Silver Palace Looks Amazing... Unfortunately, It’s Just Another Gacha Trap

Earlier this week, a new game was revealed: Silver Palace, a free-to-play anime open-world action RPG built in Unreal Engine 5. It’s launching on consoles and PC. Yay! It’s also unfortunately launching on iOS and Android. Not so yay. Set in a Victorian-inspired metropolis, the game casts you as a detective; there’s dynamic real-time combat, QTE combos, and character switching.

And yeah — Silver Palace looks f**king amazing. But let’s be real. It’s just another gacha game. So why bother getting excited?

It’s not Silver Studio’s fault, either. They’re just following the money. Last year alone, Genshin Impact raked in around $700 million. Honkai: Star Rail pulled in $118.3 million on just mobile. Zenless Zone Zero already made over $200 million. Even Wuthering Waves hit $110 million.

For comparison, Granblue Fantasy: Relink — a non-gacha, one-time purchase game with similar anime-action vibes — earned about $69.1 million on Steam. That’s a massive success, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the earnings of its gacha-based cousins.

What’s the takeaway here? Gacha games print money, obviously. They thrive on addictive mechanics: randomized pulls, limited-time events, fear of missing out. Developers don’t even need everyone to spend — just the whales who drop thousands. They’re also cheaper to make than traditional AAA games, easier to update, and tailor-made for markets like Japan and South Korea, where the genre dominates.

Add strong communities, long shelf lives, and steady income streams, and it’s no wonder publishers keep chasing the gacha model — even if it means leaning into predatory monetization practices.

So yes, Silver Palace looks sick. And I want to play it. But my hyped must remain quelled, for the game is probably another gacha trap.