this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025

327 points (96.3% liked)

Games

37859 readers

560 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

Submissions have to be related to games
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No excessive self-promotion
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here and here.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

shitpostpolice@lemmy.world

Dremor@lemmy.world

327

Almost 19% of Japanese people in their 20s have spent so much money on gacha they struggled with covering living expenses, survey reveals - AUTOMATON WEST (automaton-media.com)

submitted 2 days ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

85 comments fedilink hide all child comments

(page 2) 41 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] MoonlightFox@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I wouldn't mind microtransactions, gacha games and gacha mechanics if there were sane upper limits to spend.

I was trying to learn how different gacha games work and monetization in f2p games in general, especially obes for smartphones.

I was surprised about how similar all the methods across games are. Some were a lot worse than others though.

I think the monetization method is sometimes viewed as acceptable by some, because the games often have a lot of content and can be a lot of fun to play. The thing I really dislike is that it's unfairly monetized. Some people pay the majority of the income, they are also known as whales. There are of course some people that spend small sums, but the whales is where it is at.

After Arcade games went out of fashion we had a nice long period in which players paid about the same for a game, and got the same experience.

Now vulnerable people are paying more than they can afford to finance the game for everyone, and still everone gets a limited experience.

Some of the games I enjoyed the most had terrible gacha mechanics. One of them had items and mounts with 1/500 chance per pull. Of course it is designed so that it appears as 1/10, but it is really 1/500. To justify this they had the PITY system. Yes, thats the actual name of it. The pity system makes it so that after buying 500 pulls ypu are guaranteed the mount.

The price for 500 pulls? 500$

After the free pulls you could play to get, about 480$.

So I actually can't get the entire game for even 500$..

That was just one of many such instances. I could probably spend more than 10 000$ and still not unlock absolutely everything.

Was it purely cosmetic? Nope. It gave an advantage too.

Legislation that effectively adds an upper limit to unlock the entire game with a sensible maximum monthly cost for new content, is needed in my opinion.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Vipsu@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Played Puzzle and dragons for like 3 years when mobile games where booming and spend like total of 300€ to it.

Honestly it was pretty good and did not feel nearly as predatory as many other mobile gatcha games I've played after that.

But it did kinda red pill me on F2P games, gatcha, fomo, peer pressure and many other manipulative methods these games use. The fact that Gungho ended up closing the servers down in Europe making people lose their accounts also showcased pretty well how temporary these games are.

Now if I'll ever again play games with gatcha I'll do no gatcha "challenge" run. It's pretty good for gauging whether the game is actually any good and how fast you'll hit the paywall.

[–] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I played a gatcha game with a friend when we didn't know what gacha was and we where trying to build our teams by just playing the game and there where always massive difficulty walls that couldn't be passed. So we both ended up spending around $500 CAD on that game and farming with our phones open on the game 24/7. We stopped after we understood how predatory the model was.

[–] Vipsu@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Stopped playing Puzzle and dragons after clearing tower of gods for umpteenth time to "efficiently" consume my stamina so it would not get wasted.

Had this "wtf I am doing with my life moment" as I was no longer having fun and clearing the dungeon over and over was simply booring time waster.

Started ignoring daily login bonuses and only played when there was new content. Soon after that stopped playing all together.

[–] hisao@ani.social -4 points 2 days ago (17 children)

Honestly it was pretty good

Yeah, I have never seen anyone talking about benefits of gacha model online. People only ever talk about it like it's pure evil in its most refined form. Yet to hear anyone say how this model allows developers to fund basically F2P "Breath of the Wild" tier games with 100x more content.

[–] Vipsu@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Some of the F2P games are great especially if you cant afford new games. In some you can just ignore all cosmetics and focus on getting good. Hell make using default skins your identity and some gamers may get extra salty if they get their ass handed to them by someone using "noob skins".

As for gatcha games it depends largely where the paywall is. If its in the late/endgame then you may very well get tens if not hundreds of hours of enjoyment before you get there. Some of them also shower you with premium currency early on to get you hooked so you might eventually end up with pretty good team to clear most of the content without spendi g a dime.

[–] Flemmy@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago

To be fair there's a range between $1,99 up to $150. The arcade hall from the 90's with token exchange wasn't much different.

load more comments (15 replies)

[–] vegantomato@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Let me guess

Anime tiddies
Short skirts
Long socks
Ultra brain-stimulating UI
Ultra brain-stimulating sound effects
9001 virtual currencies to mask the actual cost of everything
Mystery RNGs everywhere
Muh behavioral psychology
More manipulative shit

Parents need to do their fucking jobs.

These gaming companies (parasites) need to lose all their IP protections.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Firipu@startrek.website 4 points 2 days ago

This doesn't surprise me. If I hear stories of some of my teenager son's classmates it sounds realistic. The other day one of his mates spent 20k in an arcade on claw machines in a single afternoon. He "won" like 4-5 massive plush dolls, and had to hide them at our place to avoid parental wrath. Can buy them for 2000jpy incl shipping on aliexpress.

Some of his friends spent their entire allowance and more on fortnite every month. Parental failure imo. Parents should teach their kids the value of things...

[–] cholesterol@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Well I had no flippin clue

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game

[–] hisao@ani.social 3 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Anyone into Genshin here? When do you think the urge to spend a lot starts? I'm AR19 now, I rolled 2 characters from 20 basic wishes (Noelle and Collei), and I think I have enough crystals and primos for maybe 10-20 wishes more which is likely to yield yet another 2 characters (or more if I'm lucky). At this point, I still have no clue when I should start wanting to spend real money. There seems to be so much content to earn primos and everything else I need organically.

[–] socsa@piefed.social 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This entire comment feels like brain rot to me

[–] hisao@ani.social 1 points 2 days ago

brain

RPG enjoyers have talked like this since before computer games existed. I think D&D terminology for all their kinds of dice rolls and internal math would sound similar, but even more gibberish.

[–] caut_R@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I‘m just spending 5 bucks for Welkins, swiping is for when you really want a character and have nothing left. But even then you drop one Mario Kart World and that should get you what you want. I have no idea what the point in whaling is, there‘s nothing hard in the game that needs it, there‘s nothing that even needs constellations. Maxing out a character just makes their numbers bigger (which isn‘t needed, see above) and doesn‘t change anything about their gameplay. I really don‘t get it.

But since you‘ve just started, you‘ll notice that eventually you won‘t be swimming in resources anymore. Still, you should be able to get a character every other patch even if you‘re unlucky. I guess the biggest opening people give for swiping is banking on „winning“ the 50-50, and then they don‘t win (duh) and then they’re frustrated and force it. As for why they’re swiping a grand and upwards into C6, I have no idea.

I can only speak for ZZZ, WuWa, and Genshin though. I‘m not in the picture with any of the others.

[–] IronKrill@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago

I haven't played Genshin in a couple of years but it's definitely one of the better ones from what I've seen. I played through f2p until I had a sense of the game and was confident in the content and monetization model. After that I did spend whatever it was, five bucks(?), for the "battle pass" but honestly as long as you have the time to grind then Genshin is fairly non-invasive. That grind is why I quit though, the end game was a slog.

[–] IndieSpren@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago

In my experience, the urge only begins once you've completed the entire openworld and run out of content other than the endgame dungeons (spiral abyss, imaginarium theater). You have a long way to go before that point.

[–] atotayo@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago

I did play a lot a couple years ago completely f2p and in the late game the artifact farming gets really bad, to the point that you farm for weeks for one character. It's not necessary to clear the story (at least in the past) but in the late abyss is mandatory and it kills any will to try off-meta/more fun builds. Still a lot of fun if you play casually.

[–] HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone 3 points 2 days ago

I only really ever got the urge to spend when I lost a 50/50 for a favorite limited banner character. I stopped playing and hopped to another game instead though, eheh

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social -1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is why we really need a system where people can spend their whole paycheck and still be fine.

[–] proceduralnightshade@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I do believe people should have the right to spent their money however the f they want, but this becomes extremely problematic if you don't at least regulate their spending behavior, either directly or indirectly.

So okay, now you have a society full of hopeless addicts, but at least nobody has to starve. Sound kinda... dystopian if you ask me

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

I really don't think everyone is not an addict because of lack of opportunity. If anything I would say many addicts arise from an attempt to escape a reality that does not meet their needs.

load more comments