New Gacha Policy Discussion

[Finite]

19 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.

Would it be possible for gacha to be available on skill gaming sims since no devil resembles gambling far more so than most gachas in SL do. At least with gacha you are receiving an item of value regardless of if it is the item you desire. Who's to say that item isn't worth the 50, 75 or 100L you spent? Seems odd that one is allowed while the other isn't. No Devil is not a game of skill and is in fact a game of chance since you can play as skilled as possible and still not make the threshold of "winning". It still requires chance to actually win no matter the skill.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Finite

[Yuri Snowfield]

Those that defend gachas reminds me of those EA lawyer that said "its not a game of chance but  "suprise mechanics"

Edited August 2, 2021 by Yuri Snowfield

[Toothless Draegonne]

2 minutes ago, 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.   

IIRC sploders like that are already on dodgy ground outside of skill gaming regions.

[Sebastian Vanlager]

4 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

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.
 

When you purchase a breedable... you purchase the breedable... there is no chance involved in what that breedable is... what it drops later on is a bonus and is not what you purchased to begin with.

[Patch Linden]

I am seeing a lot of great questions.  We're going to batch some of these up again and also post updates addressing some of these on the original post.

[LittleMe Jewell]

2 minutes ago, m0ld said:

My understanding was that most sploders were already against TOS.

They are only disallowed if the players have to pay money in to them. 

[Alwin Alcott]

2 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

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.

the creators could change that... for example, with amaretto animals you always can see the triats , of course not when somebody puts offspring int mass sell deivces to get rid of worthless low traits ( and puts one good on in for every hundred bads). But at normal markets all offspring is rezzed out and checkable.

[Spar Amethyst]

1 hour ago, Teresa Firelight said:

Did the higher powers somehow decide that gachas are too much like gambling? is that the reason behind this?

I think so.

[Aili Panthar]

Couldn't gachas be redesigned to add some sort of "skill" element to them, and no longer be considered gambling? Because that's what happened to the slot machine type games. i.e. you would pay to play the machine and instead of it being just a slot machine with prizes, you have to solve a puzzle, and you are given an item based on points scored.

[Riviera Medier]

So folks ....

 

🧐 THE THINGS I LIKE ABOUT GACHAS:

1.  An array of "themed creations" from a creator. ie a Unicorn Bedroom including all decor, A baby including all accessories etc, A mermaid outfit with all accessories.👍

2. It's an "exclusive" creation for the event.👍

3. The items are "transferable".👍

4. Trading items with others is fun 👍

5. Reselling items on marketplace or in yardsales to search for the exclusive items 👍

😡 WHAT I DISLIKE ABOUT GACHAS:

1. The "rarity" quotient that requires dumping lindens 🤑 to complete a desired set.👎👎👎

----> My TWO LINDENS --> 🤩 :    Good riddance to remove the gambling aspect of dumping lindens to get the rare item. Price the items accordingly and shoppers will shop accordingly. It's a win-win all around. 

Keep creating folks, keep the events going and let us shoppers continue shopping ! And instead of calling them GACHA events - someone figure it out and give it a jazzy new name .. Swap Shop Exclusive  !  Now that's something we'd probably love to attend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Riviera Medier

[SlyDog4]

What about Gacha Machines that do not give repeats? So it's still random but eventually the person will get the item they want.

[DoriPhoenixAngel]

Lol Google what a wonderful tool for looking up of things like this... https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PETI-CM-648537_EN.pdf

[Stephy Silvercloud]

2 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

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.
 

Exactly.

So many people are freaking out about their breedables. Breeding is not a gacha....unless you're selling your babies in a vendor that gives a random item for pay, then yes, your vendor will now be against the TOS. .  Set them out individually priced, and if someone wants to buy them, then they know exactly what they are buying. 
Breeding itself is a simulation of exactly what they are called, breeding. Just as in RL, you are paying to feed the animals and keep them alive/healthy for breeding. You also have the choice not to breed them.  You make the choice of what parents to mate, knowing the possibilities of that birth. When you buy a baby from someone, you know which baby you are buying. So no, they are NOT the same.

Now, where I COULD see this being impacted, is any breedable where you buy the starter item from the creator's store, and has possibility of a normal starter, or a rare starter. Then, yeah, I can totally see how that would be a concern.  Or an LE where you may or may not get a rare LE or get an overly common one. But, this is also something the creator could fix.

 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Stephy Silvercloud

[Experimental Scientist]

Long overdue. Thanks for finally doing the right thing and cracking down on gambling.

[Charlotte Bartlett]

We stopped Gacha a fair time back.  We always exchanged ours from mod/transfer to mod/copy if purchased from us - as H&G is pretty useless as no copy.

For creators concerned about it, we found using a fatpack of mod/copy priced at a sale price at our own store created the same level of revenue as a gacha monthly event.    So something you may wish to consider is switch your items to Mod/Copy and use a Mainstore sale / event to sell together at your own pace versus being held to an event deadline.  

We phased out gently as we did not want to impact resellers, and waited a full 12 months plus  before packaging our items to allow resellers time to complete any sales of residual items they had from old gacha sets.

Our customers love them, the revenue outpaces gacha over time and it also gives you control back on when you release your own items at your own store.  The traffic it also drives allows you to cross populate visitors to see your other items.
 

[Lee McKay]

1 hour ago, Teresa Firelight said:

goodness.. this seems so extreme. I have several gacha Hair out .. if I understand correctly, people can resell gachas that have already been purchased but we cant use gacha machines to see them anymore -- is that correct? But we can sell items that were once in gachas as long as they are in clearly marked vendors so people know what they are buying??

Did the higher powers somehow decide that gachas are too much like gambling? is that the reason behind this?

Government. This has to do with lootboxes in MMORPG games as well. You can sell whatever you want, you just have to set a price and sell a specific item. No rolls of the dice anymore.

[asteriddle]

[Lee McKay]

3 minutes ago, Riviera Medier said:

So folks ....

 

🧐 THE THINGS I LIKE ABOUT GACHAS:

1.  An array of "themed creations" from a creator. ie a Unicorn Bedroom including all decor, A baby including all accessories etc, A mermaid outfit with all accessories.👍

2. It's an "exclusive" creation for the event.👍

3. The items are "transferable".👍

4. Trading items 👍

5. Reselling items on marketplace on yardsales 👍

😡 WHAT I DISLIKE ABOUT GACHAS:

1. The "rarity" quotient that requires dumping lindens 🤑 to complete a desired set.👎👎👎

----> My TWO LINDENS --> 🤩 :    

Keep creating folks, keep the events going and let us shoppers continue shopping ! And instead of calling them GACHA events - someone figure it out and give it a jazzy new name .. Swap Shop Exclusive  !  Now that's something we'd probably love to attend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As long as it's a specific price for a specific item, it's not a problem. It just can't be "pay something for a random item".

[Lee McKay]

7 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

They are only disallowed if the players have to pay money in to them. 

No, you still pay money in, but you have to get back at least as much as you put in. It's a violation if you can lose money.

[LittleMe Jewell]

2 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

6 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

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.

the creators could change that.

For KittyCats that might be difficult.  There are 9 breedable traits for each.  When buying regular kitty boxes, you can get any random combination of values for those 9 traits. There are over 100 furs alone and over 100 eye colors - add in the other 7 traits with multiple values for each and the available number of random combinations is quite high.  When buying collection kitties, size is also random, but it does impact resell price.

It will be interesting to see how things play out in that arena.

[Adam Spark]

44 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

A post like this might have been more effective if it hadn't come after several posts by various people saying how much they approved.

Not really, due to the legalities involved. LL doesn't have a choice here. Unless you want them sued out of business.

[DeeJay Peapod]

EA is to blame for this....ea is to blame for everything.....boycott electronic arts today XD

[Lee McKay]

1 hour ago, Alexis Crisp said:

I'm sad for those who resell gachas as their SL job and for the many events that rely on them to be created... but I'm not upset that we can now buy items we actually want instead of getting so many copies of things that we don't. So mixed on this. 

Those are predatory users anyway, so them being gone isn't a bad thing.

[KarissaBerryQueen]

Ok, I have an interesting question: Where does the "gambling/gaming" policy change end? For instance, what about starters for breedables? Wouldn't they be the same basic concept? You pay so many Linden Dollars for a starter of a breedable and have a random chance of type and their offspring is random chance... Is this still considered gambling? If so, this will COMPLETELY kill the breedable market and that is a LOT of commerce that LL and SL creators will lose out on. And it will kill an enjoyable hobby that some SL patrons enjoy is and sometimes their sole purpose to return daily to SL... This would be excruciating.

[Qie Niangao]

6 minutes ago, MewRai95 said:

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!

Are none of the game tokens (neither the "currency" nor the "booster packs") transferable nor exchangeable for anything else of value? That seems as if it would be allowed because no money changes hands, even though the booster packs are "chancy" in operation.

If on the other hand they can be transferred among players, it would attract payments, and because those booster packs have probabilistic value, it might qualify as a weird kind of "game of chance."

Interesting.