With almost everyone having access to a mobile phone these days, it’s no surprise that many game developers have migrated to the mobile market when considering how their games can reach the largest possible audience. While mobile games themselves aren’t an inherently new concept, the way in which many developers are tackling the modern mobile market has growing concerns for the future of gaming.

The way many developers have chosen to take advantage of the ever-growing mobile market is through the “gacha” approach, a term coined for mobile games that have a heavy reliance on spending real-world money for in-game currency that allow you to unlock various bonus items. These gacha games bring in massive amounts of revenue from dedicated fans who want to unlock everything possible. With Aniplex’s Fate/Grand Order mobile gacha grossing an estimated 3 billion dollars globally in 2019 as well as the continued steady stream of developers putting out mobile games, such as the upcoming Bleach Immortal Soul, it doesn’t look as if the mobile developers want to stop anytime soon. Those not familiar with the topic of mobile gaming may be confused as to why these types of games are causing growing concerns for the future of gaming, and it boils down to how gacha games treat their playerbases.

Gacha games not only incentivize spending real world money for in game currency to net you rewards, many gachas also contain gambling-like elements in an attempt to get as much of your money as possible. Fate/Grand Order is a prime example of the gambling elements present in so many gachas, as the game allows you to spend anywhere from 10 to 100 dollars in a single sitting, which gives you in-game “Quartz” that players can spend in a lottery-esque system in hopes of winning their favorite characters. Some of the more powerful characters have abysmally low odds of being won, with the best characters having chances as low as 0.1%. Players can spend hundreds of dollars into this game and not win the character they want, and there’s no way to simply get your money back after the fact. This brutal cycle of spending with no payoff rubs many the wrong way, including the ESRB themselves who have attempted to put a stop to the gambling element in gachas entirely by taking many notable developers to court.

Gachas aren’t likely to go anywhere soon, and with the sheer amount of revenue that they’ve proven they’re capable of bringing in, there’s concern as to whether gaming as a whole could shift into the gacha direction, even if it’s a long time off. Would such a climate for gaming be for the best, or is this something that should be avoided at all costs?