New Gacha Policy Discussion

[MarcusBlueSky Whitfield]

@Patch LindenI have a question: If the "gacha machine" has sort of a queue display showing what will come next or let's say shows the next 5 or 10 items , would that be allowed? In that case it is not about a "chance" anymore , because you KNOW what you will get and it is your decision as a buyer to buy the other things which are in front of the item you desire in the queue?

Don't get me wrong, I have sometimes trouble with gacha playing myself if there is a cool item and so I can understand your decision but on the other hand I see an entire market in SL collapsing because , yes, "re-selling" gacha is still allowed, but what is it worth all the creators step away from gachas? Have a good time and stay safe!

[DeeJay Peapod]

Look if this is based on the lootcrate scandal then shame on you, the differences as slight as they are are still night and day between gachas, gachas are more like the sticker machine or the gumball machine, and anyone arguing that fact needs to look at the facts. I saw earlier that someone states that gumball machines don't use basically a random number generator based on rarity which is simply not the case, gumball machines just happen to use a very primitive version of this. the rarity on the items inside the gumball machine is varied by how many of each type of item exists within. As the mechanism inside the gumball machine it jumbles up the little plastic eggs further creating a sense of random ness and variance while the ones at the top sometimes the more rare ones don't move. At least with a gacha machine its purely random based on odds and RNG. Again you also know what you have a chance of getting based on the image. Where as lootcrate you had gotten items based on a category or theme and the variance in objects content and count was much wider as apposed to a gumball or gacha machine. So why not ban pre sales on well pretty much anything not limited to but including video games? I mean we know game companies half the time cant be trusted, so why is this practice allowed to continue? Your still ordering something based on a theme or a category in this case it just happens to be an RPG, or FPS, or survival game. you still dont know the contents of said game. you are in fact taking a gamble that the company gave you something good and not garbage. but as with gachas isn't good vs garbage only relative to the person playing?

[LittleMe Jewell]

3 minutes ago, Darien Martin said:

I don't get it as Gatcha's aren't gambling at all, their random raffle items.

Your opinion.

LL has to deal with the legality of things, not Resident opinions. What matters is how various locales define it legally. 

[Alwin Alcott]

26 minutes ago, Jessicatje Artful said:

So, after reading all of this i do have a question,

Are we still allowed to use a random gift giver in a club or store ?

Or will this be a violation as well ?

is answered several times.
No pay is allowed.

[Toothless Draegonne]

All this means to me is that people making the items make all the money, instead of it going through a train of voucher-tout middlemen first.

Good. 😄

[Krow Ames]

50 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

You mean don't want to gamble and instead, just want to pay money for the make/model/style/color they want.

It isn't your item to dictate how it's sold. Make your own if you don't want to risk paying a content creator a few dollars for an item they made.

[VanessaJane66]

@Patch Linden  Is this going to end up impacting Breedables?  That also has the element of paying for something with an element of chance involved.

[Krow Ames]

2 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

LL has to deal with the legality of things

LL is not liable for what residents do in world. If they were, the whole company would be locked up for the screwed up crap people do to each other.

[Omegaslayer]

I'm really glad they are doing this, i rarely play gachas and i am not addicted to them in the slightest. But they are just gambling and a crack down needs to happen, some people put hundreds into second life playing for worthless pixels. Because at the end of the day that's all they are, pixels.

[Alwin Alcott]

28 minutes ago, DeeJay Peapod said:

Breedables will now be banned as they violate this policy as well XD

depends how it's seen...
You don't pay for to get offspring, you pay for keeping the breedable healthy/alive. People háve the original (parents).. gacha buyers have nothing.

There are loads of markets with the traits of the offsrping bundles/nests or whatever its called.
Gacha/random is often mainly used to get rid of useless offspring.
 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Alwin Alcott

[LittleMe Jewell]

Just now, Krow Ames said:

LL is not liable for what residents do in world. If they were, the whole company would be locked up for the screwed up crap people do to each other.

To a degree, they are.  That is why a.g.e play is not allowed. That is why full on gambling is not allowed - though that also has to do with all of the things that they would have to do to be a gambling provider. 

[MewRai95]

10 minutes ago, Patch Linden said:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to address a few themes I'm seeing so far.  

One of the bigger one's is 'why'?   As we mentioned in the post, the regulatory climate around these sorts of selling mechanisms abroad have been under scrutiny for some time, as many have also already mentioned.  This includes the formation of some precedence already in place.  We did not make this decision without a lot of thought on the impact this has and sadly we know how burdensome this can be for many.  Through legal guidance, we are giving as much notice as we possibly can, but we also understand that it may not be enough is all cases.  While we will begin enforcement on September 1, we will not start this out with an aggressive approach.  Your account will not be at risk on a first offense basis.  Please don't take that as an opportunity to break the rules until you get caught, but we are committed to taking a proactive approach to any enforcement. 

Next, is some of the comments on the mechanism or the gacha machines themselves.  It is the act of paying for something and in return the item/thing you receive back is based on chance.  The level of chance does not matter, or if you disclose it, including the ratios, percentages, etc, if the output is unknown (chance based in any way), that combination of mechanisms is what will be prohibited moving forward.

I have seen some interesting counter-points to how to handle the sales of the content themselves.  Of course any already purchased gachas will continue to be able to be re-sold by resellers so long as the sales mechanism doesn't use a chance based outcome to give you the item.  Limited quantity items is another that would be perfectly ok to do, so long as the item being represented for purchase is what you receive upon purchase.

As posts are still coming in faster than we can respond to, we will do our best to respond as quickly as we can.

Hi there! I own a card game sim where the residents on sim can earn a hud based currency to buy booster packs within the region. The currency is not tied to L$ and is earned by their stay on the sim. The booster packs themselves act like how they would in real life where there is an amount of chance. Would this also be against the new policy? Thanks!

[s2Pandora]

21 hours ago, Brinlea said:

Powder pack changed. It's now run by Velour. In the days leading up to each pack they add pics of what's in it, till you finally can see everything in the pack before you buy it. They are only doing Lelutka packs now.

Is this when it's at it's full price? Or the discounted until the half of the month? Any time i've ever looked at the site, i've never seen any previews.

 

Edit: I'm a dumb lol, reread. I haven't actually checked the marketplace page, only the website. So I will keep an eye out.

Edited August 3, 2021 by s2Pandora

[Moira Stern]

32 minutes ago, Anna Nova said:

In most jurisdictions, ignorance of the law is never a defence. But ya.  My guess is that some law enforcer said 'the fine will go up by 1000x if you don't stop it pronto',

This is accurate; for instance, a Dutch court fined Electronic Arts (EA) 10 million Euros for all the lootboxing they did, with an additional 600K/week if they continued. Belgium went even further and slapped them with a 800K fine and threatened five years' jail time for the company officers.

 

The EU is most assuredly not playing around with this, and LL does not have that kind of cashflow. They'd get torn to pieces like a jock in a zombie movie.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

[Abel Bellios]

@Patch LindenIf I am understanding correctly, the gachas are considered a form of gambling due to the fact that you pay money for an unknown item, but you will receive an item with every play. How would this be any different than a sploder? I put 20L in, and while in theory I should get my 20L back, I am playing for a chance to win more.   

[Stephy Silvercloud]

1 minute ago, Krow Ames said:

LL is not liable for what residents do in world. If they were, the whole company would be locked up for the screwed up crap people do to each other.

They ARE responsible for what they do and do not allow in their Terms of Service. If people decide to go against it, and many do, then they run the risk of being reported and having their content deleted and possibly being banned from SL.

[Miu Margetts]

8 minutes ago, DeeJay Peapod said:

Look if this is based on the lootcrate scandal then shame on you, the differences as slight as they are are still night and day between gachas, gachas are more like the sticker machine or the gumball machine, and anyone arguing that fact needs to look at the facts. I saw earlier that someone states that gumball machines don't use basically a random number generator based on rarity which is simply not the case, gumball machines just happen to use a very primitive version of this. the rarity on the items inside the gumball machine is varied by how many of each type of item exists within. As the mechanism inside the gumball machine it jumbles up the little plastic eggs further creating a sense of random ness and variance while the ones at the top sometimes the more rare ones don't move. At least with a gacha machine its purely random based on odds and RNG. Again you also know what you have a chance of getting based on the image. Where as lootcrate you had gotten items based on a category or theme and the variance in objects content and count was much wider as apposed to a gumball or gacha machine. So why not ban pre sales on well pretty much anything not limited to but including video games? I mean we know game companies half the time cant be trusted, so why is this practice allowed to continue? Your still ordering something based on a theme or a category in this case it just happens to be an RPG, or FPS, or survival game. you still dont know the contents of said game. you are in fact taking a gamble that the company gave you something good and not garbage. but as with gachas isn't good vs garbage only relative to the person playing?

so many words, yet nothing of substance

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Mellorious said:

nobody wanted this.

I'm sorry. My name isn't nobody.

[Ayame Musashi]

What about all of the REAL gambling places that claim they are "Games of Skill" instead of games of chance? I do not want to name any one of them and harm them unfairly, but there are many of them. I am standing in one of them now. Each one is an entire sim full of machines, and in many cases, multiple sims. LL Seems to feel they are not gambling because there is a slim bit of advantage a player has by learning the game and playing intelligently, but in the end, they are all just gambling machines.

Not only do these places offer multiple types of gambling, with random, roulette-style payout methods of L$ cash rewards, but they also automatically add you to lists and then IM you on a regular basis to give you free lindens (which you must visit the place to receive) to entice you to come back and play more. Their machines range from bets of L$1 to L$100,000 or more, and I have watched people drop L$100,000 in a machine before. That's almost $400, gone in a matter of a few minutes. These places are exactly like casinos and are far more detrimental to people with gambling addictions.

I have long wondered why these gaming places were allowed at all, but to see Gacha removed, while the gaming continues, is just wrong. Gacha is something that the people who play them know what they are doing, and always get an item that is of the value they pay. (Of course there are exceptions, but you are shown the items ahead of time, and it's no different than buying a normal single item and finding out it is poorly made.) Meanwhile these gaming centers give out Linden dollar prizes, when they actually pay out, and are generally games of luck rather than games of skill.

I, for one, enjoy Gacha, and feel it brings with it more creative items. If Gacha was gambling, then so would be the gumball machines in grocery stores that give a random prize. And the original Gacha machines of Japan would not be legal. The fact that you get an item every time you play, makes it no longer a game of chance.

I do understand that some countries might not see this the same way, and that LL needs to meet the regulations of the world as a whole. But the exclusion of actual gaming where people lose money with nothing to walk away with, while punishing creators who are actually selling their items, for less, to facilitate Gacha, makes no sense.

My two cents.
~Aya

 

[Cinos Field]

Just now, Abel Bellios said:

@Patch LindenIf I am understanding correctly, the gachas are considered a form of gambling due to the fact that you pay money for an unknown item, but you will receive an item with every play. How would this be any different than a sploder? I put 20L in, and while in theory I should get my 20L back, I am playing for a chance to win more.   

Paid entry sploders have been banned for a long, long time.

[Vesca Starlight]

@Patch LindenThank you for taking the time to answer questions as best and quickly as you can. I do have a concern regarding what another user said however about people who might not be able to log in or are no longer actively involved in SL, are there any plans to "grandfather" or treat such cases in a sort of way, not to allow them to continue sales but to prevent people from losing their accounts over it if they can't log in or don't see the message for some reason.

I'm mostly concerned due to the very real issues that have been affecting everyone for the past year or so, people might have lost their house/internet or be in hospital, or other real-world issues that could affect the removal of listings in a timely manner or attentiveness to SL. The use of the abuse report system does cause a little concern of this to me.

[m0ld]

15 minutes ago, PippaScott said:

the voodoo sploder doesnt require cash from anyone but the owner.  its a straight gift.  all it does is divide the linden available between everyone present and signed up.  no players are required to pay in to that one. ergo, no gambling

 

My understanding was that most sploders were already against TOS.

[LittleMe Jewell]

I could see that KittyCats might be impacted.  When you buy a new kitty box from the store, whether it is a regular kitty or a new collection kitty, you do not know what any of the primary or secondary traits will be.

Sad if this does impact them.  I enjoy breeding the KittyCats, mostly just to see what combinations I can create.

[WinnieTheWerewolfPup]

This is absurd. gatchas are not any different than a child putting a quarter in a large gumball machine and trying to get blueberry flavor. Not to mention that gatchas are major revenue streams for countless stores and creators. Low blow, LL.