“Give me your wallet!” Atelier series gacha game under fire for “money-grabbing” commercial 

The management of the Japanese mobile gacha game Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator (Resleriana) has recently gone under fire for a controversial TikTok posted as official advertising. Users describe the video as being distasteful and “treating players like money-cows.” The game’s management has since posted an apology. 

Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator is the latest installment of the Atelier series of alchemy games, which has been ongoing since 1997 and counts 24 titles up to date. Resleriana was published in 2023 by Koei Tecmo and Akatsuki Games and developed by Gust. It’s a rare instance of a gacha game in the series, which caused mixed reactions, but was nonetheless well received for its story and graphics. On November 8, a 40 second promotional video for the game posted on TikTok sparked controversy on social media. 

The video in question, titled “The reality vs ideal of a gacha game girl,” is in a first-person POV, and before you is a girl (supposedly your girlfriend) playing Resleriana, showing you how cute her 1-star character is. When you offer to pay for her to do gacha after she says she wants to but has no money, she accepts it happily, but moments later she appears angry after having spun the gacha 10 times without any luck, and yells things like “Wallet! Give me your wallet!” and “Hurry up and get your wallet out!” at you, ignoring you as you ask her “Weren’t we going to go on a trip?” 

Users took issue with how the ad shamelessly urges the viewer to hand over their wallet and paints the game in nothing but a negative light, as one user comments, “So what I get from this video is that, you’re not going to get what you want in this game even if you put money into it, you’re going to ruin your interpersonal relationships, and the money needed for the game will be enough to disrupt things such as your travel plans. Who’s going to want to play Resleriana after seeing this?” 

Many suspected that the strange ad came from a third-party advertising service, but were nonetheless at a loss as to how it could have been greenlighted by the game’s management. While some users wrote it off as comical, many found the way it treats players disrespectful. With live service games, the “customer vs service provider” dynamic is a lot more pronounced between the developer and players, so handling PR well without making faux pas plays a big role in the game’s success. Especially in the case of the Japanese public, management showing signs of incompetence or disrespect can make players lose their trust regardless of the quality of the original product. 

In turn, the Resleriana development team responded to the issue on their official Discord channel, on which they explain they had tried to reach a wider audience via TikTok content and apologized for causing offence to players. They announced that they will be deleting the TikTok in the next few days.