What Kind Of Impact Will Duet Night Abyss’ Monetization Have On Gacha Games?

As you know, Duet Night Abyss is scheduled to launch in just a couple of days, on Tuesday, October 28. (Technically, that’ll be Monday evening for those of us in the West.) There’s a good bit of excitement around this free-to-play action RPG, with 15 million would-be players having pre-registered for it. At least some of that excitement can likely be attributed to a change the developers made not that long ago. In fact, it’s only been about two months since the devs announced they’d be removing the gacha system for playable characters and weapons and shifting to what a friend pointed out to me was something more akin to the Warframe model.

With this new system, players can get all the character and weapons in the game for free – although they’ll have to work for them. And, for those without the time to spend, there’s still an option to spend money to obtain the character. They also added a lot in the way of character customization, offering players the chance to pay not just for outfits, but dye-able outfits at that. It’s a pretty significant shift, and it was a bit surprising that they’d decide to do this so close to the game’s actual launch. As they pointed out in one stream, the change meant a lot of work.

But here they are, with a non-gacha system. And while I’m not sure that Warframe’s monetization makes them as much money as the big gacha developers have been making on theirs, I do know that you can call it successful all the same. Players have always seemed relatively happy with it too.

Even as a dedicated player of gacha games, I’d argue it’s the fairer system. Will it stop me from playing games like Genshin Impact or Wuthering Waves? Nope. I’m too invested in the story and characters. That said, I’m also not the player they’re making the most money off of, either.

When it comes to gacha games, I’d argue there are three kinds of players – although, those three kinds can blend. There are absolutely those that are spending a ton of money to get the perfect teams built. These folks are walking around with characters with complete constellations (using the Genshin term here) that potentially ran them a thousand dollars or so to complete.

The next group are those that really enjoy the gacha mechanic. Some people love games of chance. I mean. We are gamers. So it makes sense that this would be the case for some.

Then, there are those like me – here for the story and to collect the characters we like. Maxing them out isn’t the biggest priority, although we do end up getting around to it at some point – at least, to a point.

The thing is, unless you’re heavily into endgame, it’s just not necessary. If you’re here for the story and characters, you can set your team up well enough to handle all of that. And if you’re like me, playing across several of these games, it’s probably a good thing if that’s the way you’re going to handle it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve spent money to get characters. Most recently I did it to acquire Flins in Genshin and Iuno in Wuthering Waves. I got extremely lucky when it came to all the other characters I wanted in the latest Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero drops. So, these companies do get my money. But, as a friend who also plays these games and I have discussed many times, we’d rather they just let us buy who we want – at least maybe the first time. If they really have to have the gacha, then make the constellation versions something to roll on.

Now, we know that for Warframe, the kind of system that Duet Night Abyss will be rolling out with works – at least for them. But it’s not a Chinese-made anime-style game built around collecting waifu’s. So, it will be interesting to see if it translates as well as we’re thinking it should. Ideally, people should appreciate things being more fair. But people can be strange about some things.

Some might wonder what happens with existing gacha games if DNA is successful. Honestly, I’m not sure that that, by itself will have that big of an impact on them. It might have some. But let’s look at it this way. I’m one of the lower-spending customers in all of these games. I’d argue there’s more of us than there are those spending thousands on all their characters. At this point, I have forty characters in Honkai: Star Rail and somewhere around seventy or eighty in Genshin Impact. The other two games I have smaller character counts in, but they haven’t been around as long.

The point is, even if I’m unable to get a character I want when it drops, I’m not overly upset because I honestly have more than I can play with as it stands. And I definitely have my existing favorites. So, between that and the fact that I want to know how the stories end, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.

On the other hand, we have the big spenders. The people who have put a lot into their accounts. These may be the ones that complain more loudly when they think something is messed up. But at this point, they’re literally invested. Most people are disinclined to just walk away from collections they’ve spent a lot of money on and worked hard on. If they leave, it’s going to be because the negatives of the game outweigh the time and money spent. Otherwise, they’ll probably just add Duet Night Abyss to their roster of games, like I plan to.

It’s also worth noting that as a lot of the players in these games have already spent a good bit of money on their character collection, they might take any shift that makes it easier for other players to obtain those characters in the future as a slight.

That said, what it may change is how companies like HoYo and Kuro operate future games. If this proves reasonably successful, it may make them inclined to try it for themselves. My overall impression of HoYo is that they’re not afraid to try things – although, some of those things might end up making players unhappy, like the recent announcement of the weapon skin for Cyrene in Honkai: Star Rail. So, I imagine they’re watching how DNA does and may get a little inspiration out of it.

It’ll be worth paying attention to, too. Because the one thing I think this shift will do for Duet Night Abyss is attract the people who would otherwise enjoy any of the other games listed above, if only the idea of playing a gacha game didn’t stop them from trying them out.