Convincing The Baby To Give You The Candy

(Or: Gacha is the Worse Thing to Ever Happen to Gaming)

Ok. It probably isn't. But it's not a particularly good development either. For those unaware, "Gacha" games are games that take inspiration from Gashapon machines—machines that dispense a small toy from a random selection for a small fee. While originally from the US, they spread throughout Japan, leading to many gacha inspired games also having an anime aesthetic (though this is not a universal rule). Gacha, while being treated as a genre, is really just a mechanic. Tsumari: they're lootboxes.

What makes Gacha games unique from games with microtransactions is their complete reliance on gacha for all aspects of the gameplay. Overwatch, for example, gave cosmetics such as skins and emotes. Nothing that would impact the gameplay. Gacha games, meanwhile, often give weapons, items, or characters through the gachas. This, combined with the majority of these games being free, categorizes Gacha games as generally being pay-to-win (or at least "pay-to-avoid-a-shit-to-of-grinding-and-get-exclusive-items" but that doesn't roll of the tongue as nicely). If you knew this already (which you most likely did, given who would have this website), congrats! I just wasted your time. And get ready for more of that, because gachas won't come back up for awhile.

Like many things in life, the problem begins with Todd Howard. While several other games had cosmetic microtransactions, the $2.50 horse-armor DLC for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is widely considered to have begun the paid-cosmetic craze in both free and paid AAA experiences. While widely mocked at the time, this has since become the norm. Bethesda even has a paid title filled to the brim with microtransactions (Fallout 76), and despite a rocky launch, it is considered to be widely successful.

Let's look at another example. The latest Call of Duty game, despite its $70 USD price-tag, is currently selling a bundle of skins themed around the latest Predator movie for roughly twenty-four dollars. This is gross! And bad! Boooo! It is absurd that we've let this happen, and is a symptom of off ever expanding greed typically found in AAA studio executives. The rising price of game development has also led to this, and one can argue that this is a better alternative to games having a higher base price. And I suppose, to a certain extent, I agree. Sure, any thematic cohesion in Call of Duty is destroyed when you run past Beavis and Butt-Head or get sniped by Donatello, world famous mutant turtle. But how much would the game cost without it? $80? $90? $100? Plus, it was common practice for multiplayer games like this (for multiplayer games, in the context of paid cosmetics, are the primary culprit) to charge for expansions that include new maps, weapons, etc. Would you want to go back to that? Probably not!

The Infamous Horse

(Or: The Path to the Epic Gmaes Store is Paved with Good Intentions)

Tim Sweeney. Founder of Epic Games. Enemy to gamers worldwide. Yes, how dare he launch his own store. Gabe Newell should have more yachts, actually.

I kid. He doesn't seem that bad. Sure, he's committed the crime of being annoying on X: The Everything App, but his goals of damaging Apple's monopoly on the mobile app ecosystem is genuinely a good one. But how he got to that point is worrying and damaging to the gaming industry as a whole. This is relevant, I promise.

Fortnite (as of January 2025) has an average player count of slightly over two million players. Two. Million. That's a lot. Fortnite, which many consider to be past its prime, is still one of the top multiplayer games in the world, and certainly one of the most profitable. Getting its start as a knock-off of another game (PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds), Fortnite is a free-to-play battle royale game. In it, 100 players fight on an ever-shrinking map until only one player is left (or only one winning team). You know this already, of course, but I'm writing these articles as if whoever is reading it wouldn't for some reason.

The point I'm trying to smoothly transition to (and can't) is that Fortnite is funded off of a heavy amount of microtransactions. You can buy dances, pickaxes, and of course skins. While the most commonly recollected hay-day of Fortnite had relatively few collaborations (I believe the only notable one for years was the Marshmello Concert and the Avengers Infinity War collab), the game is now entirely built around them. The current shop includes skins based on the Terrifier, Friday the 13th, The Black Phone, Scooby-Doo, King-Kong, Godzilla, Peter Pan, Lethal Company, and Marvel franchises, along with Doja Cat skins and songs. And this is a rotating shop: it is likely that in a weeks time every single skin here will be something different. This is all to say that Fortnite is extremely profitable, largely thanks to microtransactions. In fact, the Disney based collaborations (which make up a decent percentage of the shop at any given moment) have proven so profitable that Epic Games have announced a permanent Disney focused mode / game that will soon be added.

The reason this is relevant is that Fortnite is the number one example of a "live-service" (continuously updating) game today. It is the gold-standard all other major gaming companies are desperate to recreate. Literally gold. It's a glorified money printer. But making the next Fortnite isn't easy, if possible at all. Sony, most infamously, announced in 2022 its intentions to launch twelve live-service games by the end of 2025. Realistically, they knew how this would go: out of these twelve games, only a few would catch on. But taking a slice of the Fortnite pie was, to them, worth the risk.

Spoilers: It was not worth the risk. Only two Sony-published games have released since: Helldivers 2, which had a modest success (but only in comparison to other paid, non-live-service multiplayer titles), and Concord, a failure so large that it was shut down within two weeks (and the studio that made it along with it). The majority of the other twelve have been canceled. Hundreds of millions of dollars (Concord alone may have cost upwards of 400 million dollars) have been lost, and thousands have lost their jobs.

This is sucks! And is bad! Boooo! But it will continue because the small, almost impossible chance of creating the next Fortnite is irresistible to out-of-touch boards and CEOs who care about infinite growth rather than sustainability or creating games rather than products (not that they aren't also games. Theres no comment section so we can't argue about this). It's worth the short-term risk (though if studios fuck up enough they may all go under) and will thus never fully go away.

(Or: The Devils Advocate)

As previously stated, I think that microtransactions for paid cosmetics are actually fine. This applies mostly to free-to-play games. Paid titles, in my opinion, should cover their costs with the fee! I understand that's not always realistic but then that leads to an entire other conversation about ballooning game budgets and how gamers are unwillingly to pay for more than seventy dollars and frankly this piece is off-topic enough already.

In any case, the benefits of this model are immense. Games are able to receive continued updates for years, all for free. No more are players separated by what expansions they do or don't buy. Instead everyone has access to the same content... content that is constantly removed, replaced, or at least made irrelevant in order to keep people to play something else. Fortnite is the greatest example of this: it is genuinely very fun to play, but weapons, modes, and maps last only a few weeks or months before being "vaulted," never to be seen again.

Shops for Fortnite, Call of Duty, Genshin Impact, and Fallout 76

So live-service games, while having their flaws, are still very enjoyable from a player perspective. And while their success has harmed the gaming industry, thanks to the AAA space turning all of its attention towards it, at least the gamers™ enjoy it. Besides, these games aren't pay to win. Those who buy cosmetics won't gain any sort of advantage against others. In fact, by standing out more, they may be more of a target—though this really only applies during the first few months of a live-service game releases. Once everyone has custom cosmetics, no one does.

But let's say. Hypothetically of course, a studio (or studios) didn't care that. What if they prioritized profit so much that all else would fall to the wayside; what if their games were entirely built around spending money or pressuring the player base to spend money. If not pay-to-win, at least pay-to-experience-all-the-content or pay-to-play-in-a-timely fashion. That would be crazy, right?

Gacha games. I'm talking about gacha games. We're back on topic folks!

(Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cookies)

Congrats! You now know the full backstory as to why I believe gacha games are not only more successful than ever but why they saw a rise in popularity after the recent success of non-gacha live service games. Now normally, we'd be done here. Perhaps I'd list some popular gacha games and describe their predatory practices, but frankly I think the basic way they work has already been laid out. However, there is one thing I don't have yet: specific examples. I haven't actually named any gacha games (unless I have, I'm writing this at 1 AM ok). Genshin Impact is the primary example, kicking off the gacha revolution (at least for western audiences) but I haven't played that one. I really should actually play one of these games in order to form a fair opinion on it, shouldn't I.

And so, across three days, I played 2021's Cookie Run: Kingdom for six hours. I picked this game because it stands out as even more monetized than other gachas. Paradoxically, it has a less visible budget behind it. Genshin, while beginning as a Breath of the Wild clone, clearly has a lot of money behind it. The art direction in Genshin, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero, along with non-Hoyoverse games such as Arknights or Wuthering Waves is stellar (if overused). Which makes sense, as these games are meant to encourage you to gamble for a chance at something with both great visual appeal and gameplay use.

Meanwhile, not only is CRK full of microtransactions unrelated to its gacha mechanics, it also completely lacks a incentive for me to gamble besides gameplay benefits. Let's be realistic here, the characters in gacha games are often... let's say pretty or handsome to entice people. People don't just want Nicole ZZZ (yes that is her legal name) or Venti Genshin (again, his full legal name) for whatever gameplay benefits they provide, they are also attractive and people like looking at attractive or otherwise pleasant looking people, not to mention their vibrant or at least often distinct personalities. This is to say that the casts of most gacha games are prime fan fiction bait. But not so in CRK. The cookies in CRK... are cookies! The game looks perfectly fine but is clearly not on the same spectrum as more gameplay focused gachas, and all the characters using the same uninteresting template reflects that. Plus, there's not really that many real-world cookie types to draw from. At some point they must have given up because I learned the game had an Olive Cookie. The game has enough fan art and fan fiction to indicate that many others disagree with me, and in fact their personalities are often cited as a core reason to play the game. But to be honest I don't feel like reading dozens upon dozens of character bios, quest dialogue, and story cutscenes to learn if I would get anything out of that. Additionally, the game clearly doesn't expect this of most players, since all cutscenes have the option to both speed them up and skip them entirely (a mechanic present in other gachas as well).

Upon opening the game and finishing the opening tutorial / cinematics, I was greeted with not one, but two "Welcome Packages" that I could purchase for a limited time (though of course, when first shown them I only had a feint idea what their benefits would be). These were two of many splash screen advertisements I would get while playing the game. If I were to purchase all of them, the total would be $59.94, which is almost a full game. This is without counting the ad for a physical card game based on CRK, nor the fact that all of theses products can be bought without even opening the store.

All of the popup ads I remembered to take screenshots of

Top: My Kingdom

Bottom: The Gacha Menu

It may feel strange for me to lead with the microtransactions (are they really micro if they're this much?) rather than the gameplay. But when you get past pop-up ads and onto the main screen, you are greeted with:

A shop tab
An events tab (that brings you to things that cost money)
A golden time package (opens a 10 dollar microtransactions. I have no idea what it does).
The gacha button
A Magic bottle button (another microtransaction I', too lazy to find out what it does)
A Battle pass

And the standard currency meters all these games have, allowing you to purchase 3 types of currency with real money, then various with one of the other currencies. The gacha shop allows you to gamble in five different ways, with the standard pull costing roughly (I say roughly because you cannot spend the exact amount of money required for a pull, you'll always have some in-game currency left over) three dollars. You also have a 10 pull option for around 24 dollars. These prices are obfuscated behind an in-game currency in order to trick people into buying more than they "need." In the case of one-time items, many of them are listed under actual dollars.

Like all forms of gambling, winning is incredibly unlikely. For example, there is only a 0.012% chance of acquiring Charcoal Cookie (or Almond Cookie, if you're the person I know who would react to that one). This is a 1 in 8,333 probability, meaning you'd have to spend thousands of dollars for the chance to 100% get a particular cookie. Of course, the game, in it's infinite generousness, has a mercy rule. After 100 draws (or $240) you are 100% guaranteed to get... one epic cookie. Of which there are many. It is also my understanding you can get a cookie you already have, but that could be wrong. Getting any cookie, regardless of rarity, is guaranteed every 10 pulls, and so for all intents and purposes a cookie is 24 bucks. Given how CRK focuses on these cookies, it expects a lot of money to be spent per player, or at least a lot of grinding (pulls can be earned for free in daily challenges).

CRK's gameplay is split into two sections that are designed to be swapped between. First, you'll be in your Kingdom. Your... CookieRun Kingdom. Applaud me. Anyways in the town you place various buildings for your cookies to work at, creating a variety of materials and goods per building type. The Smithy, for example, makes Axes, Saws, etc. while the Jammery makes different types of jam. This style of town-builder strategy games is a common trope for mobile games, and can be seen in various genres from Clash of Clans (medieval-magic strategy themed) to Farmville (take a wild guess). Every task takes a certain amount of time, and the amount of tasks that can be done at once is based on the amount of characters you have. The resources are used to complete quests ("wishes") in exchange for money and XP to further grow and decorate your Kingdom.

While waiting for your cookies to finish working, you can take them to battle in what I can only describe as shockingly bland combat. Through a variety of modes (main story, challenges, events, bounties, etc.) five of your cookies will run in a straight line while attacking enemies. Each has an ability that can activate on a timer, such as healing or extra damage. You can use these abilities manually or set them to auto, where they'll activate as soon as they can every time. There is no reason not to do this, since there isn't any real strategy in the combat, at least in the phase I was in. The cookies have categories and can have minor stat buffs equipped to them, along with a million stats and leveling systems, so I'm sure at some point the selection of cookies begins to matter, but I highly doubt the timing of abilities does.

You can also speed up the length of time battles take up to 2.5 times faster. I feel like a feature like that, much like the cutscene skipper, is an admission to how the entire game fails at even being an interesting skinner-box. The entire point of the fucking game is too build a kingdom and to battle, and the game makes one process take ages while the other is over in an instant. The reason for this is obvious: the game wants it's players waiting for as long as possible. Either you spend all your time on the game, doing as much as you can since so many timers are going at once, or you buy loads of premium currencies to bypass the timers. In any case, the devs—which as we all know is short for the name of the studio, Devsisters—make bank.

(Or: Let People Have Fun)

In short, every single mechanic in CookieRun: Kingdom is designed to wring every single possible cent out of it's players and cause an addiction. And while this is the point of every single gacha game, it is remarkable how CRK doesn't even attempt to hide it. Genshin Impact, from the little I've played (two hours years ago) and seen, appears to have a genuinely fun gameplay loop completely with interesting puzzles, combat, and exploration. CRK is a worse version of one of those Facebook games meant to use up the quarterly bonus money of soccer moms.

And don't you worry, CRK makes bank; it is estimated that it made six million dollars in September 2025 alone, the franchise continues to release new entries (CRK isn't even the first one), and the game has upwards of 72 million users. However, it is only the 23rd ranking gacha game by revenue, give or take (revenue for these games rises and falls as new events start and end and as new characters are released). This is whats so funny about CRK to me. It is such a blatant cash grab, financially ruining the lives of literal children by putting them into the gambler's fallacy (the cartoonish design of the game clearly lends itself to a younger audience than the other, hornier gachas). And while it's successful, it isn't even notable in the grand scheme of the industry. The biggest gacha, Love and Deepspace (yknow, the period tracking one) made fifty-three million in September 2025. It makes in eight days what CRK makes in 31. It could fund the next Call of Duty game in... a year. Huh. Seems like those games have a budget higher than their revenue, leading to a larger push for microtransactions. See, it all came full circle! The COD section was relevant.

CookieRun: Kingdom is not good. It's businesses model disgusts me. It's gross! And bad! Boooo! But that does not mean anyone should be judged for playing it (yknow, the thing I've been doing this whole time). If you enjoy a gacha, that is more than fine. There's plenty of valid reasons too! I've already outlined why I think CookieRun lacks those elements, but if you disagree you are certainly welcome too. But you cannot deny that the games design is predatory, as are all other gacha games or indeed any games with an incentive to charge for gameplay benefits. It is possible to play without spending a single cent (my friend is ranked in the top 10% in an aspect of the game and has never spent any money on it), but know that to do so is rare. After all, the game is doing everything it can to make you spend one day. Gacha games are elaborate casinos, and the house always wins. There is no beating the system. So please, gamble responsibly, if such a thing is possible.

Originally Published on October 26th, 2025. I'm sorry for the amount of parentheses

Sources

Images

PCGamer: Horse Armor Won
Fortnite Item Shop
Call of Duty Shop
Genshin Impact (Wishes Menu)
Fallout 76 (Atomic Shop)
CookieRun: Kingdom (Various)

Hello! If you read the whole article (and went down here for some reason), you get a reward! That reward being the name of the site when it moves to HTML. It will be called...

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NotSoNeat's Word Hole. Or NotSoNeat's Nest. I'm aware that the former requires an explanation. And you'll get one... when it's relevant. Thanks again for reading :D

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