On a Reddit post over on r/ayaneo, Arthur Zhang, the CEO of AYANEO, has responded to the recent concerns expressed by the retro handheld community with promises and detailed plans for the company to improve in 2026.

The Response

On a post in the AYANEO Discord, AYANEO’s initial response to the criticisms of their business practices was to shine a bit of a negative light on the creators and community members who criticized them, stating that they believed these individuals were “acting in bad faith” and had “chosen to position themselves on a moral high ground to judge or publicly shame us”. This, understandably, rubbed some people the wrong way, and didn’t help to resolve the frustration that many individuals were still feeling.

AYANEO Initial Criticism

The Promise

In a bit of a surprising turnaround, Arthur Zhang chose to publicly respond to these criticisms head-on, with promises of improvements and changes regarding international customers starting in 2026. The main issues that AYANEO wanted to address were:

• The responsiveness of customer support
• The speed and quality of after-sales service
• The shipping timelines and fulfillment order of crowdfunding projects

In an effort to resolve the issues above, AYANEO is launching a 2026 Service Improvement Plan. While you can read the full plan in detail below, the changes that AYANEO are trying to implement can be summarized here:

• Expand and better train their customer support team to more deftly handle current and future customer emails and inquiries
• Creation of a dedicated email group (he**@****eo.com) to handle unresolved legacy cases, including clearing out any accumulated emails within the next 7-10 business days
• Improve the after-sales experience by improving their replacement policy and compensation process for repairs, returns, and warranties
• Improving product quality control by adding more critical inspection checkpoints, strengthening collaboration with their supply chain, and conducting regular audits
• Move more products to be sold on their official website in in-stock or pre-order form
• When launching on crowdfunding platforms, provide more frequent and transparent updates and more strictly control delivery timelines to reduce delays
• Suspension of planned releases like the AYANEO Pocket Play until existing issues have been resolved
• Trial global simultaneous releases and fairer inventory allocation to reduce instances of inventory making it into the hands of non-backers before fulfillment
• Arthur has promised to become more personally involved in Discord, Reddit, YouTube, and other overseas communities to improve communication and accountability

AYANEO 2026 Improvement Plans

Moving Forward

The adage “I’ll believe it when I see it” exists for a reason, but AYANEO taking the time to respond to these criticisms with detailed and well explained plans for improvement is a great first step. This is a prime example to those in the retro handheld community to see that our opinions matter, our voices are heard, and we can encourage change in those who make and sell these retro emulation devices we love so much.

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