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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/emiliers on 2024-10-10 10:28:06+00:00.

I’ve been wanting to write about this debacle for ages, and I’ve been half-hoping that either someone else will get to it (didn’t happen) or that the situation would reach a definitive conclusion before long (also didn’t happen, more on this later). Since neither of those panned out, here I am with this hopefully not-completely-inadequate write-up about how a much-loved mobile game turned into a complete meme.

(This is my first hobby drama write-up, so if I’ve done something wrong, feel free to tell me.)

What is King’s Raid?

King’s Raid is a gacha game that was initially published in Thailand in September 2016. It was later bought by Korean company Vespa and then released in Korean and English in February 2017 before finally being released in Japan in March 2018.

For those who don’t know, a gacha game is a live-service game that has lootbox mechanics where the player uses premium in-game currency (often bought with real money) to pull for either characters or items. While gacha mechanics are fundamentally equivalent to western lootbox mechanics, most people who play gacha games differentiate them from western live-service games by their anime aesthetic, and players also most often gamble for characters rather than items in these games. For reference, a popular gacha game is the megahit Genshin Impact.

While King’s Raid’s anime aesthetic was typical gacha, and its story was mostly generic “hero’s journey” fantasy, it differentiated itself with its gambling mechanics. Namely, the player gambled solely for weapons, and all characters in the game could either be earned for free with enough daily logins or outright bought with premium in-game currency (which can also be earned for free in-game by doing certain daily tasks). In other words, as long as you invested time in the game, you could get your character of choice with no risk at all.

Another point in King’s Raid’s favor was the somewhat equal gender distribution on its roster. Now, this probably sounds ridiculous to those who weren’t in the gacha space at the time, but back then, most gacha games in English featured predominantly female casts, with few if any male characters. (Off the top of my head, games released around the same time such as Girl’s Frontline, Azur Lane, and Genshin Impact’s predecessor Honkai Impact 3rd all had exclusively female rosters. In fact, even the whiff of adding playable male characters often sent players into a tizzy. That’s not to say male-only roster games weren’t being made, but they were often not being licensed globally – just look at hugely popular Touken Ranbu, which debuted in Japan in 2015 but didn’t receive an official English translation until 2021.) In fact, many gacha players might even argue that this uneven gender distribution is still an issue in today’s gacha games. But, with King’s Raid, it not only had a roster of both men and women (some of whom were even furries! if you’re into that), it also featured equal opportunity fanservice for them. Want every single one of your characters in a swimsuit? You can do that! Want to dress all your characters in suits? You can do that too!

It’s hard to state just how free-to-play friendly King’s Raid was during its first few years to those who don’t play gacha games, especially since it seemed to eschew a lot of the predatory gacha practices of the time – some of which are still in place today! But needless to say, it was popular enough to earn it a top spot on app store charts and even netted it an anime adaptation in 2020.

Signs of Trouble

While there are disagreements about when the decline of King’s Raid began, with some arguing that the growing power creep (harder to get weapons, increased grind, etc.) were the first warning signs, for the sake of not confusing the gacha uninitiated any further, I’ll stick to talking about things that took place outside of the game.

In 2021, even with the aforementioned power creep, King’s Raid was in a relatively good place, and the playerbase had mostly positive feelings towards the game. At this point, the anime adaptation had basically concluded, and while it was mediocrely reviewed, it did bring a slew of new people into the game. Meanwhile, the game itself was actually gearing up for the final chapter of its main story, which eventually dropped in May 2021. (Yes, a gacha game story that actually ended!) And while the playerbase also had mixed reactions to that, it was still nice to see these beloved characters’ journeys come to an end.

Riding this hype, in March 2021, the developers posted their Q1 2021 plans for the game, including an announcement for a King’s Raid 2, basically a completely new story set later in the same universe with new main characters, though still available on the same app as before. At the same time, they also announced a PC client, which ended up never materializing (what will soon become a trend for Vespa, as you’ll see).

While they initially announced King’s Raid 2 for the end of the year, it eventually became abundantly clear that they wouldn’t be able to fulfill their promises. Despite numerous requests for more information on this second season, even just in-progress screenshots, Vespa continuously pushed off these requests, often showing just minor changes to current content instead.

Finally, in November 2021, Vespa announced what everyone in the community had been expecting: that King’s Raid 2 would not be finished in time and would have to be delayed until sometime in 2022 – later revealed to be June/July 2022.

At this point, the game hadn’t received any new content in a while (those of you who play live-service games know this is a fairly clear indicator of something seriously wrong) and was going through endless holiday event reruns. Most people did not realize it was about to get a whole lot worse.

2022: Slow But Steady Decline

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of what happened in 2022, I just want to give some additional outside context. For much of King’s Raid’s run, it was Vespa’s only game. However, in late 2021, Vespa released a new game Time Defenders in Japan, which eventually got a global release in April 2022. This game did extremely poorly, supposedly releasing in an extremely unfinished state, and ended service in September 2022. Some King’s Raid fans attribute Vespa’s split attention – and the poor revenue Time Defenders generated – with Vespa’s eventual downfall, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

In retrospect, the release of Legendary Costumes (costumes that were sold for a limited time, in a limited quantity, and for a whopping ten times as much premium in-game currency than normal, always-available costumes) was a sign that Vespa was probably in dire financial straits, but since they continued to release updates reworking older content, dedicated fans still believed that Vespa was actually working on King’s Raid 2, even as actual events, including reruns, trickled to nothing – because why else would they fix old content if not to attract new players for their new upcoming content? Though it’s also important to note that a lot of the…

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