Gacha games are out of control. Gambling shouldn't be so widespread
Gacha games are out of control. Gambling shouldn't be so widespread
As someone who grew up playing games like World of Warcraft and other AAA titles, I’ve seen how the gaming industry has evolved over the years—and not always for the better. One of the most disturbing trends is the rise of gacha games, which are, at their core, thinly veiled gambling systems targeting younger players. And I think it’s time we have a serious conversation about why this form of gaming needs to be heavily restricted, if not outright regulated.
Gacha systems prey on players by offering a sense of excitement and reward, but at the cost of their mental health and well-being. These games are often marketed as "free to play," making them seem harmless, but in reality, they trap players in cycles of spending and gambling. You don’t just buy a game and enjoy its content—you gamble for the chance to get characters, equipment, and other in-game items. It’s all based on luck, with very low odds of getting what you want, which leads players to keep spending in hopes of hitting that jackpot.
This setup is psychologically damaging, especially for younger players who are still developing their sense of self-control. Gacha games condition them to associate spending money with emotional highs, which is the exact same mechanism that fuels gambling addiction. You might think it's just harmless fun, but it’s incredibly easy to fall into a pattern where you're constantly chasing that next dopamine hit, just like a gambler sitting at a slot machine. Over time, this not only leads to financial strain but also deeply ingrained mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, and a lack of self-control when it comes to spending money.
Countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have already banned loot boxes and gacha systems, recognizing the dangers they pose, especially to younger players. The fact that these systems are still largely unregulated in many other regions, including the U.S., shows just how out of control things have gotten. The gaming industry has shifted from offering well-rounded experiences to creating systems designed to exploit players’ psychological vulnerabilities.
We need to follow Europe’s lead in placing heavy restrictions on gacha and loot boxes. It’s one thing to pay for a game and know what you're getting; it's another to be lured into a never-ending cycle of gambling for content that should be available as part of the game. Gaming should be about fun, skill, and exploration, not exploiting people’s mental health for profit.
It's time for developers and legislators to take responsibility and start protecting the players, especially the younger ones, from these predatory practices.
At least make all gacha games R18, no kids should be exposed to this stuff.
Quite a few years ago now I went to my nan's house for Christmas.
My cousin, I think he was about 13, had got a £50 Steam voucher for some games. Him and my other cousin who was a couple of year older went to Steam, swapped the voucher for something, and then took that to a gambling site. I don't know if they're still a thing. It was something to do with Counter Strike drops I think. Heavily advertised by YouTubers who ran them, with a bunch of videos showing them winning. The sort of thing they'd be sent to prison for in any right thinking society.
They took that £50, put it in, and clicked. The younger one went "what now?" and the older one just went "oh, nothing. It's gone." A couple of games worth of money, gone. For nothing.
He looked like he was about to cry, and only didn't because he was going through that acting tough phase.
He's an accountant now, and plays crown green bowling. I like to think that was a relatively cheap lesson in why not to fuck around with gambling.
It’s a small measure, but I’d really like to see a law where gacha games need to publicly advertise their odds and allow independent verification.
The biggest effect it would have is, the odds would need to be static. Many gacha systems have been accused of putting a hand on the wheel, assuring someone “so close to their needed item” must keep going through a series of failures.
Also it should be required to display prices in local currency. I spent 2.99usd on that fox card game. Ended up costing me 5 bucks canadian
World of Warcraft and Diablo are gacha. Every time you play, you are "pulling" and hoping for a good drop(item). What modern gacha games did, is take that gameplay/psychological feature and directly monetize it(instead of indirectly monetizing it through a subscription/1 time payment).
But both are gambling. I am ok with having age restrictions but we need to be honest with ourselves. And what is "fun" is whatever makes neurons activate. Gambling(ie rpg elements) has always been a core mechanic for many games.
It’s time for developers and legislators to take responsibility and start protecting the players, especially the younger ones, from these predatory practices.
They're making fucking bank with these practices. It will have to be stopped by government regulation. Self-regulation of industries has literally never fucking worked once in history. Look at Boeing, which has had the FAA basically glad-handing it for 50 years and it's falling apart at the seams (sometimes literally).
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
-Upton Sinclair
Sure, but, technically, without Gacha games I would t have discovered my ex wife sexting another dude. Because she was attempting to hide the money she spent in credit cards I didn't have access to, then wanted me to pay.
Which led me to digging around, discovering the unaltered statement, then she got drunk and the phone was open in her hand playing some stupid virtual bingo and a snap popped up and wouldnt you know it
Without being a gacha game, World of WarCraft is guilty of a lot of the same stuff. You probably know people who flunked out of college due to the addiction, or have heard of parents who neglected their child over that game. It preys on a lot of the same impulses that Diablo and Diablo II seemed to have found by accident, before they were monetized by subscription fees and then microtransactions. And you can see a lot of the same in games like Destiny.
As someone who plays a gacha game (Genshin Impact) I 100% agree. This shit should be kept the hell out of the hands of kids until their brain has at least matured to the point we'd let them go actual gambling.
That said, there's certainly a spread of abusiveness in the games: some are very reasonable and could be played with no money or very little money because they're generous with premium currencies and others are doing a sexy little dance while they steal your wallet.
Regulation around how much you can spend in a month would be reasonable, no kids would be reasonable, requiring clear and published probabilities and what those probabilities mean in terms of how many pulls would be a good start.
I can assure you most gacha players cannot tell you how many pulls you'd need to make for a 0.5% chance pull.
Also maybe outline estimated costs for winning wouldn't be awful, but that's maybe not feasible since there's a lot of variability?
I started playing one of the Gacha games a few months back now, Watcher of Realms, I think the only reason I started was because it showed jiggling boobies in a trailer. The name is goofy and the story is almost non-existant, the gameplay isn't terribly deep, but has some nuances to it, it's like a tower defense RPG game. It's kind of dumb as a game because it records your playthroughs of scenarios that you can then use later on to "Auto-fight" for you as you frequently have to grind for different shit. So you basically set the game on auto-pilot and stop playing the game. I've been playing for something like 6 months now, but I've been committed from the start to never pay a single dime for it and I've stuck with that the entire time. Granted, I've put way too much time into the game and, if time is money, I've wasted a bunch that way, but I've never actually paid for anything in currency. Cheap skate 4 life. I honestly don't know why I keep playing, knowing what the game is setup for, but I still log in day after day.
I can definitely see how it encourages players to spend money, there's so many mini-currencies within the game that obfuscate what you need to do to earn this or that hero or get whatever thing you're trying for, but ultimately the incentive is to buy shit to get further along. In this game though, the rates are so goddamn ridiculous that you'd have to be an impatient jackass to pay the rates they want for simple things that don't even give any guarantees of better performance in the game. On the one hand, I thing games like this are evil for trying to take advantage of people, but on the other, if you're that stupid and that rich that you have money to burn on a game like this... maybe throwing your money away on digital stuff isn't the worse thing you could be wasting your money on (like real world drugs or donating to Trump or something stupid like that). But yes, for kids who haven't mentally developed yet, there probably should be some sort of protections for them, since they'll pay for dumb shit at the drop of a hat.
Look at the mobile game industry if cancer could manifest as a software this industry is spreading it like oil and gas.
While I definitely have a lot of issues with how fast people said "Gacha and loot boxes are okay if it is Genshin Impact", I have the same general reservations I did back when it was about loot boxes in Overwatch or nu-Battlefront 2.
Yes, it is real shitty and a great way to pad out a game into a grind. And the goal is obviously to encourage RMTs to bypass it.
But also? It is like people for got ARPGs and MMOs and the like. The common refrain among older "gamer" Millennials is something like "I almost flunked out of school because of WoW/Everquest" and the like. And a lot of us have stories about staying up all night doing Bhaal runs to get a specific drop in Diablo 2 and so forth.
And, at the end of the day, it is the same thing. It is a way to artificially increase engagement with the option to RMT your way out of it. Studios have found ways to pull all those RMTs into the game itself (so that they get a cut on every legendary sword sold) but it is still the same skinner boxes.
Not to mention games like Balatro or Vampire Survivors that take massive inspiration from casino and slot machine design and mechanics. Yes, they don't have additional purchases (DLC aside) but there is something to be said when EVERYONE owns a ten dollar game because everyone who touches it can't stop gushing about the flashing lights and bells.
And, much like with loot boxes, I am really hesitant for any "We passed some random ass legislature. Mission Accomplished(TM)". When the underlying skinner box concept is still the basis of so many games.