Yostar Customer Service Dismisses BA × Mahjong Soul Collab Backlash as 'Players Throwing Tantrums' — Community Erupts

A leaked customer service response from Yostar just threw gasoline on the BA × Mahjong Soul dumpster fire.

Here's the background: Blue Archive (BA) announced a collaboration with Mahjong Soul (雀魂/Jong), a Japanese mahjong gacha game. The problem? Mahjong Soul doesn't even have a Chinese server. This is a foreign-server-only, one-way collab — Mahjong Soul gets BA-themed content, while BA's side would just send a congratulatory message. Despite seemingly having nothing to do with the Chinese server, the collab sparked massive backlash from CN players and reportedly impacted the CN server's community atmosphere.

A player from Baidu Tieba shared screenshots of Yostar's offline customer service response to the collab controversy on NGA, with the OP saying 'saw nobody sharing this yet, so here it is — just the screenshots, no commentary.' But those screenshots immediately blew up. The core argument from customer service boiled down to: 'Mahjong Soul has no CN server, so this collab has nothing to do with CN players. Wait until you actually experience it before judging.'

NGA users were not having it. One commenter dropped a screenshot and declared 'the first point already ends the match' — implying that the very first line of the response exposed the problem. Another user nailed it: 'They clearly had a prepared response ready. They knew exactly how players would react, yet still chose to go through with it.' Having a PR script pre-loaded doesn't inspire confidence — it confirms the 'we knew you'd be upset and we don't care' vibe.

The plot thickened when another commenter revealed a critical detail: this was a one-way collaboration. Ichihime, Mahjong Soul's official mascot account on X (formerly Twitter), had already clarified it was a joke. BA's involvement was limited to sending congratulations — meaning Yostar's customer service QA 'basically said nothing at all.'

But the real kicker was the alleged wording in the response that characterized player protests as 'bird squawking' (鸟鸟怪叫) — essentially dismissing legitimate player concerns as mindless noise. One commenter sarcastically fired back: 'Great, great, great — player protests are all just bird squawking, hope Yostar stays strong!' This is textbook 'how to make a PR disaster worse 101.'

Another user spotted a logical contradiction in the response: 'They say wait and experience it, but also say it has nothing to do with China. Don't those two statements contradict each other?' If it truly has nothing to do with the CN server, what exactly are players supposed to 'experience'?

One comment perhaps best summarized the whole fiasco: 'Mahjong Soul doesn't even have a CN server — it was always a foreign server collab, and a one-way one at that. Yet they nearly sacrificed their own CN server over it. Truly a 6 (impressive).' A collaboration supposedly 'unrelated to CN' managed to rock the CN community to its core.

The collab is now locked in — as one commenter put it, 'the collab is set in stone, time to watch the show.' Yostar's 'the more you explain, the worse it gets' response is likely just the opening act. Players have already shifted from anger to cold sarcasm, with some calling for a complete 'severing' between the CN and JP servers. One user philosophized: 'Once you embrace the idea of cutting ties, the world suddenly feels vast and free.' When your playerbase reaches the sarcasm stage, that's usually the most dangerous sign of all.