For those of you who like to play games, especially mobile games or free-to-play games, you must be familiar with the gacha system. This system requires players to use a kind of “ticket” to get the latest characters or weapons in the game.
Although games with this gacha system were not the main choice in the past, in recent years this gacha genre game has become increasingly popular. Games like Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Wuthering Waves, and so on have popularized this genre and continue to attract many players to this day.
This gacha system itself is inspired by a type of toy from Japan called gashapon, where buyers exchange money for tokens to spin the machine and get toys in capsules.
imilar to the concept of gacha in games, where we use “tickets” to get certain characters, weapons, or items, but we don’t know what we’ll get until we click the button for the gacha.
However, with the rise of games that use the gacha system, a question has emerged that is often discussed. : Are gacha games gambling?
First, let’s understand more about the gacha system.
In a game’s gacha system, two main components are often discussed: pity and rate off (or the Fifty-Fifty system).
Pity is a system where the game counts the number of “tickets” a player has used in a banner. Once the number of tickets reaches a certain limit, the player is guaranteed to get a special character or weapon (such as a 5-star or SSR character). However, despite this guarantee, players can still get the special item or character faster, depending on their luck.
Fifty-fifty or rate off is a system where players are not always guaranteed to get the promoted character on a gacha banner. Sometimes, there are two main character choices (for example, two 5-star characters that can be obtained). If the player “loses Fifty-fifty,” they will not get the promoted character, but if they win, they will get the character.
However, in most cases, after “losing Fifty-fifty,” players will usually get a guarantee in the next gacha conversation to get the character they previously failed to get. So, while the chance of getting the main character is not always certain, there is still an element of guarantee in it.
