Oh gacha, when will you learn
In some regions, studios are playing with fire with gacha games. As more and more legislative bodies are taking an interest in them, they’re becoming more and more regulated: and companies may want to take note of this recent case with War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.
So here’s the gist. As reported on Square Enix’s own site, the consumer affairs agency got involved with War of the Visions. Under article 7, paragraph 1 of the “Unfair Gifts and Unfair Labeling Prevention Law,” Square Enix got in hot water concerning limited-time gacha rewards. In their own words, the “offer ratio” for specific items was “not held according to the displayed ratio.” In other words, the advertised “pulls” (a gambling chance of getting certain items people want in gacha games) didn’t exist, in these specific sanctioned circumstances. Square Enix also apologizes in the letter.
4Gamer fills in some of the blanks here, noting that the problem in question actually happened from November 14 to November 16 in 2020. Similar to how Epic compensates some wronged parties in Fortnite V-Bucks, Square Enix is compensating people with the in-game currency of phantom stones. Hilariously, this just brings players full circle back into the gacha economy.
Unless people want to make a big deal out of this, there really isn’t much that’s going to be done to gacha as a whole. It inherently benefits from withholding information, and although some games have done a “better” job of showing exact pull chances (like 1% or less than 1% for items featured in an advertisement), the entire industry is very much unregulated.
Gacha has been around for a long time, and it seems here to stay for the foreseeable future.
[Thanks Rick!]
