CookieRun and its community - The sweetest mobile game franchise with the most toxic fanbase

[Your Local Paleofag]

CookieRun is a mobile video game franchise by the South Korean company Devsister Corporation. The first game would come out in 2009 and it has earned wide success in its country of origin, with now to this day having several games of different success. Most of their games are free to play, here's the ones that you can play right now:


CookieRun Ovenbreak:
This gameplay is the basis of all of CookieRun, a gacha endless runner with obstacles where you use the abilities of different Cookies as well as their pets to get as far as you can. Ovenbreak came out in October 2016 with a stable success and a loyal fanbase. It was the successor of CookieRun Line and Kakao, which had the same gameplay. Ovenbreak has over 200 Cookies for you to play with different rarities and abilities, every month there's a new event that shakes up the gameplay with 2 different Cookies released.


CookieRun Kingdom:
The most popular game in the franchise. It's an RPG city builder gacha with a bigger focus on story and lore, first time in franchise's history to feature voice acting. Released on January 2021, it has a lot of returning Cookies from Ovenbreak but also some new ones, with more than 100 playable. This game will get very successful in 2021 and they'll get collabs with big franchises like Sonic, Disney and BTS. There's new Cookies being released every month with different rarities as well as new events to continue the story.


CookieRun Witch's Castle:
A puzzle gacha mobile game similar to Candy Crush. It came out in on March 2024. It's a spiritual successor to CookieRun Puzzle World which you can still download to this day despite the fact it hasn't been updated in years. It features mostly old Cookies with some new ones, they all have different abilities for the different puzzles. When this game came out, it was riddled with controversy because the gacha system was very egregious.


CookieRun Tower of Adventures:
The newest game in the franchise, released this month on the 25th. This is a 3D gacha RPG action game with a lot of emphasis on combat. New Cookies as well as returning Cookies are here. Not a lot to say for now, the game is still pretty fresh but people seem to be enjoying it.


CookieRun The Darkest Night:
A VR game that costs 25 dollars, it's only on chapter 1 and it's only like 2 hours long, no one bothered with this one but you can get it if you want.

Games in development:
-CookieRun Ovensmash

Dead games:
-Ovenbreak 2009
-CookieRun Line and Kakao
-Cookie Wars (probably Devsis bigger failure)
-CookieRun Puzzle World

THE COMMUNITY:​

CookieRun's community is considered awful by everyone, it's riddled with gender specials and people who will cry if you draw a character with a shade lighter than normal. The community has pretty much always been like this and has drama every other week, do take in consideration that it's full of terminally online minors that would rather get mad about baked goods rather than doing their homework. A lot of the drama can be mixed with Devsisters and their decisions with the games:

The official Discord server
Devsis opened their community server back in 2019, despite everyone in the comments saying it was a bad idea. With over 100 000 users to this day, it's always a very active place and full of very interesting people. These are two screenshot I just got from the server, the guy with the blue username is a mod

Mods and admins are usually from the community because the devs do mod applications on the server, so this isn't surprising. The devs also bend the knee quite a lot to their users, Pitaya Dragon Cookie (originally a guy) was called with a masculine pronoun in the game and the people threw a tantrum until it was changed in game. When it released vs now


Genders being changed for gender special bucks
Characters change pronouns all the time for the sake of appealing to gender specials. This is the case with the character Cream Unicorn Cookie. Cream Unicorn was originally released in Ovenbreak and he was a a feminine man. In an interview in Korean (here translated with Google), the devs confirm this.

Source/Archive
However when being put in Kingdom, he was retconned as a they/them. This could be because people were asking all the time what pronouns he used cuz it was never stated in Ovenbreak, and maybe it could also be because his VA is a gender special niggerfaggot

This is their official Youtube channel

This is their series "Last Cookie Standing", source

Keep in mind, Cream Unicorn Cookie is not the only one that has gotten this treatment. Pitaya Dragon Cookie had this happened too, characters like Snow Sugar Cookie were male until they decided to make his pronouns hush hush for Ovenbreak. Same happened with Angel Cookie, girl in Line/Kakao, unknown in Ovenbreak, they/them in Kingdom. None of the Cookie characters are nonbinary, things just get changed and retconned for quick gender special bucks.

Season 6 and Invocation Cards
Summer 2021, season 6 is coming and they promised big changes to the game. They introduce a new gacha with something called invocation cards, which would allow any character to be meta. Issue is, the rates were atrocious and it introduced a new currency that was hard to come by, similar to costume gacha but cards were 100% needed if you wanted to stay in the meta. Players in Korea think it's a horrible change, even whales think it's too much, people start visiting Devsis HQ and protesting outside of the offices (allegedly)


Sadly, Twitter account has been deleted, but alleged pictures of the protest plan with trucks telling Devsis to stop can be found here



Devsis tries to ignore it as much as possible, Korean players start to speculate this is Devsis trying to kill Ovenbreak in favour of Kingdom. However MicMac, the oldest content manager, was forced to respond.

Source/Archive

After a lot of protesting, Devsis decides to make cards useless, they would only be useable in Story Mode and Custom Run and even then very limited. To this day, you can still see the like to dislike ratio on the announcement video.

Source

Yogurca being racist
Spring 2023, a new update and its set in Yogurca. Yogurca is a location in the game story heavily inspired by Arabian culture, things like Aladdin and Arabian Nights. This update released during Ramadan, and people are quick to cry racism

Source/Archive

This one is a long set of images so I'll post it under a spoiler, here's the first one

Spoiler: Rest of the images

Source/Archive

Another thread on the matter, multiple images too

Spoiler: Twitter thread

Community Manager being bullied off her position
If you thought only the western side was autistic, the Korean side is genuinely deranged. This is Community Manager Rose, she appeared in a few videos with Micmac (the Community Manager since the beginning of Ovenbreak) talking about upcoming updates.

Her introduction video

CM Rose did regular livestreams on the official Korean channel, showing concept art and interacting with the fanbase. Whenever something bad happened with the game or people weren't satisfied with how it was, Koreans would usually go to her streams and tell her to please talk about it. One thing she did on stream was criticise fan designs that were send her way, this was as a way to interact with the community and to give constructive feedback.
In one of the designs however she was rather rude so hell broke loose. The rude remark was in 2:23:46, I don't speak Korean but according to Google, she says ""It's not us who are showing off our pride, it's you who are showing off your pride."

Some of the comments of people exploding at her


She ended up crying on the next stream because of how much hate she was getting, albeit it didn't make the hate stop, at 20:10

The last livestream featuring her did not soften the blow

She ended up quitting being a CM shortly after


Ancient+
Even if Kingdom is the most popular game, the active playerbase it has right now is minuscule compared to how it was back in the initial popularity boom. Devsis has been losing money with how expensive it is to maintain Kingdom as well as their other projects not being as successful as they'd hope for. They've been laying off a bunch of people from the US division

Source/Archive


Source/Archive

This has lead to creating new rarities for Cookies, releasing harder to pull characters to force people to spend more money and changing the meta every 5 seconds. They decided to release a new rarity, Ancient+, it'd be either the same Cookie or a new Cookie with a different rarity. They were stronger but much harder to pull in the gacha and it made the Ancient rarity essentially useless.

After much much backlash, they backed off on this. Ancient+ will now be "Awakening", which is upgrading your characters to a new rarity. This has been delayed until further notice.


General sperging
CookieRun fans are always sperging about something, be it official art using a shade lighter than normal for a character's dough...

Misgendering...

Or their headcanon not being canon

The devs have responded to retarded people being retarded and have told them it's dumb to care, but obviously CookieRun fans just call them racist and continue playing their games

Source/Archive

And an extra fuckery from the games: In Ovenbreak, they don't really like using they/them for just one character unlike Kingdom. So we get abominations like this instead



Pages:
Ovenbreak
Official iOS page
Official Android page
Official Youtube
Official Twitter
Official Discord

Kingdom
Official iOS page
Official Android page
Official Youtube
Official Twitter
Official Discord

Witch's Castle
Official iOS page
Official Android page
Official Youtube
Official Twitter

Tower of Adventures
Official iOS page
Official Android page
Official Youtube
Official Twitter

Puzzle World
Official iOS page
Official Android page
Official Twitter

The Darkest Night
Official Meta page

 

[Anonitolia]

was wondering how a thread on this cesspool didn't exist yet
Good start, OP, though are you sure this isn't intended for Prospering Grounds? Feels like the community would have a lot more milk to offer than the actual games themselves, which are mostly just shitty gachas.

 

[Ghost Boy]

Time to lurk this one. Cr is fucked thanks to crybabies.

 

[Cat tit bingo]

"God I want to FUCK those cookies!"
-cookie run fans

 

[ChucklesTheJester]

"God I want to FUCK those cookies!"
-cookie run fans

Would that just be considered Glazing/frosting the cookies?

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

It really is a combination of every gacha and moder western audience cancer rolled to one. At least the usual PNG gacha has boobs in it.

 

[didelphigina]

Finally a thread on this. Semper Fi to you. I'm expecting this thread to really blow up soon. It deserves it since the milk with these people are endless. I've never seen a more desperate fandom having legitimate mental breakdowns over cookies, their gender and pronouns, and bulging their arteries if they see someone draw fan art of a cookie that's a shade too light.

And I'm in the hh/hb fandom, man, as much as I hate to really admit that sometimes. That community don't come close in terms of how gender/drama obsessed the Cookie Run fandom is.

was wondering how a thread on this cesspool didn't exist yet
Good start, OP, though are you sure this isn't intended for Prospering Grounds? Feels like the community would have a lot more milk to offer than the actual games themselves, which are mostly just shitty gachas.

Agreed. Feels more fitting for Community Watch.

 

[Your Local Paleofag]

though are you sure this isn't intended for Prospering Grounds?

Imma be honest, I forgot about Prospering Grounds somehow entirely. I will ask a mod to see if I can move this thread.

Another edit to avoid double posting: Thread is now on Prospering Grounds! I have added more archives and images to the OP to further expand on some Korean only drama

Also for the OP, there's some sources still missing. Biggest example is the streams were CM Rose was being bullied, I don't speak Korean so it's harder to find them. Hopefully if this thread grows then people can contribute to documenting everything needed and maybe more, cuz I'm sure there's been many more controversies that I didn't put in the OP.

Edit: I'm fucking stupid, the livestreams were in the Korean Youtube channel, here Rose is holding back tears at 20:10 (timestamped)

As I said, I don't speak Korean, but looking at the like to dislike ratio, it seems Koreans really hated her and attacked her for the state of the game despite her only being a content manager

Last livestream featuring her, seems like Koreans were even angrier here

I have edited the OP to include everything here.

 

[#FF0000]

"God I want to FUCK those cookies!"
-cookie run fans

I used to know a guy who genuinely wanted to have sex with the Sorbet Shark Cookie. He was literally desperate and I think he actually thought he was in a relationship with it.
Anyways, good OP. This community looks like a shitshow.

 

[Kiwilurk]

I remember these people saying Cookie run was going to destroy Genshin impact or something.

 

[isalaide]

tranny gacha drama!! I don't play this but I love this thread. trannies + gacha = Total dev persecution

 

[Kaze no Kuronoa]

After much much backlash, they backed off on this.

This wasn't mentioned, but I'd like to do so: the main reason Devsis had to bend the knee on this update was because Korean whales went completely schizo on them. At first it was small stuff, like changing their user/guild names to include the "+" in "protest", but then it went to the extreme of renting trucks with protest messages to stand in front of Devsis HQ as well as planning to put funerary flowers at the entrance (archive). Yes, guess Koreans really love their trucks.

Spoiler: Discord screenshots

These Koreans are also going to the extreme to want to sue Devsis for what might as well be the biggest reach yet (archive). Needless to say, some think this is going to be a grift, especially since these whales are asking for "truck crowdfunding" under the same breath.

Spoiler: Screenshot from /vmg/

Not sure if there will be any other updates in the future, but this is what one should expect from gacha whale drama.​

 

[Your Local Paleofag]

I used to know a guy who genuinely wanted to have sex with the Sorbet Shark Cookie. He was literally desperate and I think he actually thought he was in a relationship with it.

Sorbet Shark fans are very special, they either think that biscuit is the hottest thing alive that needs to be shipped with other biscuits or a cute uwu bean that is an innocent child and if you ship him with anyone then you're a pedophile. For obvious reasons, these two groups clash, to the point where someone DM a Devsis employee called Gedi (he doesn't work for Devsis anymore) asking what was the canon age of that pastry. Even with this comment, Sorbet Shark fans are still in constant war with one another.

Source of this screenshot/Archive

 

[Coolio55]

I was genuinely shocked the first time I saw polished fanart of a cutesy endless runner I played in 2009 ...only to find that it had become a media empire in the meantime. Such is the power of Korean MMO moneygrabbing.
You just learn to not question these things in today's bizarre era.

"God I want to FUCK those cookies!"
-cookie run fans

Would that just be considered Glazing/frosting the cookies?

It makes more sense if you're familiar with Fru T. Bunn

 

[The Un-Clit]

Links to the games themselves might be a good idea. Not that anyone's likely to play these gatcha crap games seriously but it might be interesting/give more context to see what this is all about though the game breakdowns are good already.

Not a huge deal, one can simply go look them up but it would be a useful addition to the OP.

 

[Your Local Paleofag]

Links to the games themselves might be a good idea. Not that anyone's likely to play these gatcha crap games seriously but it might be interesting/give more context to see what this is all about though the game breakdowns are good already.

Not a huge deal, one can simply go look them up but it would be a useful addition to the OP.

Good idea, I have added links to the official download pages as well as tidy up the links

 

[I_Am_Not_Bruce_Willis]

Genders being changed for gender special bucks
Characters change pronouns all the time for the sake of appealing to gender specials. This is the case with the character Cream Unicorn Cookie. Cream Unicorn was originally released in Ovenbreak and he was a a feminine man. In an interview in Korean (here translated with Google), the devs confirm this.

Now I'm getting flashbacks to Pyohato and all the gay/gender-baiting he did back in the day. He went out of his way to make almost every single one of his OCs queer for seemingly no reason, and he was a fan of Cookie Run.

I honestly think he too might be deserving of his own thread at some point, but I'm not sure if there's really any point in the grand scheme of things since he's completely disappeared from the Internet.

 

[Your Mother Should Know]

There's a diverse community of Koreans, OvenBreak veterans, Cookie Run: Kingdom kiddies, waifufags, troons, and white bread gaming influencers involved with Cookie Run. Since humans were only designed to function in small tribes, this cultural melting pot ensures that hilarity will ensue. All we're missing are criminal cults and fringe political extremists.

 

[I glow in the dark]

I'm surprised the lunacy has even kept going on, Genshit literally beat this game by doing nothing.

 

[Your Local Paleofag]

New controversy happening! Because of course, seeing a monkey and thinking it's tied to black people means the devs are the racist ones


Source/Archive

Spoiler: Racist monkey

Bonus racism from the same game

Source/Archive

Spoiler: Images

I already put in the OP how Yogurca is racist because no reason at all, so it reminded me of how some other Cookies have gotten painted as being racist before:
Milk Cookie was called a nazi for using iron cross imagery (apparently) and for looking like a crusader (apparently). Also being called a white saviour because Purple Yam is black coded (apparently) and he's a an aggressive brute that likes to destroy everything.

Spoiler: Loooooong image

Source/Archive


Source/Can't archive because Tumblr made it so you need to be logged in to view some blogs

Spoiler: The racist monsters in question

Goblin Cookie is another character that got this treatment because well, he's a goblin and that's antiemetic

Source
Oy vey, shut it down

Researching this made me discover an old Tumblr post from an user called "devsisphobic" which has been deleted since but archives about it exist. Even if most of the links are dead, it talks about different controversies into why Devsis is horrible.

Archive
Some old pics that I found when I google their username


If the CookieRun fans have always been like this, you might ask yourself "if they believe the devs are racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc etc, why do they keep playing the game and posting about it?".
Well, that is a great question.