New Gacha Policy Discussion

[Deathly Fright]

1 minute ago, Viche Hexem said:

Y'know this is an interesting one if only because it shows just how blurry the line can get. Sure it's been made clear that within the terms of the exchange of L$ for product that the user needs to know exactly what they're going to get but then there's this case. As I understand it:

1.  The "regular" product is sold and in that exchange everybody who buys it knows what they're getting, they pay for the (thing) as advertised and they get the (thing).
2. Everyone who bought the regular product is entered into a prize draw and randomly selected members of the people who bought the product may recieve a rare item.

Now on the one hand this could just be seen as paying for a random chance to get a product with extra steps and, in turn, be forbidden by the new rules. On the other it could be argued the systems here are seperate, the random rare prize draw element could be viewed as a potential free prize completely tertiary to the product where someone who buys the (thing) gets the (thing) either way and getting the random free prize is just incidental. Is it gambling any more than the chance of getting a free toy in a box of cereal when each time you're buying it for the cereal?

I suppose it'll come down to LL to rule if this is or isn't permitted (not that I doubt that people will reply to inform me it is actually super definitely what they think). It gives me other ideas for horribly tortured hypothetical scenarios also though! I'll elabroate next post.

@Patch Linden here's another thing to email LL lawyers about lol

[Silent Mistwalker]

6 hours ago, Teresa Firelight said:

Logistical Suggestion for the Lindens.

If you find a gacha out after sept 1, could you just return it, like you do with covenant breaking items at Bellisseria?

If you do that, then there is no penalty for the occasional inadvertently left out machine. (Some of us creators have gachas put out for fundraising, etc at assorted charity locations and dont remember where all of them are.) 

Of course, if any creator were to put back out a returned item, that would be a punishable offense.

 

You didn't make a list of the locations? 😲

[Silas Merlin]

37 minutes ago, Deathly Fright said:

less new items is a better way to put it, yes.

thank you for taking the time to type that long explanation, but for me I would want to make clothes as I used to, just this time with mesh. pushing prims around was easy, as was texturing. getting everything for a dress I have in mind and then rigging it etc is so complicated now. I don't have time to learn the whole new skill of 3d modeling. I have looked into doing it and have even tried my hand at blender but it's such a giant learning curve.

you obviously love SL as much as many people here, including me. yes the number of people still active is very important to keeping this thing we all like alive.

 

the first step (designing your dress) is something that can be done in Marvelous Designer, which is totally unlike any modeling software out there. It does not feel like working with mesh at all. Look for tutorials on youtube by Daisy Winthrope.
Of coure the problem is that this is a very expensive software, but luckily they have a trial period you can make good use of.

The second task is optimizing the resulting mesh, which is indeed a daunting task. That said :
-having designed the dress of your dreams in the first place will give you incentive to continue on the journey.
-as long as you are not selling it (plaguing Second life with yet more unoptimized mesh), you could very well skip that step (for now)

the third step is rigging, which can be done relatively easily with acceptable result using Avastar, which is affordable and has a discord were you will find a lot of helpful people to guide you (provided you take the time to watch the tutorials first at least).

EDIT :
There is a problem though... the dress has to be rigged specifically for the body you use inworld.
For that you need the files called "devkit" which creators often make difficult to acquire for some mysterious reasons.

Edited August 4, 2021 by Silas Merlin

[Deathly Fright]

17 minutes ago, Deathly Fright said:

this made me think of another scenario that could also be considered a gatcha... what if update scripts (where you get a free update for an item you own, which checks for a new version when you put it on) didn't update everybody. what if they only updated random purchasers who then could also resell it? nobody would know who if they got the updating version until the update went out

actually remove my thing about being able to resell it, that makes it needlessly complicated... just get a rare item generally via an update script

[Rosa Hexem]

1 minute ago, Deathly Fright said:

@Patch Linden here's another thing to email LL lawyers about lol

Ha, agreed! But here's the other one:

It's been said that with 7seas the purchasing of bait for your fishing line doesn't count as an exchange of money for random goods: it increases your odds of getting rarer things but it doesn't mean that you can't, it makes playing the game and getting those rare prizes more expedient. Like premium currency in a mobile game that completes things instantly: no gambling, a-ok.

What happens if the time period before obtaining, or random chances of obtaining, a product are made so ASTRONOMICALLY IMPROBABLE that it is practically impossible? What if in a fishing game there was a fish where you had as much chances of winning the irl lottery (not very high) as you did of getting that fish if you're playing for free, but were you to buy bait that one bucket of bait would give you a gacha's chance of getting that fish? It's a bit convoluted but I'll try and rephrase it again:

Imagine there was a gacha machine that works just like any gacha machine on SL has played before, except there's also a free option where you have a chance of receiving a free randomly rolled gacha every decade? Paying the machine wouldn't be paying for a chance, it'd just be improving your odds right? Really this is an issue both of if you get a chance sooner rather than later or if you modify the odds by paying in order to have a realistic chance, as scenarios go it's so tortured that even I'm stuggling to dechipher it.

[Rowan Amore]

11 minutes ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

You are not even making sense. There is no randomness. It's not like one person got the skirt that looked great on them and you got the goodwill version. THEY ARE ALL THE SAME SKIRT!

And easily avoided if you NEVER buy something that doesn't offer a demo.  Basic consumer protection 101 and what we tell people ALL the time.  Demo demo demo.  No demo, no sale.  I always assume the item is crap and the creator doesn't want anyone to see how bad it is before purchase.  That may or may not be true but I'm not going to buy it to find out.

[Katherine Heartsong]

1 hour ago, Marigold Devin said:

I thought the gacha machines were just like those bubbly gum machines my mother never let me put my money in when I was a kid (because dogs peed up them, not because they were a device for gambling). Of course, when I was a little older and had my own pocket money, I made a beeline for this machine that sat with another outside our local shop. There was no gamble as far as I could see, just like in Second Life. You put in really a small amount of money and got something back out.

The beautiful thing about the in-world gacha machines has been having transferable items that people have put onto their own market stalls, just like a garage/car boot sale. I thought that added to a sense of community whenever I've seen this happen.  

If it is gambling because some of the machines have a particularly desirable item inside just one of the 'eggs', then yes, it's gambling, but surely that element can be removed, and it can just be a machine full of regular items all of the same value. I've really enjoyed popping a dollar or two into these machines over the years, just to cheer myself up with a little surprise on a rainy day. 

Where is the harm in that?

I've highlighted the flaw in your thinking ... here's the dictionary definition of gambling ...

the activity or practice of playing at a game of chance for money or other stakes.

The gambling (aka chance) part comes in when you pay money and you are not certain of the outcome, in this case, the regular item you'll receive for you money. This is the crux of the problem with gachas and loot boxes from a legal standpoint. It's not gambling when I pay money and choose the item I get; which is how stores and the MP works.

If you want to resell an item, put up a store or MP listing which is the equivalent to a virtual garage sale. It is honestly not that hard. Trust me, if someone as tech stupid as me can figure it out, anyone can. If a seller doesn't want you to resell an item, it's a simple no transfer setting [aside: I think this is a big part of the massive pushback against the upcoming Gacha ban ... reselling .. though I don't know the intricacies of gachas that well since I never partake]..

My paintings? They allow for transfers just like my RL works (but not copy or modification), so feel free to buy and mark up and sell them on at whatever profit you can make, just like RL.

(Sorry Marigold, I posted this before seeing your earlier reply!! *hugs*)

Edited August 4, 2021 by Katherine Heartsong

[Vanity Fair]

Question for Patch Linden:

If the word "gacha" is going to be banned (as seems to be the case, from what I understand), how will that impact gacha resellers who have branded themselves with the word "gacha" in their business name?

Thank you!

Edited August 4, 2021 by Vanity Fair

[Silas Merlin]

Another alternative to gachas would be.... subscription.
Paying a subscription to a given creator would give you all the items they produce that month, or the next, and there would be no other way to acquire those items at any time in the future.

Would that be illegal because you would not know what you will get when you pay the subscription ?

[Rowan Amore]

5 minutes ago, Deathly Fright said:

actually remove my thing about being able to resell it, that makes it needlessly complicated... just get a rare item generally via an update script

Did you purchase the original item on the CHANCE you might be picked for a random update to rare?   

[Jo Trimble]

So make 10,000 copies of 1 item. No transfer,  Sell for 200 linden. That's 2 million linden, that's 6000 dollars usd in the bank. (If the item is a must have) You're still exploiting on peoples weakness for -rares- or quality items that only a few people in world possess.

But item scarcity is not -illegal-

Don't under estimate the appeal of limited items , RARE being rare is gauranteed to make bank. Supply and demand. You don't need RANDOM gatcha, you just need time limited, or limited amount of items. Sell these limited items at shopping events and don't tell me you can't make bank.

Rarity has its appeal

[Deathly Fright]

2 minutes ago, Viche Hexem said:

Imagine there was a gacha machine that works just like any gacha machine on SL has played before, except there's also a free option where you have a chance of receiving a free randomly rolled gacha every decade? Paying the machine wouldn't be paying for a chance, it'd just be improving your odds right? Really this is an issue both of if you get a chance sooner rather than later or if you modify the odds by paying in order to have a realistic chance, as scenarios go it's so tortured that even I'm stuggling to dechipher it.

put the gatcha in a name prize chair and is it gambling? as in, you can purchase on of the items that the chair would give by name prize.

[CelestineDemetria]

34 minutes ago, Tari Landar said:

Yep, I have since 2008. I'm quite well versed in them. I wouldn't comment if I wasn't, that would be silly. 

You literally are talking about breeding. That is secondary to the initial purchase of a LE. If the initial purchase of the LE is as random as starter packs, that is to say the exact known traits (not secondary, not unknown, not "can be breed out later down the line", etc..) that can get called into question. That is indeed a starter pack, and falls under exactly what I already said "LL needs to discuss with their legal team on how to help breedable creators solve this initial randomness". It will likely need to be 100% known at time of purchase, no "you could get brown, you could get green, both are starter colors", that will keep it compliant. 

If, in buying the LE animal you know it's basic traits, the known ones, the ones you can see, before buying (it's green with gem eyes, curly tail, floppy ears), then it is not random. What you can breed out of it is irrelevant to this particular discussion. 

I don't think you fully understand either what I am saying, or what you're saying. No, all LEs do not all hold the exact same genetics, they are, by design, a bit different, you just have to figure out how (if that's how you choose to play that particular breeding game).  If they were not different, there would be differentiation between the offspring they all give off, which is part of that breeding game, lol. 

 You are actually talking about breeding and what you can get out of, or do with, the item (animal in this case) after buying it. This entire post is about what you can get out of those LEs, through breeding (secondary, involving genetics, which in the case of all breedables is still very much just code, everything in sl is., lol) , which is very much secondary to buying the LE in the first place. 

 

Okay, get what your saying. 

What I'm getting at is your playing or paying money to get a Different Item then the previously bought Item as you- put it or say in the Post-. Is that not Randomization? IF each LE pack is a bit different unknowingly to you or not ( is that not like a gacha, if each item coming out is seemingly different from the previous?, but for the same payment)  Different items being sent to different subscribers on a chance basis is not allowed. - Is that Quote from patch Linden not the same as what you described. That's what I have been trying to get at. 

Then you hope that new desired thing pops out. (hidden trait) unknown item in some of the packs or animals.(money maker) (intrinsic monetary value placed on that item of Rarity- if not all packs contain them)- like you said if each pack is unknowingly different.

Most breeders don't breed to just keep the Animal.

It is Transferable so then you can take it and sell it. You take the initial gamble of first buying (getting a different item then the previous item), Another gamble Breeding, to get that hidden thing (diff trait) . To then sell it on for more or less. So you are gambling that you will receive that item, and make more or less money off the Randomization of the animals being sold as you stated- if everyone is a bit diff. You are not knowing/getting what exactly what you pay for. (if those things are hidden- you don't know if you got the same or different then item previously)

Edited August 4, 2021 by CelestineDemetria

[Trixie Lanley]

1 minute ago, Silas Merlin said:

Another alternative to gachas would be.... subscription.
Paying a subscription to a given creator would give you all the items they produce that month, or the next, and there would be no other way to acquire those items at any time in the future.

Would that be illegal because you would not know what you will get when you pay the subscription ?

Patch said in one of his posts that this type of subscription is ok, as long as everyone who purchased the subscription receives the same item  

[Rowan Amore]

1 minute ago, Silas Merlin said:

Another alternative to gachas would be.... subscription.
Paying a subscription to a given creator would give you all the items they produce that month, or the next, and there would be no other way to acquire those items at any time in the future.

Would that be illegal because you would not know what you will get when you pay the subscription ?

That would seem to fall under...everyone is getting the same items and no one is receiving anything special (rare).   There is no randomness in what is included as everyone gets exactly the same items.  

And answered in the FAQ

Q: How are subscription boxes affected?

A: Subscription boxes are not affected as long as all subscribers are getting the same content box. Different items being sent to different subscribers on a chance basis is not allowed. 

[Deathly Fright]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Did you purchase the original item on the CHANCE you might be picked for a random update to rare?   

how does a maker that implements this rare via update idea enforce that people are only buying it based on the item they're selling?

[Katherine Heartsong]

1 hour ago, Deathly Fright said:

this is such a good point

Never, ever, ever, buy clothes you can't demo.  Ever. Ever, ever. I don't think I could tally up how many Lindens I have lost to badly designed clothing. Ugh.

[LittleMe Jewell]

5 minutes ago, Silas Merlin said:

Another alternative to gachas would be.... subscription.
Paying a subscription to a given creator would give you all the items they produce that month, or the next, and there would be no other way to acquire those items at any time in the future.

Would that be illegal because you would not know what you will get when you pay the subscription ?

Answered in the updated blog post:

Q: How are subscription boxes affected?

A: Subscription boxes are not affected as long as all subscribers are getting the same content box. Different items being sent to different subscribers on a chance basis is not allowed. 

 

ETA:  I didn't notice that someone already answered with the same thing.

Edited August 4, 2021 by LittleMe Jewell

[Jaylinbridges]

40 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Odd. Gachas originated in Japan and yet Japan was the first country to ban them. Go figure.

Only "Complete Gacha", where you would win a special prize for completing the entire Gacha set was banned in 2012 in Japan.

All other forms of Gacha in Japan are legal today.

"Today, gacha are barely subject to any kind of controversy in Japan," Toto says. "Loot boxes are widely accepted by users, developers and the public alike. As long as excesses like kompu gacha continue to be shunned, the mechanic's future should be safe."

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-05-16-who-is-responsible-for-loot-boxes

Edited August 4, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Rosa Hexem]

2 minutes ago, Deathly Fright said:

put the gatcha in a name prize chair and is it gambling? as in, you can purchase on of the items that the chair would give by name prize.

Kind of, but imagine the odds on the lucky chair were so insanely unfair that basically nobody has a hope of winning it. Now pair that up with the idea that there's also an option to pay the lucky chair to tip the odds in your favour, effectively giving you the same odds of getting what you want as a gacha. My point is really taking the 7seas idea of paying not to get a prize but to be more likely to get a prize and then stretching its terms to the point of absurdity, so technically everyone still has a chance of getting something for free and only pay to improve their odds except in practice their odds are so bad they need to pay to even get a prize.

[Deathly Fright]

Just now, Viche Hexem said:

Kind of, but imagine the odds on the lucky chair were so insanely unfair that basically nobody has a hope of winning it. Now pair that up with the idea that there's also an option to pay the lucky chair to tip the odds in your favour, effectively giving you the same odds of getting what you want as a gacha. My point is really taking the 7seas idea of paying not to get a prize but to be more likely to get a prize and then stretching its terms to the point of absurdity, so technically everyone still has a chance of getting something for free and only pay to improve their odds except in practice their odds are so bad they need to pay to even get a prize.

you always say what I mean to say in such a better way

do the same with just a name prize chair, so if you're giving away the items in a name chair, have a conveyor that you can buy from as well, which does have better odds at getting the rare. if I was still a creator I'd even charge more for each conveyor purchase due to the odds.

[Arielle Popstar]

5 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Never, ever, ever, buy clothes you can't demo.  Ever. Ever, ever. I don't think I could tally up how many Lindens I have lost to badly designed clothing. Ugh.

Exactly which is my point that items without a demo are equally if not potentially more so a gamble. At least a Gacha if it is not what you wanted can be resold, whereas a regular item that is crap can only be trashed and is thereby a total loss.

[Rowan Amore]

1 minute ago, Deathly Fright said:

better odds

Would then make it gambling.

[Velcon Ethaniel]

17 hours ago, Patch Linden said:

Hi everyone!

We have posted our first update with a round of initial FAQ's to the original announcement.  We will post more as quickly as we can.
 

 

@Patch Linden

 

I just want to mention that all 7seas fish are transferable and I will be pretty upset if they have to make them non transfer. I think that 7seas should be allowed to stay as it is, as you aren't purchasing the  fish you catch - you are purchasing the bait so that you can fish, which is a known item.

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by Velcon Ethaniel

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 minute ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Exactly which is my point that items without a demo are equally if not potentially more so a gamble. At least a Gacha if it is not what you wanted can be resold, whereas a regular item that is crap can only be trashed and is thereby a total loss.

 

Apparently the Legal world does not consider 'getting crap' to be gambling.