{"id":238636,"date":"2025-07-04T23:23:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T23:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/238636\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T23:23:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T23:23:14","slug":"gachapwned-gacha-is-not-just-a-business-model-its-a-vice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/238636\/","title":{"rendered":"Gachapwned: Gacha is not just a business model \u2013 it\u2019s a vice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Don't<\/p>\n

When I started off the Gachapwned<\/a> series, I devoted the very first column to explaining that the gacha business model is inherently a predatory way of monetizing a video game<\/a>. And I framed that column as being a matter of establishing something as a starting point, an object of basic understanding: Gacha is a predatory business model. But I also clearly said something that wasn\u2019t entirely true by stating that these games would be better without the gacha elements, as last week\u2019s column made it clear that when you\u00a0do strip out the gacha, it doesn\u2019t make the game suddenly or indisputably better.<\/p>\n

This was, in fact, altogether intentional. It\u2019s the point I have been leading up to for the entire series because it is in fact extremely important. We have, heretofore, been discussing these games as separate entities, treating the business model as an\u00a0albatross to their overall enjoyment. But it is time to acknowledge that this is perhaps the wrong framing. We should consider that the gacha is not simply the business model used in these games but a core part of what makes these games themselves.<\/p>\n

In other words, the gambling isn\u2019t the\u00a0weakness. It\u2019s the\u00a0selling point.<\/p>\n

At first glance, this may sound kind of unreasonable. The selling point of these games can\u2019t be that predatory monetization model that we started off discussing as a predatory business model! But I want you to think about those first couple of columns in that context, because suddenly a lot of things make more sense. All of the elements of incentivizing you to spend are still there, but I want you to look at that through a different lens of the gamble.<\/p>\n

Consider this. Let\u2019s say that with all this \u201cpaying for a couple of extra pulls\u201d stuff, the game developers decide to change their business models so that you just buy a character for the same price as they expect the average person to pay. In that context, the average payment may well be in the $10-$15 a month range. In other words, if all the developers wanted to do was to get you to buy a new character, you could just be sold that.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not what you get sold. You get sold pulls and chances with pity systems to assure you get something. Why is that? Because the gacha part is\u00a0part of the fun. Pulling on a gacha\u2026 is\u2026\u00a0fun. It\u2019s not a bug; it\u2019s a feature.<\/p>\n

So when we ask about gacha, we have to ask about why humans have vices.<\/p>\n

\"note.\"<\/p>\n

I mentioned in that first column that we all enjoy doing things that are bad for us. Drinking and gambling are the obvious ones (there are good reasons that casinos are machines for making money), but even if you want to sit back and be very smug about how you don\u2019t share those vices, I know that you have vices. You have desserts when you shouldn\u2019t, or you like to sleep in, or you smoke pot, or whatever. I don\u2019t care what they are. You do things that you know are bad for you.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean that the vice in question ruins your life. There are lots of people who drink without drinking to excess, for example. But that doesn\u2019t make drinking liquor\u00a0good for you. If you get tipsy, you\u00a0know you have had too much to drink already. You know that the vice is bad for you and knew it when you started drinking.<\/p>\n

So why do we do it? Well, this may astonish you, but I am not actually a psychologist and do not believe that I can answer that question conclusively in a column on an MMO blog. The fact is that vices do a lot of different things for us. But I think there is an overall unifying factor to them, and it\u2019s not just that they tend to be a little harmful along the way. It\u2019s that the harm is placed in direct contrast with how they make us feel, and that feels like a touch of control.<\/p>\n

I very rarely spend money on the gacha games that I play. I know that they are, in fact, predatory, and I definitely do not spend money to get\u00a0one more pull before pity. But the act of doing so makes me feel like I\u2019m winning. I smartly saved up my resources and look at me now, I\u2019m getting your characters for\u00a0free. I\u00a0outsmarted you. No, I am not stupid enough to think that it\u2019s\u00a0actually a trick because, like, the system that I am using to get these characters for free were systems you put into the game to begin with. But it feels like getting away with something.<\/p>\n

The rush is part of the fun. The pull of the slot machine, even if you know it\u2019s almost certainly going to end with a loss, is the fun part. I have gone to casinos with $20 on hand to play cheap slots, and walked out with $0 on hand from that initial amount, and the slot pulls that I had were the fun alongside having dinner at a nice restaurant. It\u2019s $20 for an experience, in other words.<\/p>\n

But some people enter with $20 on hand and wind up thousands of dollars in the hole. Therein lies the problem.<\/p>\n

\"She's<\/p>\n

In taking into account that the gacha itself is a vice, we also have to acknowledge that the vice can be dangerous and destructive even if it isn\u2019t automatically so. The problem with gacha is not that every single person who plays one is a sucker who is going to waste huge amounts of money hard-pulling on things. The problem is that\u00a0some people are. Some people are simply genetically wired for that type of addiction. Just like some people are going to start drinking and end up unable to function.<\/p>\n

And if you think that I\u2019m saying this as some abstract thing, I assure you I am not<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The problem with regulating vice isn\u2019t that it\u2019s difficult to address the vices of video games alongside the vices that are not that; it\u2019s that vice is difficult to regulate in general because for most people it\u2019s fine and for some people it\u2019s turbo-grade bad times. But what I didn\u2019t slow-roll with that first column was that we need to be able to understand what gacha games are and\u00a0why they appeal to people because even if there are lots of layers to what make gacha games appealing, we have to face those layers authentically.<\/p>\n

By simply saying \u201cgacha is a bad business model,\u201d we fail to understand why it appeals. By failing to understand it as a vice that is a part of the appeal, we treat it the same way. We reduce the people who are vulnerable to it into suckers and marks, people to be\u00a0pitied instead of people who have a problem that needs compassion and help. And we let ourselves become distracted from real questions of addiction and abuse by papering it over with smiling soft anime-style artwork.<\/p>\n

I reject this framing on every level. The fact is that gacha is a predatory business model, but it is also a predatory business model that has that as a core part of its appeal. It is, in its own way, like gambling \u2013 and we need to treat it the same way, both in the sense that some people can become very vulnerable to it and in the sense that you cannot \u201cfix\u201d it via simple removal.<\/p>\n

You can play poker without real money, but most poker fans would argue that the game loses something in the process. Gacha is, at the end of the day, no different. And that doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re somehow wrong if you don\u2019t like it; after all, I don\u2019t particularly care for poker. But that doesn\u2019t mean I am immune to all vices, and vices are as endemic to the human condition as calling things the human condition. Only by understanding them can we address them.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s wrap this up next week.<\/p>\n

Many MMORPG gamers recoil from the term \u201cgacha\u201d \u2013 and for good reasons \u2013 but the subgenre is still raking in money from players, and it\u2019s worth a deep-dive. In Gachapwned<\/a>, MOP senior reporter Eliot Lefebvre<\/a> tackles the highs and lows of the infamous gacha game genre and how it affects the MMO industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I started off the Gachapwned series, I devoted the very first column to explaining that the gacha…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3094],"tags":[51,3134,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-238636","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114797544163234022","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}