Honestly, it’s been a long time coming, but the drama has finally come to an end. On December 21, Migu Video Technology Co., Ltd. issued an apology statement through its official Weibo account, “Migu Movie”, acknowledging that its May 2023 video, “Using ‘Love and Producer’ to Open Up ‘Warm and Sweet'”, constituted unfair competition.
The statement clarified that there was no cooperation between the game “Love and Producer” and the TV series “Warm and Sweet”, and that the production and release of the video were not authorized by the game’s official authorities. Moreover, the game’s characters and the TV series’ characters had no corresponding relationship.
“We apologize for any confusion this may have caused to the public,” Migu Video said in the statement. “In the future, we will thoroughly improve our content review mechanism, strictly follow relevant laws and regulations, and maintain a compliant business operation, in order to protect the intellectual property rights of the industry and promote the healthy dissemination of high-quality works.”
Migu Video is a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Mobile’s Migu Culture Technology Co., Ltd., and was formerly known as China Mobile’s mobile video base. It officially began independent operations in 2015 and is the only copyright operation entity in the video field under Migu Culture. Its popular products include “Migu Video”, “Migu Movie”, “Migu Live”, and “Mobaihe”.
On the same day, the official Weibo account of “Love and Producer” forwarded the apology statement and stated, “After two years, we have finally won the lawsuit! We will continue to use the law to protect the intellectual property rights and original value of each character.”
This dispute originated from Migu’s “hitchhiking” marketing strategy. In May 2023, Migu created a mixed video to promote the TV series “Warm and Sweet”, which used the names of the four male protagonists, promotional PV clips, original music, and original dubbing from “Love and Producer” without authorization, causing public misunderstanding about the cooperation between the two.
According to the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court, this behavior constituted unfair competition by using the game’s IP influence to attract traffic. The case went through a complete process, including filing in 2023, winning the first trial, Migu’s appeal, and the second trial maintaining the original judgment, and finally came to an end.
As the content IP side, “Love and Producer” is a female-oriented love game launched by Papergames in 2017, featuring a sci-fi world view and love story. The game has been voiced by well-known voice actors such as Bian Jiang, and has had nearly 100 million registered users and over 26 million followers on its official Weibo account since its launch. The #Love and Producer# super topic has a reading volume of 29.02 billion.
Papergames was founded in August 2013 by Yao Runhao. The company’s representative works, in addition to “Love and Producer”, include the “Warmth” series of dress-up games “Shining Warmth” and “Infinite Warmth”, as well as the “Love and” series of love simulation games “Love and Deep Space”. Among them, the “Love and” series focuses on love interactive experiences, attracting a large number of female players with its rich storylines and interactive modes.
A report released at the 2025 China Game Industry Annual Conference showed that the Chinese female-oriented game market reached 8 billion yuan in 2024, with a year-on-year growth rate of 124.1%, becoming one of the fastest-growing sub-sectors in the game industry.
