Maintain the ban on Gacha | Voters

Maintain the ban on Gacha

Zia Underwood

Gacha is an unethical predatory practice designed to abuse the psychology of neurodivergent individuals and individuals who are prone to addiction.  It obfuscates the cost of an item by a series of small payments that prey on a humans inability to really understand what is being spent.
Its use in gaming has been for the express purpose of generating wealth beyond the true worth of an item through exploitation.  If you are going to allow this predatory monetization in your game than you might as well allow a traditional slot machine or a roulette table because they are functionally the same thing.  There are no solutions that make this ethical.  And lets face facts you don't have the manpower to regulate the current grid in a timely manner.  This is a huge undertaking and predatory monetization and other psycological tricks will be deployed in the loopholes your policy will leave open.  Like NextUp which was truly not much different than gacha.
Im sure this was a decision made by the CEO or the accountants.  Im hoping you can find a way to put a stop to this.  Its the right and ethical thing to do.

2 days ago

Skyler Pancake

Coming from a former gacha addict, **** gacha.
A FEW places like DRD at least were respectable enough to offer chance to trade them for copy versions, which gave the items some use value at least. But no-copy items are trash. Only thing worse is no-mod. I've got so much crap in my inventory that I likely won't ever use, because I'm worried if I do put it out somewhere it's going to end up returned and lost forever. Or if I wear it, broken on a region crossing.
I've been mostly ignoring stores with the next up items and such. Any store that does have gacha is a store I won't shop at.

Ciaran Flasheart

I hate gacha, as a consumer. It is highly predatory, pointless, and leads to the marketplace being swamped with no-copy garbage from resellers. I never bought a gacha product and I never will. It's just a disgusting practice.

Kathlen Onyx

Ciaran Flasheart Then don't participate in it. Simple. If people are concerned about Gacha items showing up in the MP then that's a valid concern and LL needs to fix the MP so that doesn't happen.

Zexen Alecto

Gacha as it was pre-ban degraded the experience of many users. Items that should not have been gachas - such as plain basic clothes - were. Significantly more valuable items, such as whole buildings or outfits, were often used as rares in machines that were otherwise filled with less valuable accessories or small decor pieces.

Serious ethical considerations should be enforced when it comes to gacha. Predatory practices should not just be discouraged, but outright regulated.

I figured that if gachas returned, some limitations would be put in place to address user concerns. While I am glad that for the most part, LL stays out of the business of telling merchants what to do, I also believe that consumer rights are important for the health of the platform overall.

With the goal of keeping gachas in line with similar real-world items, such as blind boxes and actual gashapon machines, here are my suggestions for broad limitations:

The no-copy permission of gacha objects can lead to them getting lost or accidentally deleted. This is especially not okay for objects that are intended to be rezzed out inworld. Nobody should be losing digital items that they spent money on due to sim issues or average, everyday carelessness. With that in mind, I believe that ALL gacha items should be available for trade in OR DIRECT PURCHASE for a copiable version. This is easily done with a voucher system, but several merchants had similar trade-in stations for no-copy items that worked slightly differently. Merchants that do not want to provide a trade-in system must sell copiable versions of the gacha items.
All objects in a gacha machine must fall under the same category based on marketplace categories (with the exception of the actual gacha category itself.) That means apparel should not be in the same machine as accessories, and buildings should not be in the same machine as decor. This limits value disparities between various items within a gacha.
Chances per item needs to be displayed clearly to the consumer. These percentages should be easily accessible. Consumers should NOT have to calculate these out. Consumers should get what they pay for, communicated in clear terms, and communicating percentages is part of that.

Crush Cutie

You're appealing to a company that runs a social casino at the newbie welcome area and asking them to ban a game mechanic that is prevalent the world over in everything from video games to pokemon cards.
I suspect you're going to have to do a lot better than a "think of the children" ethical argument. especially when the "children" who "might" fall "victim" to this dastardly scheme don't seem to leading the charge .. or the ones having a problem with this in general.
Shutting down gacha was bad for the SL economy as a whole, marked by a downturn in users engaged and drop in spending on all products.

Jaydoge Resident

Gachas are predatory and a cash grab. Eu gambling laws are why it was banned in the first place. Undo the gachas ban lift, we've grown past the need for gachas.

Crush Cutie

Jaydoge Resident It was not banned previously due to any specific law, merely concern about the "legal climate" that turned out to have been unnecessary.

If this was actually illegal, it would not be back.

Mo Elara

I agree with everything that has been said, and I am wondering why - after banning gatchas a few years ago for many good reasons - lead to reintroducing them? Legal loop holes? Money making? Both? I never liked nor supported them, and still do not.

harlequinn87 Resident

Considering my past experiences with Gacha, and how much it has flooded my inventory, and drained my linden only to try and get a rare that may or may not even come, i agree with this.. I get it that games of chance could be fun, and can be addicting... i really do feel like it's more of a money grab and is very much gambling, which can be devestating for someone who has a gambling problem.

I've known a few people who have had a problem IRL with that, and bringing that into SL is a real concern.

Drakona Lewellen

Even if it wasn't a gambling issue, for those like myself that don't fall victim to those addictions, it's still obnoxious to deal with when an outfit is parted out in gachas and you have to now battle RNG to get a full set.

No. Just give me one flat fee to buy it and walk away. I'd rather spend $2k on a fatpack for the whole thing than 50L a spin for a 'chance'. I got other things to do with my time that endure the toilet-swirling the internet has become.

Lorelai Mistwallow

Given how much pump and dump unregulated generative AI content has flooded the platform en masse; I can only see gachas increasing this tenfold. LindenLabs NEEDS TO STOP allowing predatory business practices to thrive on their platform. That includes cracking down on ripped mesh, generative AI mesh/"art", and disallowing gachas entirely. At this point it feels like they're enabling and encouraging grifters to use SecondLife which will ultimately kill the platform and make the real artists jump ship sooner.

marxman1313 Resident

I'm not counting on this to happen given the save face responses during the town hall on AI, but you have my vote on the off chance it does stop this. We have enough problems with scammy scumbags and thieves as is.

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