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The End of Second Life Gachas Will Hurt for Awhile, But Second Life Itself Will Recover (Comment of the Week)

Second Life gacha epiphany shopping hud2From Chic’s post “EPIPHANY GOODBYE GACHA“

Good analysis on the coming end of SL gachas from Chic Aeon, who’s both an SL blogger and a sometime gacha creator, echoing my sense that their end will significantly impact the virtual world economy as a whole:

I rarely played gacha machines; only the ones with “no losers” enticed me; like twelve colors of a truck. After all you DID get a truck for 60 or 75 Lindens and that was usually a good deal. I sometimes bought at the old Seraphim Arcade Sale and recently bought from resellers on the Marketplace. But still, I PREFER copy items since I have lost a fair amount of gachas to the database fairy.

I also made a ton of money MAKING gacha items. So there is that… I am guessing that folks don’t really understand just how much money many of the top gacha creators have already made. (Laughing here). I made some heart-stopping dinero on my most popular gachas and I was never a top creator, only second tier. The folks who made exceptional goods (and honestly some that weren’t all that well-made) have already made plenty. We don’t need to feel sorry for them.

While she lists the end of gachas as one of her historic moments of Second Life, she does think the virtual world economy will experience a temporary hit, but quickly recover:

We will lose sims and we will lose players. We have seen that every time we have had a significant change in SL. But each time we have pulled ourselves up, accepted (usually after lots of yelling) and continued with our virtual lives. So impact? Yes, certainly. But no greater than any of the other upheavals SL has withstood.

And as to The Lab’s decision and obvious money loss over this move — I am guessing that they weighed the loss of revenue against the cost of court battles in the future. Countries all over the globe have or are in the process of considering any form of virtual gambling as illegal. Better to cut losses than wait until the guys with handcuffs show up. I am sure this decision wasn’t made lightly.

That last point is a really good one. While Linden Lab likely earns a few million dollars every year from L$ sales driven by gachas, it’d probably cost about that for the company to face down legal challenges across the globe, not to mention pay fines and licensing fees to even keep gachas going.

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9 responses to “The End of Second Life Gachas Will Hurt for Awhile, But Second Life Itself Will Recover (Comment of the Week)”

  1. JJ-Abra Avatar
    JJ-Abra

    I will miss events like Ephiphany.
    I will not miss the Arcade (owners had issues with ethics).
    I was only ever a purchaser who shared with friends, or gifted items at Christmas.
    I am hoping the good creators will now do fatpacks.
    The creators who try to come up with another form of gacha that isn’t a gacha I likely won’t be buying from.

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  2. Chic Aeon Avatar
    Chic Aeon

    Thanks for pushing my point of view to the front page. Appreciate it.

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  3. irihapeti Avatar
    irihapeti

    many of the professional gacha operators have already changed to the new conveyor system that Linden have approved
    the conveyor system has all the operator benefits that gacha offered
    so nothing much changed and business as usual

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  4. Chic Aeon Avatar
    Chic Aeon

    I’d like to hear more about that irihapeti since I did visit a lot of sale gachas this month (only played a few vehicle ones :D). I didn’t see any changes anywhere yet. I know that Linden’s have approved selling gacha items repackaged as NC-T items and a COPY fatpacks.
    That of course goes against the agreement that many events had; that is never selling the event offering items in any other manner than gachas (chance, transfer). So more info on just what some folks are doing besides those choices would be good.
    I know from the SL forums that people are trying to circumvent the new rules, but I didn’t take part in those discussions. I will be retiring my gachas except for some copy fatpacks which have always been available. I kind of like to keep my word. I appear to be in the minority on that :D.

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  5. camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra Avatar
    camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra

    That agreement is no longer tenable with the new ban as it locks away a tonne of products produced with a lot of work. It is up to the organizers of gacha events to issue a blanket waiver allowing normal resale to the people they’ve previously worked with, and it would make for one last bit of goodwill before they go down, even if they’re not obliged to allow folks to break those terms. And as you’ve shown, it’s also up to creators to decide whether to convert their items to normal sale, or let them fade away quietly into the past.

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  6. Luna Avatar
    Luna

    So happy gachas are gone, we didn’t always have that and we did fine. That conveyor system seems like another racket it’s basically the same gouging you have to buy a bunch you don’t want and will probably delete to get to what you do want 😕

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  7. irihapeti Avatar
    irihapeti

    @Chic Aeon
    my bad. I should have said that many professional gacha machine makers have developed conveyor machines ready for the 1 September rollout date
    those that haven’t will have to close down their gacha operations yes
    the basic conveyor machine will display an item from the set. When the customer purchases the displayed item, the machine will ‘randomly choose’ the next item to be displayed. Customer can buy it or not as they please
    the items in the conveyor machine can be NoCopy Transfer

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  8. Sofia Padilha Avatar
    Sofia Padilha

    Tired of these characters who live around Second Life and therefore publish articles that minimize anything Linden Labs may do, It’s that or no more interviews or books right?!
    The issue here is not Gacha or when they stop a computer architecture from working like once they did with Macintosh computers, they just don’t care!
    The userbase means nothing to them… only the $$$ do
    Second life users need a calculator and check how expensive things got over the last years and they can add the Tilia make-believe payment system to the formula.
    One thing is right in this article people will leave and SIMs will cease to exist.
    Where is the mobile app, a stable inworld experience with higher fps?
    A marketplace that doesn’t go down at the first mesh head offer while they charge commissions anywhere and everywhere
    All I listen to is LL own interests, always their own, and never the userbase.
    The people who planned things for months on the Gacha business model better change it in 30 days… wow
    oh yes, 60 because they got into damage control!
    Don’t feel sorry for Gacha, for the users, for the prices, and for the lack of a stable SL
    Now you can censure this comment

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  9. Chic Aeon Avatar
    Chic Aeon

    Thanks @irihapeti — I saw a mention of that and two other “methods” that were legal on the SL forums. All of those including the conveyer method were used in the past LONG ago. The problem is (or at least was) that they weren’t all that popular and of course they weren’t as inexpensive (per play of course) as gacha machines. Hence it seems a VERY good bet that the creators didn’t make the influx of money that gachas garnered recently. So it will be interesting to see how long those hang around.
    Appreciate you explaining more. I didn’t see any of those machines in my journeys earlier in the month. Most of the places that I visited were what many folks would consider the TOP gacha makers. To me that mean very good LODs, nice styling and a reasonable triangle count. We all have our favorites I am sure.
    PS. I was thinking tonight about the psychology of the conveyer system and how it has the same feel (to me) as trying to get into the FLF Backyard Event (gifts). I tried many many times for a week to get in and NEVER saw the count below 45. NOW, I simply don’t care about going even though there were a few things I was interesting in buying. That conveyer system has the same FEEL of banging your head against the wall :D.
    Might just be how “I” look at things. The future is unsure at this point.
    And at camilia — IF the venue owner sends out a reversal of the agreement, then that changes the contractual bit of the issue, but there is still the point that people played the machines BELIEVING that the items would never be sold any other way — which is one reason they played the machines. So even if I receive notes from the venues I participated in, I will still be retiring my gacha single items. Some were also sold as copy fatpacks and a few favorites of those will remain — a whole different story.

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