Economic Analysis on Gacha Game Pricing - Part 6 - Conclusions
Written by Researcher Alex and Edited by Rei Caldombra 12/22/25 Previous Part: Economic Analysis on Gacha Game Pricing - Part 5 - Consumption and Sustainability — Blog Under a Log
This series of articles which focus on how video games become effective monetization ecosystems is a general reference for how the purpose of games have shifted towards maintaining a business of incomplete satisfaction rather than giving a fulfilling and fun experience. By showing both sides of how consumers and video game businesses interact with each other, I aimed to show how things logically are, not how they should favor one side or another. Consumers have the power of choice while businesses have the power of materializing ideas. Consumers have the money to spend on what they imagine. Businesses control how to spend and retain the money flow given by consumers. But ultimately, the consumer and the business are all controlled by constant money flows and cutting off this flow would destroy both sides in this ecosystem. The point I want to show is that the flow of money rather than the money itself is what connects and glues both groups together. This relationship ultimately exists because the creativity is in the hands of the business but demand for creativity is in the hand of the consumer.
Talking about why businesses choose gambling or chance sale systems to monetise things such as digital products in a game is to show that this is simply a logically effective tool for player retention and spending. Specifically, selling a chance to get a desired product is an economically smart move by the business to allow consumers to buy a desired digital product in a free-to-play game. Showing how this sale of a chance benefits the consumer as an affordable product demonstrates why video game companies think this method is a win-win situation for both groups. For instance, achieving low probabilities through multiple rolls gives control to the business by the law of large numbers while consumers are incentivised to buy more rolls from businesses at affordably cheap prices.
Consumers with their own desires and ideal imagined ideas are what drives these consumers to spend their money towards games. Consumers are simply shoppers of ideas. If consumers simply do not like the idea in the game, they will go find another game with their ideal idea or as close as possible to their ideal idea. Free-to-play games are just storefronts to sell these ideas to consumers, while retail games that require a purchase to play a game are selling the storefront with the idea packaged together. This may explain why gacha games have excellently detained settings and stories as part of the storefront and why sellable digital products are highly detailed and tailored towards consumers. Consumers simply must spend their money in small installments or rolls to buy the product, which may take some time for the consumer in the storefront to see if every roll may be a chance for the consumer to get the product. But ultimately, it all depends on whether the consumer likes the digital product with the finances of the consumer being a second priority. Business simply just makes the consumer be able to spend in their game while catering to the desires and ideas of the consumer is dependent on what the business and other businesses have to sell to the consumer. A free-to-play game run by another video game company can attract consumers with a more aligned and desirable digital product away from other free-to-play games. This is the basic economic concept of substitutes being applied to selling ideas to a consumer.
Testing this using a group of consumers with varying levels of disposable income is to show if the consumer likes the product, then they will have disposable income ready for the product. Disposable income is to represent a willingness to spend and the level of willingness to spend is the budget amount of the disposable income. Combining ability with desire is intentional because reading people's minds is difficult and simply because of the logical reasoning that businesses and consumers only communicate with money. I can only provide all possible options of what a person wants, not what the person specifically needs. Thus the existence of whales, minnows, and free riders in free-to-play games are all addressed in the group of consumers. Wealthy consumers, financially risky consumers, and not financially risky consumers are the main driving force of monetary communication towards a free-to-play video game company, with the note of free riders being excluded from doing monetary communication by them not spending any money.
The testing ultimately revealed that businesses are incentivised to price their individual chance also known as a roll sold to consumers at the lowest value in order for consumers to spend as much as possible. But raising the price per chance also had some benefits. Consumers who could not afford the price per roll could let their disposable income grow, thus becoming more financially stable. Businesses at a higher price per roll had the ability to lower their price instead of being at a lowest price denominator, thus controlling which spending group could pay for the desired product. This is an advantage by slowing financial losses during economic downturns where consumers have reduced disposable income. Wealthy groups are first drained, then not financially risky consumers, then financially risky consumers by incrementally making the price per roll more affordable over time. Whereas free-to-play games using only low priced rolls at the lowest price denominator allows for all consumer groups to spend at once, thus quickly burning out the disposable income in comparison to businesses using higher priced rolls.
Then looking at consumers from a macro perspective, consumers in an ecosystem of multiple free-to-play games can directly hop between these games to find the product they desire, or they can choose to not play and find their desired digital product though a video platform like YouTube or Twitch. Being on a video platform allows for consumers to save disposable income like depositing money in a bank. But to a business, content on the video platform is a substitute to their storefront of a free-to-play game. To compete with the video platform, a business will offer the agency of being able to play a game to the consumer rather than just watching the game with no agency. This is the competitive advantage of the free-to-play game over the video platform. However, consumers ultimately choose where to be and can stay on the video game platform, in a free-to-play game, or hop between several free-to-play games. Immovable consumers like these are not the real focus of businesses but rather the consumers that move between free-to-play games and the video platform. There is no point in getting a consumer to be more loyal when they are already loyal to the business or platform.
During the mapping of the free-to-play game ecosystem, being an economically competitive free-to-play game against other free-to-play games was found to be harmful to the overall free-to-play game economy. A company that wants to attract consumers by offering a lower price per roll to consumers compared to the price per roll in other free-to-play games will keep all companies unwilling to raise their price in fear of consumers going to other games. Consumers will spend all their disposable money instantly on an affordable roll or affordable rolls to get what they want. If a free-to-play game ecosystem has only low prices, consumers will spend their money and go to the video platform to save their money until a desirable product appears in one or several free-to-play games. If desirable content keeps being released constantly and simultaneously in volume, consumers will be able to spend their money faster than they can save. Consumers will be stuck in a phased state of having no disposable income and having disposable income. This condition will persist under free-market competition conditions.
However, if a company controls several free-to-play games, then the company can raise price per roll across all games simultaneously without fear of market competition. This will only work if the desired product being sold within these free-to-play games is unique when compared to free-to-play games outside of the company's control. Raising the price per roll will allow consumers with little disposable income to save their disposable income for something the consumer will like in the future. This gives the free-to-play game company an option to control which consumer can spend based on price and gives consumers more disposable income levels to spend in the free-to-play game. Consumers get the added benefit of not becoming unable to spend in the free-to-play game quickly due to their reserves of saved disposable income from high price per roll set by the free-to-play game company. In short, consumers actually become resilient consumers during times of economic downturn when disposable income is reduced. However, this can only be beneficial to the businesses by their idea in their digital product being unique. Once outside competitors copy the uniqueness, consumers will have the option to go to a competitor's free-to-play game and spend their disposable income in that free-to-play game. Thus keeping a monopoly on owning all free-to-play games is actually a benefit for a free-to-play company and their consumers.
Alternatives to the Monopolistic Method
In comparison to alternate solutions, gacha games usually sell rolls that can be used on products for a limited time and rotate to another product that could be bought by the rolls. Although this system works in practice for catering to different consumers that desire different digital products, the time constraint and the total amount of digital products is a limitation for the free-to-play game company and their consumer base. For instance, if a desired digital product is rotated in a pool of 100 digital products, with the showcase time for one product being a week, then it will take at most 99 weeks for a consumer to be able to purchase a digital product if they missed the showcase window for their desired digital product. Consumers are able to save their disposable income to get their digital product, but the control of when that digital product is based on the amount of digital products that are exposed to the consumer rather than the direct choice of the gacha company. Timing is the barrier to this problem. Should consumers be displeased by delaying the second release of a digital product over another digital product? Should the digital product be released in turn every 2 weeks to fairly represent all of the digital products? In short, the problem is that a release window constrains the consumers and businesses alike and this problem grows when the stock of cyclable digital content increases for the free-to-play game company. If a digital product remains shelved that a consumer desires, then the consumer may seek other free-to-play games from competitor gacha game companies that offer a similar digital product. This is the risk in the time domain for gacha companies and an inconvenience for consumers. This risk grows for a business based on how many digital products are being cycled and if there are similar digital products in gacha games run by competitor free-to-play companies. Giving time for other companies to create substitute digital goods for consumers will only give the possibility of free market tendencies to occur.
// no, we have that at home meme here lol
At a micro level, an important distinction I will make is that there is a difference between normal possibility and guaranteed possibility. A guarantee that within 100 rolls I will get a desired product is different from a probability of 1 out of 100 of getting a desired product. In gacha games, guaranteed probability is called a pity system. I will eventually get the product vs I may eventually get the product are two different things. This distinction is very important for pricing a product. For instance, if a roll costs $1 dollar and within 100 rolls, I may get a desired product and if I did not get any product within 100 rolls, I will be guaranteed the product at the 100th roll. It can be said that the desired product has a maximum value of $100 dollars.
If the gacha system has a probability system of 1 out of 100 or 1% chance that I will get a product per roll, I could theoretically roll 1000 times without getting the desired product and spending $1000 while someone else can spend $1 and get the product. Hypothetically, it is possible to infinitely roll and not get the desired product, thus placing the price of the product to infinity. In this sense, placing a maximum price on the product is nearly impossible with all the possibilities possible for a price to set for the product.
In this context, probability without guarantee leaves both the business and the consumer to be unable to set the value of a product. A set value cannot be expressed by money which means consumers and businesses lose control over this product. Consumers are not guaranteed the product they desire and will shift to other gacha games that can guarantee the product being purchased through rolls (100% chance of eventually getting product vs 1% chance of eventually getting product). Businesses cannot set how much a consumer will spend to get a product because they don't have a set price for the product (how much is the product? Is it $10, infinity dollars, or $1000?). If all consumers spent for the product and only a handful of people got the product, the price would be in a range ($5, $3, $10000 unlucky, $10…) rather than a fixed point, thus making the price ambiguous. Hypothetically, businesses are also exposed to a small but possible risk of the product being priced at the lowest price denominator of being equal to a roll.
For instance, if all 1000 consumers who are willing to roll for a desired product with $10 of disposable income each and they all got their desired product by chance on the first roll with each roll being priced at $1, then the product would be worth only $1000. This would put the company at a loss if the cost to create the product was higher than $1000.
On the flip side, if the maximum price was set for the product, then businesses can control the risk by adjusting the guaranteed obtainment of the product for the consumer. Pricing each roll at $1.001 for 1000 guaranteed to pay to roll consumers and guaranteeing the product at 2 rolls would cause all 1000 consumers to pay a total sum of $1001 at minimum to the business, thus making a profit of $1 and covering all development costs.
In short, businesses will fly blind with additional risk while consumers will be uncertain about the value of a product if the business uses a chance only system. To prevent this risk, guaranteeing the product after a set amount of rolls gives a visible value to the product and mitigates risk by chance for a gacha business. This is the key purpose behind a pity system.
What I want to point out from this is that general pools in gacha games which will give any character based on chance rather than a guaranteed amount are subject to this risk. Even in systems where a rare desired product is guaranteed after a certain number of rolls, the general pool will have to choose out of several rare desired products, thus not guaranteeing any desired product. General pools cannot determine a maximum value of a product because it does not guarantee a specific product, it only guarantees a chance of selecting a product out of a pool of products. In gacha games adding or subtracting products to the general pool only changes the rates but does not establish any guarantees of a product, thus this does not help businesses establish a guaranteed maximum value for a product. This is different from the situation of if the consumer is guaranteed to pick any character or any character in a set pool after doing a set amount of rolls in the general pool. With the exception that there is only one rare character in the entire pool. Overall, general pools and chance only gacha systems are riskier and unclear for both businesses and consumers. Being unable to specifically determine possible disposable income spending thresholds by consumers for a specific product is not helpful for specifically determining and optimizing solutions towards disposable income spending in the gacha game ecosystem. In short, this general pool system is not beneficial for gacha game businesses and consumers.
To optimize disposable income spending, businesses should have an individual roll system for every digital product with a set amount of rolls needed to guarantee the product to the consumer. This would allow access for consumers and minimise time that a consumer thinks about a substitute digital product. Consumers are free to spend on what they want out of the selection of digital products offered by the gacha business. This selection is constantly available to the consumer where they can focus their rolls towards any desired product. The gacha business has control and insight towards setting prices and availability for every digital product presented to the consumer. This is a free market structure on a micro economic level where demand is controlled by consumers and supply is controlled by businesses. However, on a macro economic level, consumers and businesses benefit from monopolistic practices and a lack of competition. This is because consumers and businesses are harmed by businesses competing against other businesses by lowering prices to get consumers.
Summary
To summarise the main points, consumers are demand driven to find their ideal idea materialised in a medium. Businesses materialise this idea in the medium to sell to consumers. To cater to all consumers, businesses sell a chance (also known as a roll) to get the desired product to the consumer rather than directly selling the desired product itself. Consumers can buy any number of chances and are limited by disposable income. The total product price is priced to when the product is guaranteed after a certain amount of rolls (this concept is also called a pity in gacha games) which is ideally equal to the consumer with the maximum disposable income who is willing to spend all their disposable income on the product. The chance of each roll is small in price and in probability to maximise the number of rolls and to control probability. More rolls makes a chance rate more likely due to the law of large numbers. More rolls give more chances to the consumer to obtain the product. More rolls take more time which keeps consumers in the game longer. More time in the game equals more time that a consumer could spend on something (like walking around in a store or in a maze store strategy like Ikea). Low priced rolls that are too affordable to the consumer will cause the consumers to constantly run out of disposable income. Video platforms allow consumers to save their money as they look for their desired idea in several free-to-play video games. Consumers that can be convinced and are able to move between free-to-play games and a video platform are the main focus of businesses.
Free-to-play games are storefronts to sell digital products to consumers and video platforms are like banks. Consumers that only cycle between free-to-play game storefronts will not have time to save their disposable income, thus becoming financially at risk of not being able to spend in an economic environment that reduces disposable income obtained by consumers. This consumer movement can overheat consumers in free-to-play ecosystems. To prevent this, businesses should adopt monopolistic practices by controlling a group of free-to-play games that all have a similar desired product in the game which is similar in the group but unique to free-to-play games run by competitor video game companies. Competition prevents companies from raising the price of a roll, thus eliminating the competition for a target type of desired product allows the monopolistic business to raise their prices for their group of free-to-play games. Consumers then become resilient and save disposable income for the type of desired product and the monopoly business will get the money no matter which substitute product the consumer chooses because the monopoly business owns all the storefronts that sell the monopolized type of desired product that the consumer wants.
In conclusion, gacha companies and consumers should be aware of these key things:
Pity systems are beneficial for consumers and gacha companies.
Consumer demand controls spending towards a gacha product.
Gacha products should be unique to a gacha game or gacha games run by one company. Substitute products will draw consumers away to gacha game competitors.
Low affordable price per roll is good for capturing money but unhealthy for consumers that have reduced disposable income. Not advised to do this pricing during times of economic downturn.
Raising price per roll is best done under monopolistic conditions and when a desired product is unique to a specific gacha game company.
Limited time products like gacha banners limit what consumers want. The more time a desired product needs to return, the more time a consumer has to look for similar products. The time that the consumer does not get the product is the time that consumers can be exposed to substitute products from gacha game competitors.
General pools in gacha games cannot set prices on a desired product if the general pool follows only probability with no selectable pity system. Businesses and consumers cannot determine the value of the product sold through a chance system. Businesses can’t be certain of recovering costs or establishing profit numbers. Consumers will not be guaranteed a desired product, thus pushing consumers to other gacha systems that guarantee a similar product (like a pity system). Thus chance makes the gacha system more weak to substitutes.
Probability has a risk of never occurring in a set or infinite number of rolls while a guaranteed random occurrence in a set number of rolls does not have this risk.
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First Part: Economic Analysis on Gacha Game Pricing - Part 1 - General History — Blog Under a Log
