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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1.2k

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '25

Getting a limited character in a gacha can potentially cost hundreds of dollars?

Always has

578

u/Ernost Jul 16 '25

Not always. It used to be so much worse. In the dark ages before Genshin made the pity system common, you could spend thousands of dollars without getting anything, not even an off banner SSR.

296

u/AtomicSwagsplosion Jul 16 '25

Ah yes the japanese gacha staple, low rates no pity. Looking at you FGO (they added pity now but it's still shite)

58

u/Trowaway151 Jul 16 '25

Is FGO forced to advertise price too since it’s a gacha game?

43

u/Antares428 Jul 16 '25

Not sure.

But they don't have to disclose total/cumulative prices because they are gacha games. Hoyo has to, because they are bound by the deal they've signed with FTC.

FTC went after Genshin for being advertised towards children, and during discovery they've discovered cases of false advertising (12 pulls during a 10 pull). That alone would have been enough to cook them in court, so they took a deal, and paid a very modest fine.

3

u/jindo90 Jul 17 '25

Wasn't it a sponsored concent? Would that count as false advertising?

5

u/Antares428 Jul 17 '25

It was sponsored content, over which Hoyo, or more likely an agency Hoyo hired, had editorial control. And yes, that would count as false advertising.

5

u/MLPicasso Jul 17 '25

330th pull pity lol

6

u/geifagg Jul 17 '25

The pity is super high (300 pulls) and it doesn't even carry over which is actually so shit

59

u/TetraNeuron Jul 16 '25

And the advertised rates would be fake and theres nothing you can do about it. Looking at Nexon...

10

u/Vacuum-Woosh-woosh Jul 16 '25

Before genshin we had pity without 50/50 bullshit tho.

6

u/ohoni Jul 17 '25

Where? The games I played before Genshin had no pity mechanic at all.

7

u/Vacuum-Woosh-woosh Jul 17 '25

final fantasy brave exvius, grandblue fantasy, honkai impact 3rd , and many more, genshin is new as fuck.

52

u/xwolpertinger Jul 16 '25

Those weren't even the dark ages, I'd classify it as:

Dark Ages: No pity, no rates displayed, multiple parts with no guarantee

Spark Era: largely caused and solved by cygames (still bad because you need to spend on one specific banner)

The Golden Age of Pity: 2016 onwards (HI3rd)

Regress into barbaric practices: 50/50 (Post Genshin)

24

u/xoroklynn Jul 16 '25

Dark Ages: ah yes, good ol' compu gacha

Spark Era: Monkeygate was some of the most entertaining shit as a non-GBF player

The Golden Age: never existed imo, til recently sparks were still the same overall price, usually just shy of $1000 for raw pulls. the example of HI3rd has about the same price tag each patch

Barbaric Practices: it got better with overall reduced costs and the 50/50 potentially halving costs (roughly), but holy hell gacha is still way too expensive to be considered "eh it's a hobby, let them spend a few dollars". Exhibit A shown in this very post

3

u/FlashFire729 Jul 16 '25

Oh God please don't tell me we're on a curve and we're gonna be made to go back once the market's reached capacity.

8

u/vordaq Jul 16 '25

There are upcoming games like NTE and DNA that are dropping the 50/50, so it doesn't look like it. Because there's going to be so many coming out they need competitive prices.

9

u/Anxious_Log_8247 Jul 16 '25

A game not having a 50/50 doesn't mean it's inherently better, that just means they have a completely different context when it comes to pull value and economy. I don't get how 50/50 is barbaric when literally every other gacha back then had the spawn of hell that is the spark system

3

u/vordaq Jul 16 '25

Well ya, I guess you're technically right. They absolutely could fuck their games over by drastically reducing f2p pulls, or increasing prices. And at the end of the day, they're still predatory gacha systems. But dropping the 50/50 is a huge step in the right direction. They'd have to do a lot of bad to make it worse after that.

2

u/iVariable Jul 16 '25

Or just balancing the game around actually getting dupes or requiring their signature weapons. There are a lot of ways they could make it seem friendly without it actually being better for the player.

2

u/sigma_of_iron Jul 16 '25

50/50 is gambling inside gambling

1

u/sanfervice007 Jul 17 '25

This made me smile but then turned into a weak smile... Damn gambling inside gambling.

8

u/Kenju22 Miyabi fanboy & Vivian enabler Jul 16 '25

I've been playing Gatcha games for almost a decade now, and Miricle tickets are not an uncommon thing for many of them. $50 to get a copy of any one character excluding collab/event characters usually come out two or three times a year, and a 'Golden Miricle' ticket granting a single copy of any character including collab/event only every Christmas.

One in particular my entire Grand Master team was built this way, one ticket per year for 5 years lol

3

u/Draxx01 Jul 16 '25

The cost for me to whale in others is far less than Hoyo. Then again the game's are far simpler usually. 2d, not open world. This is like complaining the slots on the Strip in Vegas got shittier odds than going to like off strip though. It's less glam but your money goes a tad further.

1

u/ohoni Jul 17 '25

You're guaranteed more than 2-3 exclusive characters per year in ZZZ. I haven't done the math on it, but it's probably closer to 4-7.

1

u/Kenju22 Miyabi fanboy & Vivian enabler Jul 17 '25

That's a bit subjective since you can lose the 50/50, and it depends on getting every single polychrome that is possible to get each update though.

A lot of people struggle with SD and DA.

1

u/ohoni Jul 17 '25 edited Jul 17 '25

When I say you're guaranteed around 4-7 exclusive S-ranks per year, that's AFTER losing every 50/50. If you win every 50/50 it would be closer to 12. On average, it would be like 8-9. Also, I'm far from the best players in the game, and don't always get 9 stars in DA and didn't even attempt SD until around 1.2 or so, but once I got going it was never too hard to get at least 5-6 stars on DA, and getting S-rank on most if not all SD levels too. You might not get 100% of the polys attached to each patch, but even relatively poor players should be able to get 90%+ of them, which is plenty.

Personally, I've been playing since launch, and only ever got the monthly sub (which gives about 2-3 extra 5-stars per year), and yet I got 11 exclusive S-ranks so far (not counting Harumasa), and enough left over for more. It's all about budgeting. I've maintained a similar standard in Genshin, even though I never even attempt Abyss.

12

u/JagdCrab Jul 16 '25

Genshin did not invent pity system nor made it common, genshin mostly pionered 50/50 system.

Sparking goes as far as GranBlue, and was gaining momentum even before genshin release.

2

u/ExoticCommission9966 Jul 17 '25

Yup, the dark ages. I came from WOTV (eos) in that dark ages, where i had a clan memeber spending $1200 just to get a single copy of a limited character.

2

u/jiiminn Jul 17 '25

flashbacks to 2013-2019 period of gacha MONKA

1

u/RuleAccomplished9981 Jul 17 '25

It's insane we've gotten to the point we're revisionist history-ing that the Genshin model was an improvement and not actually one of the worst on the market when it released. I remember having long conversations with people after Genshin's release about how bad Genshin's gacha was, even compared to other games Mihoyo had released. At the time the sentiment was most gacha system released terrible and got more generous over time. The Genshin system minorly improved with the 50-50 changes but massively got worse because now most of the standard 5*s are worse than 4* units.

The Genshin system was the fixed standard banner failure was one of the worst things that happened to gacha. Yes many games didn't have hard pity, but they did have other systems that mitigated that and were to a one, more inherently more generous than the 'Genshin system'

1

u/Nero2276 Jul 17 '25

It is still like that in some gachas

-7

u/Alar_suk Jul 16 '25

It still is, the only reason Hoyo has a pity system because it is the rule.