NieR creator pulls the rug on gacha whales with the ending of his mobile game

NieR director Yoko Taro has gained himself a cult following over the years for the ways in which he subverts expectations for storytelling in video games, and the upcoming finale to the mobile game SINoALICE, which Taro directed, will be no different.

While the exact details of the game’s ending are still yet to be revealed, players of the game have been given a roadmap to how it can be unlocked, as well as a stark warning – once they view the game’s final cinematic, they will be logged out of the game, and their accounts will be deleted – never to return to the game again.

This information came to us via @sino_english, an unofficial Twitter account that translates official updates on SINoALICE into English. 

As the Tweet points out, fans of Yoko Taro’s NieR series would have seen this one coming, and social media is kicking off about it. In a nutshell, the general sentiment is, ‘That’s so Taro.’

What makes this direction particularly interesting is SINoALICE’s identity as a ‘gacha game’, named after Japanese toy vending machines. Gacha can effectively be likened to loot boxes.

This means the game’s progression is quite intrinsically linked to the amount of in-game currency players are willing to spend on effectively gambling for unlocks. Of course, a lot of that in-game currency comes from real-world cash.

Naturally, this is quite the slap in the face to whales who may have potentially spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on the game. 

It’s quite the rug pull on Square Enix and Pokelabo’s part, and we’re pretty surprised that they enabled Yoko Taro to wrap the game up in the way he did. Then again, in hindsight, we shouldn’t have expected any different.