Newsletter vol. 14 - The Inferior Global Servers of Gacha Games

Why can't gacha gamers have nice things?

Oct 27, 2021

It’s time for issue no.14! As voted by you, our topic this week is on gacha game’s global servers!

Disclaimer: We’ll mainly be focusing on anime-styled gacha games, typically from Japan, China and Korea. We acknowledge that there are anime-styled gacha games from other regions (i.e. Code Atma), but we are focusing on the aforementioned countries as they are the most prominent creators of gacha games.

Global gets shafted (again)

World Flipper is a pretty unique gacha game, featuring pinball gameplay. The game released in Japan in 2019 and released a month ago for global, garnering over 1 million pre-registrations. We even covered it in our 4th issue, that’s just how hyped it was.

Imagine our surprise (and probably hundreds of thousands of other players) when the easy reroll feature—an important feature in the Japanese version for players to get good units—was removed for global. Understandably, players review bombed the game, calling out publisher Kakao Games for unequal treatment.

This is just a single incident in the sea of complaints that comes with the global servers of gacha games. Spend enough time with the gacha gaming community, and it’s practically tradition at this point for global servers to be inferior to debut servers. Not inferior in terms of gameplay—but inferior in terms of treatment.

The most obvious example of unequal treatment would be different prices for in-app purchases. Punishing Gray Raven Global was review bombed for having more expensive in-app purchases when compared to the Chinese version of the game, as we covered back in issue no. 2 of our newsletter.

Why do developers and publishers keep shafting their global servers, as the English-speaking community calls it? While “greed” is the answer that most will probably default to, it’s actually more complicated than that.

No one goes out to create a bad product on purpose. The same goes with gacha game companies. Developers have to make adjustments and cater their game in a foreign market. It doesn’t make sense for “greedy” corporations to spend money and release a global server that fails. Every developer and publisher want their game to succeed—that’s how they make the most money, after all.

What many players fail to realise is the cost and challenge of running a global server. The majority of gacha game companies are making a lot more profit in their local servers. To justify the cost of operating, maintaining, translating all while dealing with the differences between the hundreds of countries that makes up a global release is a hefty cost.

Another factor to consider is that by the time global servers launch, players already know which characters to gacha for or skip. For Japanese players who first encounter the new characters, they have no prior information whether they are good or not, which leads to more players pulling (and revenue for the company). Global players already know what to expect, meaning that they are typically spending less money compared to their Japanese counterparts who go in blind for new banners.

It isn’t just a simple argument of “but XXX company makes millions!”, it’s also important to realise that the very nature of business is that the company cannot lose money. This is why so many players’ favourite gacha games don’t even have an English version yet. If the publisher is going to localise the game globally, they need to make damn sure that the decision won’t bite them in the back.

Note that we aren’t justifying or defending the practice of shafting global servers. We’re offering insight as to why this practice keeps happening. You’ll see many players review bomb, boycott and complain whenever there is unequal treatment, but the fact is that 9/10 times, it’s a profitable decision. The silent majority of players who enjoy the game and spend money on it because it’s fun vastly outnumbers the vocal minority.

Communication is definitely one thing that game companies can work on.

That’s the reality for most players of global gacha games. Between the choice of receiving unequal treatment and not being able to play the game in a language they understand, most would settle for the first one. Ultimately, you should play the games you like and spend your money on what you feel is worth it. At the end of the day, it isn’t the review bombs or the player complaints that matter, it’s the moolah.

What We Learned:

Running a global server is expensive. Most of the time, simply offering the same experience to global players doesn’t pay off.
The majority of players are willing to settle for unequal treatment if that means they can play the game.
Let your money do the talking. That’s the best way to be heard.

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