New Gacha Policy Discussion

[Axel Naxos]

2 hours ago, Faly Breen said:

"O nível de chance não importa, ou se você o divulgar, incluindo as razões, porcentagens, etc, se a saída for desconhecida (chance baseada de qualquer forma), essa combinação de mecanismos é o que será proibido seguir em frente."

ASSIM, com isso em mente, basicamente 7seas (e outros jogos de pesca), cartas de coleta, reproduzíveis (onde você PRECISA de comida ou um "item chave" para que suas raças criem um novo reproduzível aleatório), cegos / caixas pretas são proibidos. Literalmente, tudo agora onde você pode obter algo "aleatório" disso, será proibido.

 

Então pensem nisso por um momento pessoal: não serão apenas gachas neste momento, tudo e todos que se baseiam em chances aleatórias "semelhantes" a gachas "um pouco", serão contra as regras.

 

A great truth... the fishing games that charge to play (mandating the purchase of baits), should have already been banned, or better offer the option of changing their systematics on the baits. I don't play any fishing that forces me to buy bait!

[Sammy Huntsman]

6 minutes ago, Patch Linden said:

We are working on getting more information, clarity and perhaps something like an FAQ set-up, hopefully we can get that published later today.

Thank you for being as transparent as you are, in these troubling times ♥

[Axel Naxos]

5 minutes ago, Deathly Fright said:

Obrigada. por favor, certifique-se de cobrir reproduzíveis e gatchas que informam o que o item é atualmente

Fishing games too!

[never Franizzi]

20 hours ago, Miu Margetts said:

Bye bye, predatory gambling~!

I liked the fun toys, but when creators stuff entire outfit collections, broken up by part and colour, it was a bridge too far. Pure scum.

Time to stop holding whales upside down and shaking all of their lindos out.

So, when i got to a shop and see a top for L300, then the matching skirt for L350, and the matching stockings are L200, and the Matching shoes are L300 and then if you want a different color pay again the same prices all over again... and then if you want a single special (RARE) color you have to buy the fatpack or lose out.. What excatly is the difference here... oh yeah the only difference is your idea of worth it vs. the next persons idea of worth it... if you don't like it don't do it.. and if theres something in a gacha you want but don't want to do the gacha then you lose out... it is the same when a designer only creates items for a specific mesh body or head... they don't have to make it avalible to everyone who wants it.. its their choice how to sell their content. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, MissPhortune said:

There is a legal way around this. It’s not considered gambling if it is publicly posted what the odds are of getting each item.. 

this is just crazy. They are basically virtual gumball machines, get real!

Just because you view them a 'virtual gumball machines' does not mean that every legal system sees it the same way.

 

1 hour ago, MissPhortune said:

what next? Ban breedables because we buy them but have no way of knowing what they will deliver???

That is actually a question that still needs to be answered.  

[Bree Giffen]

I feel bad for any gacha creators but if LL has to do this to avoid being fined by the US, California, or any other government, then so be it. The SL community is very creative and I'm sure there will be new compliant game mechanics in the future to replace the gachas. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

37 minutes ago, ARD1994 said:

Would be great if LL will run gacha events into the skill games regions, and about the creators they could have the chance to open their own gacha shops into other skill games regions, 

In what way do the current Gacha machines require any skill at all?

[LittleMe Jewell]

36 minutes ago, VanessaJane66 said:

@Patch Linden Thank you Patch for opening the thread again.  I think we would very much benefit from LL giving a view on Breedables in light of this development.  While it affects breedables content to varying degrees depending on product there ARE similarities in some areas (like the randomness of traits when buying starter packs).  I do not think knowing all traits up front is reasonable, even Nature throws out genetic variants.  Can Linden Labs please update us on what will and won't be allowed regarding breedables in future.  The silence given the amount of discussion here is starting to worry me.

I think quite a few are waiting on answers to the Breedables issue. 

In the case of KittyCats, I could see how it would be allowed to buy a starter cat with the specific Dominant traits known (5 furs, 5 eyes - so 25 combinations possible).  The randomness of the hidden traits seem to be irrelevant, IMO, because breeding is not actually required -- even if that is what most of us buy them for.

[Theresa Tennyson]

8 minutes ago, never Franizzi said:

So, when i got to a shop and see a top for L300, then the matching skirt for L350, and the matching stockings are L200, and the Matching shoes are L300 and then if you want a different color pay again the same prices all over again... and then if you want a single special (RARE) color you have to buy the fatpack or lose out.. What excatly is the difference here... oh yeah the only difference is your idea of worth it vs. the next persons idea of worth it... if you don't like it don't do it.. and if theres something in a gacha you want but don't want to do the gacha then you lose out... it is the same when a designer only creates items for a specific mesh body or head... they don't have to make it avalible to everyone who wants it.. its their choice how to sell their content. 

And the fact that you get what you pay for.

[ARD1994]

“Skill Game” or “Skill Gaming” shall mean a game, implemented through an Inworld object: 1) whose outcome is determined by skill and is not contingent, in whole or in material part, upon chance; 2) requires or permits the payment of Linden Dollars to play; 

[Silent Mistwalker]

18 minutes ago, ninani Nastula said:

I have a question regarding exactly what this all covers, for instance if "boxes" of goodies, where you know the majority of the content you are receiving and included in that box is a surprise/unique item does this fall under gacha category? 

Not likely.  That is more like a gift or freebie that just happens to be included. The customer isn't paying for the gift (supposedly) but for the other item(s). 

How would you hide what that one item is anyway? All you could do is name it something like Gift and make it moddable so the new owner can rename it instead of having 1000 objects named gift in inventory.

[LittleMe Jewell]

17 minutes ago, Stella Zong said:

Hello, I got  a question about Gacha and the SL Marketplace. It is possible to sell a random Item at the marketplace, will this also stop working  on 1. September? What about selling a random KittyCat Box on the SL Marketplace? Is this forbidden also?

The blog post was pretty specific -- if customer pays money and gets a random item it is not allowed.  If the MP listing is for a specific know item, then you can sell it.

[Coffee Pancake]

On the subject of "roller" type vendors ... 

From a practical perspective.

 

The rollers idea is fine on paper, but .. and it's a HUGE butt. Put one in a busy region with lots of players and scripts lagged badly and it's a recipe for race conditions and huge delays in processing.

People will try to snipe each other (intentionally and by accident), vendors will be overwhelmed dealing with working out who's getting the product, who's getting a refund, what's to be shown next.

There is no way for a script to only accept money from a designated person. That has to be programmed in .. by keeping track of who's paid, how much they paid, who the current player is, and who needs to get refunds because they tried to play when it wasn't their turn.

Not tracking this gives you a vendor that never shows a picture (as it never has chance to load) and people paying to blindly get the next random item in the list .. which is just a gacha.

[ARD1994]

5 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

In what way do the current Gacha machines require any skill at all

Anyway where is the skill into zyngo machines?? It s another random machine LOL.... btw they have just to find the solution....

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 minute ago, ARD1994 said:

Anyway where is the skill into zyngo machines?? It s another random machine LOL.... btw they have just to find the solution....

I don't really know much about any of the current so-called "skill" games, but apparently they did manage to convince LL that there was skill involved.  

I truly cannot figure out how anyone can attribute any skill at all to simply paying a vendor to get a random object.

[Marianne Little]

I believe LL had no idea how breedables and 7sea fishing worked before they announced to kill gachas.

So now they are meeting with their lawyers and trying to figure out what the he** to answer.

[So Whimsy]

When I left yesterday it was around 16 pages and now? Holy fudgesickle.

[LittleMe Jewell]

3 minutes ago, So Whimsy said:

When I left yesterday it was around 16 pages and now? Holy fudgesickle.

It was 38 pages in the first 10 hours, then I went to bed.  Woke up and it was 51 pages. 

Not bad for it still being just under 24 hours since the thread started.  We are a talkative and opinionated bunch.

Edited August 3, 2021 by LittleMe Jewell

[Stella Zong]

Thank you LittleMe for your reply, but it is still confusing to me, if I am selling it and call it: you get a KittyCats Box it is okay, even if the Traits of it are random?

[PrettyFlower Vale]

Wow I’m really going to miss the Gachas. LL has to do what they have to do by law, but as a shopper (I am not a seller) I will miss them. Sure sometimes I spent more trying to get one certain thing, but 98% of the time I loved everything in the machine and didn’t care which item I got. It was actually a great way for folks on a budget to get great stuff at a great price with only just a little discernment about which gachas you play. Plus the gacha yard sales! I love them. Now the prices of those yard sale things will probably triple or more since no more gachas. So a silver lining to some sellers, all the former gacha items just became collectibles. 

sellers, an idea for you - Replace your gachas with limited edition items. Set those machines to sell only a certain number of those items and make them collectibles. There will be a race to get them and you’ll be able to charge a top dollar amount for it.

[Qie Niangao]

4 minutes ago, ARD1994 said:

Anyway where is the skill into zyngo machines?? It s another random machine LOL.... btw they have just to find the solution....

Fair question, and if you were around at the end of the casino era and the beginning of "skilled gaming" you may have noticed a bunch of scripters trying to get Linden approval for various devices, some of which qualified as "skilled" and most didn't, in a review process that often took months and multiple attempts. (I wasn't involved in any of this personally, but heard it a lot from other scripters.)

Point is, if there's any practical prospect of "skill gachapon" it will likely come first by revising already approved "skilled gaming" devices to dispense gacha items, rather than by revising gacha scripts to be skill-based.

[Silent Mistwalker]

2 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I don't really know much about any of the current so-called "skill" games, but apparently they did manage to convince LL that there was skill involved.  

I truly cannot figure out how anyone can attribute any skill at all to simply paying a vendor to get a random object.

 

Tringo was one. I used to play it and Slingo. Both have since been restricted to the skill gaming regions so I no longer play them. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tringo

While I didn't really view the two games as gambling they were spin offs of Bingo so technically, they are gambling.

[Cinos Field]

8 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I don't really know much about any of the current so-called "skill" games, but apparently they did manage to convince LL that there was skill involved.  

I truly cannot figure out how anyone can attribute any skill at all to simply paying a vendor to get a random object.

In short, basically LL calls it "skill gaming" if skill can increase the payout or reduce losses to any significant degree.

Of course, the house always wins still. Can't be that skilled with the current iterations.

[Gilgamesh Alpha]

47 minutes ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

All of these links to UK and EU bans on Lootboxes keep talking about children. How its children "between the ages of 11-16 who are buying the majority of lootboxes and becoming addicted to them." Just make gachas only available on Adult land.. Kids cant go to adult land unless they lie about their age and break the ToS, at which time LL can bann them. 

When does personal responsibility come into play? Who gave these "children" access to credit cards in the first place? As has been mentioned before, you can easily equate lootboxes to buying packs of cards for various games. Completely random as to what cards you will get and they are usually $15-$20 a pack. No one says anything when a kid blows hundreds on them. 

This 100%

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 minute ago, Stella Zong said:

Thank you LittleMe for your reply, but it is still confusing to me, if I am selling it and call it: you get a KittyCats Box it is okay, even if the Traits of it are random?

That is the part that is still up in the air - waiting on LL to clarify. 

Since most people buy KittyCats for their traits, not even knowing the Dominant traits is similar to a Gacha.  You pay money and get a kitty with random fur/eyes/etc...