translation for the gacha community: Sunborn did nothing wrong, the players are just being emotional babies.
One NGA commenter absolutely roasted this framing: 'Sunborn themselves stuffed the game full of controversy, turned it into a powder keg, and lit the fuse with their own hands. Now that the explosion happened, they want to blame the players for being too flammable? Every single controversy was started by Sunborn themselves!' This one comment pretty much captures the core player grievance — the developer caused the mess, not the community.
But here's where it gets really spicy — there's historical precedent. Veteran players dug up that Chuapp pulled the exact same stunt seven years ago. Around 2016, the outlet published a piece called 'In the Name of Love' (因爱之名) that used carefully crafted language to help game director Yu Zhong smear his former business partner Yao Meng and whitewash his own reputation. One commenter noted: 'This outlet used rhetorical sleight-of-hand to help Yu Zhong trash Yao Meng 7 years ago — you could say they've been his personal PR lifeline for years.' Looks like they're running the same playbook again.
The original poster's title nails it: 'Yu Zhong, this isn't 2016 anymore.' Back then, players had massive information asymmetry and could easily be swayed by an authoritative-sounding article. In 2024, NGA veterans will dissect your PR piece line by line and call out every logical fallacy. The community has leveled up, but the PR strategy hasn't.
When someone asked 'Is Chuapp even a major gaming outlet? Why would PR choose to publish there?' the reply was devastating: 'Yu Zhong published a PR piece on Chuapp years ago to throw Yao Meng under the bus and rehab his own image — it worked brilliantly. Guess he's trying to run the same playbook.' In many players' eyes, the relationship between Chuapp and Sunborn is anything but 'neutral journalism.'
Some players saw through the meta-game entirely: 'This article was planted as a deliberate target to draw fire. The PR cleanup is secondary — they're setting up a strawman so female players (解解, jiějie) take the high ground and Sunborn becomes the laughingstock.' The theory is that Chuapp's piece might have been intentionally provocative, designed to redirect community rage rather than actually defend the game.
The most measured take came from a player trying to be fair about the whole mess: 'To some extent, this Chuapp article probably represents Yu Zhong's own attitude — that players are hard to please, easily manipulated by trending topics, and incapable of appreciating his vision. Sure, players can be emotional, and some controversies have spiraled into a Tacitus trap where nothing the company does will be trusted. But the real problems are Sunborn's arrogance and the game's lack of quality. Until those two issues are fixed, Girls' Frontline 2 will be a bottomless pit — no amount of PR can satisfy players.'
That last comment pretty much sums up the entire situation. Yes, players get heated. Yes, some dramas get amplified. But the root cause is Sunborn's attitude and the game's quality — or lack thereof. Chuapp's attempt to swing public opinion with a PR piece is likely to backfire in this Tacitus trap. After all, 2024's gacha community isn't the easily-duped crowd from 2016. They've seen every trick in the book, and they're not buying it anymore.
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