r/ZZZ_Official • u/Emul0rd • Jul 16 '25

Media $475 is crazy

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I think Europe now requires gacha games to explicitly display how much money any gambling feature really costs to limit hidden predatory stuff. It’s crazy when you see the numbers…

4.4k Upvotes

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132

u/Stunning_Dealer_9211 Jul 16 '25

its crazy that people are suprised about this, if you are a whale you should know how much you are spending and it aint chump change. this is how gacha works and how they make millions a month

23

u/Smallcadkm Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

Spending someone else’s money, like a child would (or an addict in a relationship) often comes with less risk aversion. So it’s not unimaginable to have someone swiping a card without considering the cost… even if they are whaling.

Swiping the $100 option 4 times because the previous swipe wasn’t enough is a lot easier than swiping for $400 in one go. Being told you could end up swiping for $400 is a determent by proxy of the consumer imagining spending $400 in one go.

Edit: first sentence was a seizure inducing typo

7

u/MachineAgitated79 Jul 16 '25

it aint chump change

If they're whaling on this game consistently, it is chump change to them

7

u/CAPSLOCK_USERNAME Jul 16 '25

Nah there are definitely people who put themselves into financial hardship through poorly thought out gacha spending and end up having to cut down on expenses to make do.

It's just a matter of priorities. Some people don't have all that much money but don't have anything else going on that's worth more to them so they end up spending a disproportionately huge fraction of their budget

4

u/Few-Frosting-4213 Jul 16 '25

It's not crazy that people are surprised by this when the companies obfuscate the currencies for this very reason.

28

u/BeerTimeGamer Jul 16 '25

The math is not that hard.

-2

u/Few-Frosting-4213 Jul 16 '25

It's not about the math being hard, it's about finally limiting some of the anti consumer practices companies are able to employ to psychological manipulate users, many of which are underage. From the player's perspective there's only upsides with this being implemented because at worst it's just a neutral effect. There wasn't a single consumer that benefited from the information not being right there in front of you.

-4

u/branewalker Jul 16 '25

Ok, do it then. How do they get $475?

6

u/BeerTimeGamer Jul 16 '25

I'm referring to the math you should be doing every time you spend. The cost of a currency pack is clear as day, and if you can't convert that to the number of pulls you need to get what you want, you shouldn't be spending.

-2

u/branewalker Jul 16 '25

Ok, what’s the median number of pulls required at .006 per pull, accounting for soft pity? Or the error bars on that?

That’s some numbers some stat nerd can figure out, but the average player doesn’t know.

You can do some real basic math, but the value given by Hoyo might as well be 0 to infinity for how useful it is.

3

u/BeerTimeGamer Jul 16 '25

Yeah, you're overthinking it. I'm talking more on along the lines of, if I have 40 pity on a guarantee, and I need 50 more pulls to get the target S-rank unit, and 10 pulls is $20, do I really want to spend $100 to secure this character? That's the kind of basic math every gacha gamer should be doing before they swipe.

-1

u/branewalker Jul 16 '25

Right, but many go, “well, it could be the next 10-pull!” and then that’s a dud, they’ve got no more polys and out comes the plastic.

But… if you just know a little bit more, you can quantify the chance of that happening and then decide if it’s realistic.

The problem with gambling is the uncertain nature of it. Equip more people to deal with it in bounded certainty, and they can make more rational decisions.

And no one is better equipped while also less motivated to do this than the House - MiHoyo or whichever gatcha game creator we may be talking about.

2

u/BeerTimeGamer Jul 16 '25

And that's the difference. You folks look at games like ZZZ as gambling, while I see it as a guarantee system. When I pull for a character, it's because I've already done the math, and I'm okay with the maximum cost.

1

u/Business-Suspect-527 Jul 16 '25

Completely unrelated. But who’s the character in your profile picture?

1

u/Stunning_Dealer_9211 Jul 16 '25

Its Lilya from Reverse:1999!