New Gacha Policy Discussion

[Alan Cyr]

1 hour ago, RexBoye said:

Then let's hear it straight from the horses mouth, not willing to speculate when folks livelihoods are at stake. 

You did.

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Jaimy Hancroft said:

I agree with people saying it’s very short notice they could’ve done the announcement earlier , I’ve heard rumbles about this for a while now. But for someone that has made huge gachas , it was fun while it lasted but I do feel it has run its course, I already had decided last Halloween was our final gacha so this comes at a good timing for me personally.I feel bad for the ppl that make a living off it but who knows , every end has a new beginning  

If people have been "hearing rumbles" about it for a while now, they have had plenty of time to prepare. Or at least plan ahead. If they don't have contingency plans, that's on the merchant/creator, not LL. 

[Brinlea]

15 minutes ago, s2Pandora said:

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.

Velour now runs Powder Pack, and if you check the marketplace listing on 8/14 or so, by then they will have pics of all the included items, while you can still reserve the pack at the sale price. This is what I did with the July pack. I saw everything in the pack and decided to buy it at the discounted price. After it is released the price goes up, as usual.

[Quistess Alpha]

1 hour ago, 69queenofthenight said:

So Basically anyone who sells breedables and uses a vendor to sell multiple Items of the same breed but the rest of the items is unknown can no longer use vendors or gatchas to sell eggs, bundles, crates,  or whatever the babies birth as.  Because we would have to list every trait on all the breedables?  We can not just put a certain breed in a vendor with various traits. 

@Patch Linden

I wanted to amplify this because it may have been lost in the deluge of other questions and concerns.

As you probably (almost definitely) know, many merchants are in the business of creating "breedable" products, which have a certain set of features that can vary continuously across a broad range of parameters. I think many people would appreciate more specific guidance on how these new rules will affect the sale of these items both as direct sales from the producer and resale merchants.

as @69queenofthenight points out this may raise problems for resellers, as listing each individual product sepparately for minor variations is an administrative hurdle.

This may also have an impact on the origional product creators themselves though. Is a product that produces random results and requires a supply of "food" which must be purchased not functionally equivalent to a Gacha machine with a fancy veneer? What about situations in which "food" is not required, but the probabilities are such that it is unlikely for any one person to be able to produce all of the possible variation inherent in a products design?

[Alwin Alcott]

5 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

 There are 9 breedable traits for each. 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.

as far i can see the amaretto breedables aren't far different... somewhere in the 20 breedable traits, a load of coats, LE coats, eyes and whatever more.. But all visisble before you buy it, and shows a list the moment a offsrping is popping up inworld .
However a different brand, also Meeroos show their traits before buying, and also showing on all offspring before birthing.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Alwin Alcott

[Lee McKay]

1 hour ago, PippaScott said:

so whats the difference between a gacha and a grab bag? its still a random item.  this is going to put a ton of people out of business and make shopping to give gifts much harder than it has to be.  I get that the global gaming laws are at issue but i guess my question is this.  what ARE we allowed to do? low cost, high traffic gacha vendors made things accessible that maybe a lot cant afford at 2 or 3 k each

 

I think you'll find that most end up spending far more than what the item is actually worth, and that's the crux of the problem, along with having no guarantee that you'll ever get the actual item you want.

[DeeJay Peapod]

Man just found the blanket law from the EU.....politicians are friggin morons......

[Arwyn Quandry]

I do feel bad for some of the creators and events which have heavily or entirely depended on gatchas, but this move is ultimately for the best. The number of people who have told me that they have impulse control issues around gatchas is troubling, and too often the items put in them are low quality or needlessly segmented to extract maximum profit from buyers. Still, I'm going to miss being able to buy small, inexpensive transfer items on MP as the supply of old gatchas dries up. Gatchas have too often supplied a much needed pair of cheap shoes or an inexpensive necklace to finish an outfit.

[Lee McKay]

3 minutes ago, KarissaBerryQueen said:

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.

If a vendor sells a specific item at a specific price, they have nothing to worry about. All others probably do.

[KyleWForrester]

I just wanted to say "thank you" to linden labs for this. 🤬

Last May, My wife and I held a fundraiser for Homes For Our Troops, and we raised $L150 for Homes For Our Troops. Of that 150K, 7,290 came from Gachas.....

[Adeon Writer]

Has anyone ever gotten to peak into an actual gacha script? I have. Some of them were downright evil. If you think they were just a simple dice roll... nah, rarely ever.

Ever get the feeling that it's intentionally giving you duplicates? Yeah, about that.

[Jeremiah Bekkers]

I'm a bit surprised and weirded out by this...

I essentially saw gachas as insignificant as gumball machines when it comes to gambling, since they distribute an object no matter what, for a flat rate as little as a L$, that you could even put up for resale...

In my opinion, gambling is more toward machines like slots... A machine where you don't win anything, if you don't land on a specific set of three images... Or lottery where you just put money in and hope that Thursday you win with the randomized numbers that you picked...

Wouldn't this make more sense for Lindin Ball exploders or games like fishing for Lindin's? Or the literal slots that you could probably find scattered around SL? 

I just think that the focus is on the wrong thing here if we're talking about true gambling... I don't sell gachas, but I do like going around and putting a little bit of L$ into some machines to get little things like hats or stuffed animals I can place in my place, I don't mind the randomization and sometimes I get some cool stuff I wouldn't have regularly bought...

[Extrude Ragu]

Mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand I've seen Gacha's be predatory and people gamble away all their money on them.

On the other hand I've received Gacha plushies from friends and it's special because it's the one they received and they've given it to me.

Chance can be the spice of life but it can also ruin people when they don't know how to quit.

[MewRai95]

2 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

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.

With how things are right now, booster packs themselves can be transferred but the cards themselves are Non transferable Copyable objects due to how the system works as they have to be rezzzed from an object. So you can give boosters to people but once it opened you cannot give the cards out as the boosters start with no objects within its contents. The currency is also non-transferable at the moment. I'm willing to make changes as needed if they do not see it fitting the new policy. 

[Lee McKay]

11 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

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.

They'll just have to make it to where you buy the traits you want.

[DeeJay Peapod]

4 minutes ago, KyleWForrester said:

I just wanted to say "thank you" to linden labs for this. 🤬

Last May, My wife and I held a fundraiser for Homes For Our Troops, and we raised $L150 for Homes For Our Troops. Of that 150K, 7,290 came from Gachas.....

its not LL its the law makers in the EU and that dumbass company electronic arts

[Lucia Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Skell Dagger said:

I'm looking forward to being able to buy the 'fatpack' that will comprise an entire outfit in black, rather than 8 necklaces (four pink, one black, two orange, and a yellow), three left earrings (all green, and no right earring), one brown left shoe and two grey right shoes, the pair of pants in that delightful shade of puke that were the only colour I didn't want to get, and none of the 'rare' jackets whatsoever.

"How about a pair of pink sidewinders and a bright orange pair of pants?"

[Cinos Field]

3 minutes ago, KyleWForrester said:

I just wanted to say "thank you" to linden labs for this. 🤬

Last May, My wife and I held a fundraiser for Homes For Our Troops, and we raised $L150 for Homes For Our Troops. Of that 150K, 7,290 came from Gachas.....

So a grand total of 5%... which the donors would've likely donated anyway.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

They'll have to think of new names for the gachas:

Gachas -> Non-Copyables

Commons -> Cheaps

Rares -> Expensives

Edited August 2, 2021 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Josephina Bonetto]

I am as old as dirt so remember the original gambling ban. Everyone is a lot calmer than I remember them being then. I also remember the banking ban.

My interpretation:

Giveaways and raffles will be fine as long as no money changes hands.

Selling no copy items is also fine. Reselling existing gacha on MP also fine (until they run out). You might find you can charge more.

I personally hate no copy items. I have done gacha to get specific things, like buildings, furniture, landscaping, occasionally hair, etc but preferred policies where you could exchange unopened gacha to copyable stuff or buying the fatpack as something copyable.

I once recently ended up with an 07 sexbed on a reasonably well known creators gacha. It was literally full of stuff I consider unusable. Pure trash.

I always saw it as gambling, and was always pretty careful about what gachas I went for.

I think people are over thinking it. You could argue land buying and selling is gambling but I don't see that being banned anytime soon.

[Aire Xaris]

15 minutes ago, Aili Panthar said:

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.

It was a bumper feature on the slots actually, so it begs the question _What's the difference between Gacha and No Devil or skill gaming then in general? If you pay 25 L into a game you have a chance at winning x amount if its a tournament/ prize board or in the case of Gacha a rare. yes? The difference being with a No Devil game you are under the illusion that your skill will allow you to beat the set score to win advertised or possible amount, Provided the owner of game sets script to pay out on semi regular basis. It seems to me that if that is allowed, and it most definitely is then there is a step missing to Cacha, namely a skill game aspect. Right now its not regulated and there are many possible outcomes, but that could be scripted to reflect prize one, two etc. I think it's just a matter of chocolate needing to meet peanut butter.

[sirhc DeSantis]

6 minutes ago, Adeon Writer said:

Has anyone ever gotten to peak into an actual gacha script? I have. Some of them were downright evil. If you think they were just a simple dice roll... nah, rarely ever.

Ever get the feeling that it's intentionally giving you duplicates? Yeah, about that.

Oh boy yeah. Not like the mechanics were that difficult and an easy job but even I am not that mercenary

[Ember Shuffle]

Just my two cents, has probably been said already; Probably too short of a time period, but honestly all in all, brilliant move. It was starting to disgust me seeing how much seriously quality content was locked behind gacha rarity, and how many gacha machines were just... everywhere. Nothing personal against gacha sellers, but this will be good for SL.

[Nama Gearz]

So this is going to effect every SL group with the name Gacha in them. Clearly groups for events are going to have a hard time with this because you can't change the name of a group. Many followers would be lost if a new group is made and people are asked to move over. So what are we supposed to do about this? Will LL allow us to send in tickets for group name changes in cases such as this?

@Patch Linden

Edited August 2, 2021 by Nama Gearz

[WolfeRiegn]

39 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

If you see a casino in a regular G-rated sim, report it and it's going to be done very quickly. The lindens are pretty quick but not omniscient... yet.

I wish that was true mon amiee. I have reported more then one in my time and the sad part is they are still where they are when reported. That was why I commented how I did.