Linden Lab Official talk:Gacha policy

Is this policy being actively enforced?

A quick search on the SL Marketplace for the keyword gacha returns, as of today, 1,563,099 entries.

Since this policy explicitly forbids the usage of the word gacha even if the underlying distribution context is completely different, it's a surprise to me that so many items are still listed on the SL Marketplace — they surely would have drawn some attention by now!

Unless, of course, this policy was scrapped at a later date — in this case, it would be better to simply remove this page.

— Gwyneth Llewelyn (talk) 13:52, 31 August 2022 (PDT)

After 18 months, the improvements, if any, are minimal

All right, 18+ months later, and I'm still confused.

It seems to be clear that there is a difference now on the way things are presented and counted on the SL Marketplace. Namely, I get as search result "more than 10,000+ entries", and, indeed, about that number are being actively displayed. 10,000 is not much and could be considered a 'crackdown' on gachas — less that 1% remaining, which would not that bad, considering that there is no pre-approval of content on the SL Marketplace (meaning that items were removed most likely by the creators themselves on a voluntary basis, with only a few requiring 'encouragement' to remove them as well).

However, the sidebar — where the categories are displayed as filters — tells a very different story.

Even if we take into account that the same item is categorised in different ways, there is a very suspicious gacha category being listed! I mean — consistent with the policy described on the main page:

The use of the term “gacha” or “lootbox” to describe the sale of content is also prohibited.

... it would appear that the SL Marketplace itself promotes gachas, since content is not only being called 'gacha', it's being categorised as gacha, using what is an officially available SL Marketplace Category!

And, taking that into account, there are 300,000 items just in the 'gacha' category.

On the other hand, looking at the Price filter, the numbers are even worse:

Price range	# of items
L$0 – L$10	5,159
L$11 – L$100	374,865
L$101 – L$500	227,419
L$501 – L$1,000	27,614
L$1,001 – L$5,000	18,764
Over L$5,001	744
Total	654,565

Since we can assume that prices are uniquely set per item, this total value is much more accurate. And they show that only a bit less than half of the gacha-labeled items have been removed — and there are still hundreds of thousands. Not hundreds. Not thousands. Hundreds of thousands! (Not to mention those which are only sold in-world, of course.)

Granted, some of the items clearly just use the name 'Gacha' (as a brand/model name), but they're not technically 'gacha' as defined by this policy. But the statement quoted above also applies to such items! In fact, that statement turns 'gacha' and 'lootbox' effectively into forbidden words. (Also note that searching for 'lootbox' gives far less results — a bit less than 15,000 at the time of writing — which, considering that it's a forbidden word, is still quite a considerable number of items!)

Also note that the reactive nature of filing abuse reports is pretty much useless in this case. A human, taking about 10 seconds to flag each item (click on a thumbnail, locate the abuse icon, fill in some things, back to the original page, select next one...) would take about a month, working full time, 24h/7. It's far better to have an automated tool searching for 'gacha' (or 'lootbox') and flagging everything automatically on the database. Then, of course, the complains would come in from all those hundreds of thousands — and that means having a huge workforce to deal with all of them!

Clearly, something else is needed.

Unless, of course, that strict enforcement is not really needed — so long as LL is able to remove content to comply with whatever jurisdiction establishes the definition of what a gacha is and why that concept cannot be used inside a virtual world...

— Gwyneth Llewelyn (talk) 17:22, 2 May 2024 (PDT)

My understanding is, that the things you find on the Marketplace are - to a vast extent - merely gacha *resales* by private residents, i. e. items they received from an old (now prohibited) or new (permissible, like a conveyor vendor) system, but do not like and therefore resell. There is probably the odd merchant who is still oblivious to the policy, or violates it on purpose. But having bought gacha-resales myself I can say all of them where from individual private residents. In-world, it has been quite a while since I stumbled across a banned gacha machine. The merchants seemed all to have switched to the conveyor machines by now.

I agree however, that some change in phrasing and classification would be helpful.

--Peter Stindberg (talk) 23:28, 2 May 2024 (PDT)

Ah, thanks for the clarification!

IMHO, there is nothing wrong in reselling items you don't like — a second-hand market, so to speak — and that is, in my eyes at least, perfectly legitimate and justified.

Nevertheless, I point out the quote once more:

The use of the term “gacha” or “lootbox” to describe the sale of content is also prohibited.

It's not just that these items actively use the term "gacha" to promote their sales. It's also that they have the appearance of gacha. They still retain the old classifications (common, uncommon, rare, etc.) and come packaged as gacha (maybe not all, but some – enough for me to notice, at least!), and people even still publicly complain about gachas bought on the Marketplace that didn't give out their contents with the degree of 'rarity' that they expected, or that they just got an empty box, etc. (see also: https://feedback.secondlife.com/web-features/p/the-marketplace-original-stores-and-original-products-visibility)

— Gwyneth Llewelyn (talk) 19:08, 15 May 2024 (PDT)