If Maya is the main LI in this game then it's a failure because roughly half the players hate her.
You mean there's a small cohort of very vocal people on these boards that hate her and keep saying it over and over...
Look back on people's tier rankings, she's all over the place (like every other character), but only "hated" by a few.
Having said that, there's an inherent problem with making the game gravitate around any one particular love interest, for the game to keep focusing on that character (the way this game keeps refocusing on Maya), that character needs to keep having issues in order to direct the focus, effectively turning that character into a drama queen, and in doing so, annoying some people.
...and then get smote by god.
talking about hate always seems out of this world to me.
but Maya is definitely not among the favorite Lis, hasn't won an official poll for how long?
and the fact that it is the main LI from a plot point of view has a lot of responsibility in this.
these are escape games, every constraint is frowned upon by the players, they don't want to hang out with who is right to hang out with, but who they want, which for example is why any female character has some fans, even when it was clearly created as a figure marginal (can't I fuck her? so I want to fuck her)
Meghan was definitely not AL's favorite (on 3 LIs ..), Chloe is not at Lancaster Boarding House and I'm sure there are many other examples.
Maya adds to this some peculiar characteristics, she is the first LI (with Josy as a passenger) to be able to reject MC, but first of all the fact that she remains the main LI even after rejecting MC, which is quite a stretch.
in an escape game, being rejected is not nice (then in the specific case due to relative faults), and it is even less pleasant to have to live with this rejection for the rest of the game.
surely the fact of being a lesbian can also have its weight in this situation (in my opinion in a marginal way)