Last year, Mr. Lim Cheng Mong, a product manager, discovered on his credit card a debt of up to S$20,000. This amount is equivalent to 14,800 USD, or 336.7 million VND.
The money came from 89 mysterious transactions, it was later discovered that his 18-year-old daughter had invested in Genshin Impact for 6 consecutive weeks.
Initially, he managed to get about half of this money back thanks to the bank’s preferential policies. Revealing to The Straits Times, he said the full amount has been refunded.
Usually, in cases of credit card chargeback, the game account will also be banned, as it can set a precedent for bad guys who want to take advantage of this loophole to get their money back. Some people have used this method to both be able to trade in games or apps and win back their money. Nowadays, publishers are more careful about this issue.
After the incident, he decided to give his children a monthly cash allowance to make them more careful with their spending: “This includes travel, phone bills and other expenses. that if they want to spend money on games, they have to pay for it themselves.”
Mr Lim’s incident made clear the addictive nature of games with gacha mechanics, which are still likened to another form of gambling. Even Belgium had to ban Genshin Impact for this reason.
These days, gacha games have become extremely popular, sometimes becoming the main monetization engine for many games. Other ways such as making money through advertising, making money by buying in-game items, through microtransactions,… are all lagging behind the gacha boom. Games like Another Eden, Dragalia Lost, Fire Emblem Heroes, Marvel Strike Force, and especially Genshin Impact are all labeled “Free to Play”, but still earn huge revenue thanks to the addictive nature of the gacha mechanics.
It seems that gacha is an inevitable trend of the game industry. This is not the first time that parents have a “headache” because their children spend tens of thousands of dollars on Genshin Impact. Mr Lim also shared: “I never tried the games my son played, but after that, I tried to talk to my son and wanted to understand his interests.”
In fact, 15,000 USD is too much to put into Genshin Impact. To get a complete team with 5-star characters also costs only a fraction of this amount. According to the estimates of many players, even the unluckiest will only cost between 2500 USD and 6000 USD to have a strong squad.
In modern life, digital transactions are becoming more and more convenient and popular. Therefore, spending money on online services, games or applications is not too strange. Therefore, it is extremely important for everyone to have adequate knowledge about transactions like these and how to deal with overspending.