Despite my rant several months ago about my dislike Dragalia Lost’s overly grindy events, I recently hooked myself on it again. Even in that piece, I admit there’s a lot I like about Dragalia in particular, and I still maintain there are many things I enjoy that are innate to typical gacha game design. Gacha games have an extremely low barrier to entry, I’m excited by multiplayer games where my friends and I are dealt different tools to play with, and I’ve always been a sucker for a perpetually growing grind. I’m not ashamed to admit I enjoy gacha games as they are.
But Dragalia’s future doesn’t look so bright, nor does that of the entire gacha “genre.” Fire Emblem Heroes and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp have just been shut down in Belgium, much like a plethora of prolific gacha games before it such as Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. United States senator Josh Hawley recently proposed “The Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act” to regulate games that practice this sort of model. I’m unsure whether this legislation will actually pass, but even if it doesn’t, it’s amplifying the outcry against loot boxes so much that it looks like a matter of time until something like it passes.
My enjoyment of Dragalia Lost is threatened by this push for regulating loot boxes. I could potentially lose hours of progress and so much time I spent on what I consider to be a pretty good game if this bill advances far enough to ban loot boxes entirely. And even more strongly than I wrote two years ago, I believe this is legislation is exactly what the mobile market needs.
Source: Destructoid Without loot boxes, what does the future of mobile gaming look like?