Learn how the community of Gacha all began, from the company's first appearance, to how it ended up in the state it is today.
The game company, originally named "Cyan Productions", was founded by Lucas Lee (also known as Luni) and an anonymous co-founder. It consisted of a group of flash artists, animators, and game creators who developed various anime-inspired arcade games. Unfortunately, many of their early creations have since been shut down or discontinued. Examples of these games include Chibion, Dream Unit Online, Cyanity, Hayuku! Hero, and several others.
The company decided to rebrand its studio as "Lunime," focusing on creating games for kids. This change marked the beginning of Lucas "Luni" Lee as the sole creator of Lunime's productions. As a young developer and manga enthusiast, Luni founded his platform to showcase his artistic talent by creating a unique series of anime-style gacha pull games.
Anime GachaWith the initiative of switching styles, It led to the launch of an entirely new series of gacha games, starting with the first-ever Lunime title, "Anime Gacha", released on March 19. Unlike the current Lunime Gacha games, Anime Gacha was a typical Gacha pull simulator where users' only goal was to pull for random anime characters (Lunime originals), which are then used in battle in a card-based RPG-style format.
Luni has created his second Gacha game, titled "Gacha World." This game has gained significantly more traction compared to his first, Anime Gacha, due to the inclusion of a storyline. The main plot revolves around saving the world from corruption by battling against various enemies.
Gacha Neko was created on January 15th. It was a random meme game similar to Gacha World, but instead of featuring anime characters, it is focused entirely on cats. Luni already had a history of creating games of this nature, so this marked the beginning of a new line of games with this similar concept.
Gacha StudioGacha Studio was released on May 10th and is recognized as one of the four biggest games produced by Lunime. It served as a significant milestone in building the community and establishing its fan base. Notably, Gacha Studio introduced the main dress-up feature that allowed users to customize their gacha characters and utilize them in creating stories within the studio feature. Although the assets available were really limited compared to later versions, Gacha Studio would not gain widespread popularity until 2018.
Gacha ResortGacha Resort was created on July 19th. This was one of Luni's underrated games that was made as the sequel to Gacha World, revolving around a beach-themed setting, storyline, and battle mechanics.
Pocket ChibiPocket Chibi was made on Nov 25th. This was also an underrated game, but this centered around an anime chibi dress-up style. The game was mainly just the simple chibi version of Gacha Studio and remained not as popular.
Early in the year, the epidemic known as "The Hated Child" began to rise within the gacha community. This trend quickly became the first significant movement in the community, inspiring thousands of gacha creators to craft similar stories. The main premise of this trend revolves around newborn twins: one is hated, while the other is a spoiled brat. The hated child experiences mistreatment from their family and peers at school, ultimately discovering that they are a hybrid princess or hold a similar royal status. While this trend may appear humorous/cringe now, it served as a significant gateway for many other creative gacha-related works and sparked new ideas for storytelling using gacha apps and beyond.
The First "BIG" GachatuberOn January 25th, a gacha YouTuber formerly known as "EmilyKitty", now named "BeauBagels", uploaded the first episode of their gacha series titled "School Surprise". This series became one of the first major hits among Gachatubers, quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing channels at that time. It eventually resulted in multiple additional episodes, which were extremely loved by the community.
Gacha MemoriesGacha Memories was released on May 17th and is another story-based game similar to Gacha Resort. It is a romantic visual novel that allows users to bond with various characters. However, like many of Lunime's gacha games, it struggled to attract its audience due to its overly simplistic concept and design.
GachaverseGachaverse, formally known as Gacha League, was created on June 19th. It had been in development for a long time and served as a prototype for a more lore-driven and story-focused game, alongside its typical battle unit concept. However, this idea was soon abandoned, and Lunime shifted its focus to enhancing Gachaverse's dress-up style and gacha mechanics. The game represented a significant improvement over Gacha Studio, offering more customizable features in terms of color variety and clothing/hair options. Additionally, while Gacha Studio leaned towards a traditional anime style, Gachaverse adopted a simpler chibi style. This change garnered a lot of attention, expanded the community, and helped Gachaverse become the second-largest game in Lunime's production lineup.
Gacha LifeGacha Life was released on October 20th, becoming the third biggest Gacha game produced by Lunime. This game attracted significant attention from the community, both positive and negative over time. It represented a major update to Gachaverse, retaining the same core components but offering even more customizable options, such as a more vibrant color palette, additional assets, and animated poses. During this period, the community was perceived as a wholesome and positive space, primarily consisting of younger players who enjoyed creating unique Gacha characters/stories.
First Gachatuber DisappearanceOn September 18th, CuteSpud uploaded her final gacha video titled "Cotton Candy Skies Meme" and subsequently vanished from the internet. This abrupt disappearance sent the community into a frenzy, with many speculating about her situation. Eventually, it was revealed that she had simply lost the motivation to create more videos. Unlike other Gachatubers who have disappeared over the years, it was CuteSpud's absence that drew the most significant attention, particularly due to her status as one of the most popular Gachatubers at the time.
On April 5th, A well-known YouTuber named Pkrussl predicted the beginning of the downfall of gacha through a video he posted called "The Disturbing Truth of the Dark Community". He goes into detail about how the gacha content made by kids may feature a lot of cringy sexual topics and overall show an unknown portion of the community that would be known as the dark side of gacha. This influenced a lot of the gacha and non-gacha members to make their own related to what he talked about, which are now known as "Gacha Life Cringe", which led to the community's reputation of being a cringefest, and people who made content there are seen as cringe. However, bringing attention to this kind of content can potentially encourage people to increase the problem, so it's best to gain one's own opinions before seeing another creator as cringe because there are still a few gacha creators that did not try to post cringe but felt bad for doing so.
Rise in UnoriginalityIn late 2019, a trend of unoriginality began to stir discontent within the Gacha community. During this time, the content gaining traction in the algorithm primarily consisted of mini-movies and music videos that followed the same cliched concepts. Examples included titles like "My Boss is My Ex-Husband", "Celebrity in Disguise", and "The Alpha Marked Me". This repetition made the community feel stale, and it even faced significant criticism for a while, as new and creative content was lacking. Many newcomers found this content "cringe", particularly upon their first impressions.
Luni's First Action (before disappearing)By the end of the year, Luni had to recognize the escalation of inappropriate content on his platform, as he soon disappeared from the internet after posting his last video on YouTube entitled "Game Over", which celebrated reaching 1 million subscribers. The reasons for his disappearance remain a mystery, but it is suggested that it was due to the controversy surrounding his games, which were criticized for not being as kid-friendly as claimed. Additionally, he faced accusations of being a pedophile and sex offender, but he never confirmed or responded to these allegations.
In January, Luni released an update for Gacha Life. After noticing the negative reactions within the community, particularly regarding inappropriate sexual content, Luni decided to remove all potentially sexual assets from the game. This included disabling skin tone options for clothing and covering up bra-like clothing options. Unfortunately, this decision upset some members of the community, as many creators used these features for non-sexual purposes, such as in beach-themed stories. However, since there were still creators who misused these features, the backlash eventually diminished, and the community came to accept that these were gone forever.
The Rise of VA Gacha seriesOn April 25th, a gachatuber named "RosyClozy" uploaded the first episode of her voice-acted series, "The Music Freaks." The episode quickly went viral, receiving an overwhelming amount of support from the community. This success also led to a significant moment in the gacha community, inspiring a wave of new voice-acted series. Some notable examples include "Royal Fairy Academy," "Celebrity High," "Spirit Animals," and "Idolize." This development marked a major step for the community, especially in terms of content, and provided a much-needed positive boost to the storytelling dynamic within it..
The Most Viewed Gacha videoOn June 4th, a popular Gachatuber Milyie posted a video called "Fashion Week" that sits as one of the most viewed Gacha videos for its outstanding animation and a stepping stone to more advanced Gacha animations, with more uses of rigging and editing the given gacha character bases
Gacha ClubGacha Club was released on June 29th and quickly became the fourth biggest game from Lunime, generating significant excitement within the community. It featured many improvements over previous gacha games, including more colors, customizable options, and detailed assets in the studio feature. These enhancements allowed creators to create smoother animations directly within the app, without the need for extensive rigging. Although Luni remained inactive on his YouTube channel for a while, he began to engage more by posting, chatting, and commenting on the official Lunime Gacha Discord server.
First Gachatuber to hit 1M subscribersOn September 13th, a prominent gachatuber named LilyTrescot MSP reached 1 million subscribers, making her the first-ever gachatuber to achieve this milestone within the community. She is known for creating captivating Gacha mini-movies, including titles like "Why Her, Not Me?", "The Mute Tomboy," and "I Hate You, Bro".
Discussion of Trends harming the Gacha communityOn November 28th, a popular gachatuber named Notzoey posted a video discussing how Gacha trends are harming the community. This video prompted many gachatubers to reconsider their views on these trends. Although it didn't lead to significant changes, as the trends have continued to persist, it highlighted the community's awareness of the need for improvement.
On February 21, A popular gachtuber "Lentotally" was exposed by another YouTube channel entitled "Lentotally Exposed" for grooming a 14-year-old using the platform, Discord. The victim wasn't completely confirmed but some speculate that it might be one of his gachtuber friends. Regardless, with the evidence shown in the video, he was accused of being a pedophile. This took the gacha community at an all-time low, most feeling betrayed as Len was one of the most loved Gachtubers of the community. Immediately, the next day this was posted, Lentotally made both a response video on his own channel and a community post that was soon deleted stating that the accusations were true. In the end, Len disabled all his comment sections in every video he had on his channel and deleted every community post except one that reads "I'm sorry, I'll take full responsibility for my actions". Then, he went offline.
On March 20, a YouTube group named "Oopsie" posted a video of them interviewing Len himself, in response to the situation. Overall, its main impact was causing several arguments between community members where some say Len was solely at fault, some wanting to forgive him, and others that believe both Len and the victim may be at fault.
On March 22, LenTotally made another response video that was soon deleted as well, but before so, received an overwhelming amount of views and likes. This video was Len discussing that he did not initiate the conversation and argued that he was the victim the whole time.
On May 20, the gachatuber adults, Kurie, Gacha Vida, and Rosyclozy made a collaboration video to deconstruct Len and Oopsie's responses and explaining that the victim was not at fault in any way. Most of the community praised them for speaking up on the matter. But then, this led to many of the community members to backlash Len, wanting him to stop his channel and leave the community, which is what happened 5 days later. At the time, Len's channel was either hidden, private, or deleted completely, it was not certain. But, what was suggested was that Len either took the channel down himself or was forced by the YouTube staff.
In early September, Lentotally seemed to return but remained inactive, renaming his channel to "Xyn".
On June 4, Len seemed to remain inactive when it came to posting gacha videos. However, after one of his previous gacha tuber friends, "LiterallyYohan" did a response video that reveals he groomed a second minor, Len privatized his channel once again.
The Rise of Gacha HeatGacha Heat was known as the worst trends of Gacha community history. This "trend" involved making sexual content using the gacha characters. It was one of the main reasons the community is dying and already existed since the community started, but it was not as big at the time. However, by this year, the rise of Gacha Heat was significant. A lot of the small gachatubers started joining this trend and the rest were either left speechless or in rage. This greatly affected most of the big gachatubers who would never engage in gacha heat and led to the majority of them to go offline or quit gacha entirely. The situation made the community feel more abandoned, and with the rise of gacha heat's popularity, those outside of the community would look down on those that do not even make gacha heat, and grew fearful of what the community has become.
On June 8th, a gachatuber called "BronyBoy5463" posted a video titled "Lentotally is BACK" that explains Len having a comeback to the community, unprivate his channel, and renaming it again to "Xynister". Len still has not uploaded any new videos at this time, but that only suggests that he has not learned his lesson. Regardless, no one knows if he will actively come back
The Hatsumi Rou SituationOn June 16th, a gachatuber named "SetsunaiSilver" uploaded a video exposing another big and well-loved gachatuber "Hatsumi Rou" for child grooming, child sexual abuse, and manipulation, all with evidence to boot. After a few minutes of the video's release, Hatsumi posted a community post response admitting the accusations were true, and ultimately decided to leave the community forever, deleting any trace of her channel's existence. Unlike Len, the community was somewhat thankful that she did not cause any more scenes and left the first chance she got. However, this still is not an excuse for what she did and a lot of the community, especially her fan-base, suffered the price.
Gacha Life 2?!Unexpectedly, on October 10th, Luni released a new game, "Gacha Life 2". Knowing Luni being inactive for over 4 years and the current situation of the community, this game was not as hyped as it was intended. The game was a big improvement from Gacha Club, however, most of the community felt that Lunime may have gone too detailed with its customization settings. This game not only removed the battle mode that all of the Lunime games had but also made all parts of the gacha character customizable, including the poses. This made the game more complicated and a struggle for most gacha tubers who would usually want more simple options. In the end, fewer gachatubers transitioned from Gacha Club to Gacha Life 2 as compared to the previous big gacha games.
By the start of the year, Gacha heat had been the center of attention of the community, which was still not taken lightly, especially by the other gachatubers who just wanted to make positive gacha content. But then, this led to the rise of Gacha Shorts, which is basically like the typical shorts content viewers see on YouTube, similar to the content of BiancaLimon, Brianna Mizura, and Ian Boggs, only, it used gacha logic, style, and overall gimmick. It was generally standard content nowadays that viewers can easily see in their feed by scrolling through Instagram Reels, TikTok, and obviously, YouTube Shorts.
Lentotally returns (again)On July 23, a gachatuber named "PochiTrix" confirms that Lentotally has officially returned to the gacha community when he started uploading new videos to his channel, mostly through YouTube shorts. Most of the community was concerned and overall disappointed with his choice of returning as the community is already going through tough times, especially with the other situations going on at the time. Regardless, he continues to post standard gacha videos and kept the comment section disabled, most likely to prevent the community members from flooding it with arguments. By the end of the year, he has gone offline once again.
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