Gacha and Pachinko

Started by ZetaZaku August 13th, 2016 6:39 PM
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  • 1 replies
Age 31
Male
Argama
Seen June 14th, 2022
Posted October 9th, 2016
580 posts
10.8 Years
Not sure if it's worth a thread, but playing some mobile games out of boredom (mostly Love Live and now some Bleach game lmao), I started wondering, how come people aren't really vocal about gacha, yet they are about pachinko? Pachinko is basically Japanese slot machines that existed for 100 years, they're the Japanese equivalent of casinos. Nobody really complains about slot machines in the west so vocally right? Well in any case, pachinko machines have nothing to do with video games and are just gambling machines in Japanese casinos. However gacha, which originates from Japanese toy machines where you insert coins to get toys, is something affecting video games, namely mobile games. It's basically microtransactions since you get very little points while playing.

So uh, how come something harmless like pachinko is the worst enemy of games rather than gacha that's disguised gambling? I know that the pachinko uproar started with the Konami controversy last year, but gaming companies were involved in that way before Konami, like SNK's whole pachinko business, or Capcoms. It's kind of odd that Konami specifically keeps taking flame for something that's been going on for decades.
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Cherrim

Age 34
she / her
Toronto
Seen 1 Hour Ago
Posted 1 Week Ago
33,049 posts
20.4 Years
idk, I think there was a bit of an uproar in the gacha community last year when someone spent ¥700k trying to get one of the limited time characters in Granblue Fantasy and because of false advertising (the gacha banner implied a much higher drop rate than actuality), he didn't actually get the character despite all the cash dropped on it. For a while people were speculating that because of this and other similar stories, the government might pass a bill that would ban gacha games in their current form.

I haven't heard anything about it since, though. I really hope they do strengthen laws around them though because goddamn gacha games are unfair. Especially when they come west because I swear every localized game with a gacha element I've ever played in English has been soooo stingy with the paid currency and the drop rates always feel so much worse compared to the same games in their Japanese form, although of course my personal experience can only be anecdotal.

So I mean, the Japanese government doesn't seem to be ignoring it, I think they're just moving really slow to do anything about it... as governments do. :P

Sincerely,
someone really butthurt that she spent a not-totally-insignificant amount of money on a swimsuit gacha in a game for the THIRD YEAR IN A ROW and still didn't get the character she wanted


paired with professor plum.