Gacha
Free to play at the base, with the thing you want obtainable only by chance. This model of charging, grown in Japan, casts a long light and a long shadow. In 2012 the Consumer Affairs Agency judged that the «complete» variant — requiring players to collect a set — fell foul of the premiums and representations law, and the major operators withdrew it at once. What was used to do it was a notice drafted in 1977, with children's baseball cards in mind. A piece of old text caught a business conducted inside a screen thirty-five years later. Japan's regulation here also came six years before Europe and America began treating loot boxes as a problem, in 2018. On the other hand, the first country to require disclosure of drop rates by law was South Korea, in force from 2024; in Japan, where it started, it remains industry self-regulation. The importer overtook the originator on rules.
The myth, corrected
Gacha began with Kaito Royale in 2009
That title certainly spread the model, but it did not invent it. Avatar lotteries charged for in this way are said to have existed by around 2007 (this map has not reached an official primary source), and some trace paid items themselves to Korean online games of the early 2000s. This map writes the starting point as «around 2007», deliberately as a range.