In January of this year, I started playing Infinity Nikki.
I was, of course, immediately bullied by my circle of friends for this choice – friends whose most recent playing tastes were League of Legends and Overwatch, might I add – because of the simplistic story, asset-lifted world design, and, most obviously, because it was a gacha game. Soon after, I succumbed to peer pressure and, out of embarrassment, stopped, dropping out of the community altogether.
Regardless, experience with its community at the time had them expressing a positive view. The environments and UI/UX designs were beautiful, and for a gacha game, it didn’t require you to spend a single cent, with an in-built pity system that gave you high-rated outfits after a certain amount of draws, so that as long as you have the patience, you can acquire every outfit.
However, the greatest praise was within the core of the game: allowing people to indulge in the feminine art of dressing up, without having to make space for the male gaze. There was no jiggle physics, no sexualised clothing, and no erotic characters. Cosy game enjoyers loved it.
So, imagine my surprise when I checked back in with Infinity Nikki four months later to find a very different story indeed. Little did I know, there had been An Update. Little did I know, there had been several Updates, each one more substandard, faulty, and unwelcome than the last. And the latest Update managed to destroy any good-will that the community still held towards it.
This is about Infinity Nikki’s version 1.5 – the Bubble Season.
47 DAYS BEFORE THE BUBBLE BURST
Infinity Nikki was launching on Steam, and to boost publicity, developer Infold Games announced a rewards campaign – the more fans that added Infinity Nikki to their Steam wish list, the more game rewards they would get.
A tweet on March 13th from the developer announced that, if Nikki fans could get the game to 100,000 wish lists, they would receive around 11 resonite crystals – the in-game currency for this lottery spin. If the game got to 200,000 wish lists, Infold Games promised an additional surprise, however declined to specify what it would be, to create suspense.
This was exciting, as during the lottery, the more resonite crystals you spend, the better your odds become of getting high-quality outfit pieces, rated on a five-star system. In order to guarantee a four-star or higher outfit piece, you need to spend 10 resonite crystals at once.
So, suffice to say, this announcement had Nikki fans delighted. It was essentially free lottery spins! All anyone had to do was click a button to add Infinity Nikki to their Steam wish list. Good news, indeed.
34 DAYS BEFORE THE BUBBLE BURST
On the 28th of March, version 1.4 – the Revelry Season – came out. Unfortunately, for a Revelry season, nobody revelled in it.
1.4 was the longest patch Infinity Nikki would have yet, and offered little to no content – the fistful of events and challenges could be done in thirty minutes. For those who had finished the main quests, it meant waiting around for the new update with nothing to do. And it was off the back of 1.3, the Eerie Season, eerily quiet on content with quests only having you walk to places and talking to people.
After two disappointing updates in a row, fans were starting to get restless.
But, perhaps 1.4 was sparse for a reason. The developers were teasing a lot of content for 1.5 already – huge changes that quickly turned the tides for fan optimism.
The biggest, most important promise was the Star Sea outfit. It had been present in every Nikki game in its franchise, appealing to longtime fans’ nostalgia – but more significant was its narrative consequences. The Star Sea outfit was the first big story-driven outfit in Love Nikki back in 2017, and promised a whole new region: the Sea of Stars – a co-op area, where players’ Nikki’s would complete quests together, featuring a darling little animation of two players’ Nikki’s wandering the world together, hands held tight and riding a couple’s bicycle.
A boost to the event was also promised – a new area called Serenity Island in the Abandoned District of the map that would unlock upgraded features, presenting gameplay about a new exclusive quest, a soiree event, a bubble-boat ability, and a bubble-parkour minigame. Completing these would free further customizability, lending players the power to change their ability outfits and unlock new colour combinations when you Glow Up your outfit.
This was a lot of content, which somewhat explained the dryness of the previous ones. All of a sudden Infinity Nikki fans were excited again, breaths held in suspense for the big 1.5 release day.
29 DAYS BEFORE THE BUBBLE BURST
On the 10th of April, the delicious Steam wish list rewards were quietly changed. The prize was now not even half the size.
In the new teaser-tweet from the company, its graphic had been swapped. Instead of the beautifully bountiful 10 crystals, sitting shiny and tempting and spilling out the box, it had been reduced to a lonesome two. The final surprise, at 200,000 wish lists, were 10 – which pretty much eradicated the “surprise” reward.
Fans started foaming at the mouth. Their promises had been broken, the enticement of free spins diminished, the idea of a fun new “surprise” reward was gone, and all fingers were on buttons to create backlash. Infold Games came under intense criticism for this replacement. The counterblast was so intense that a mere day later, they reversed their decision and tweeted that they were giving the players their 10 resonite crystals after all. No “big surprise” was revealed, but since the 200,000 wishlist goal had been reached, players were also given 10 extra crystals.
On the back of this controversy, data miners for the 1.5 release started to snoop, and revealed some… concerning aspects. Specifically, that the new 5-star outfits would come in 11 different pieces.
There was only one outfit in Infinity Nikki that was in 11 pieces, and that was in the very beginning of the game – most 5-stars were 8-10. 11 was a ludicrous amount, especially when the pieces of this outfit could only come from a lottery draw. It takes 20 draws to get just one piece of a 5-star outfit; multiplying that by 11 was 220 draws.
But these were just the data miners; there was no guarantee that anything they’d seen would be correct, or even implemented into the update. And there were still plenty of other things to be excited about. On the whole, fans’ spirits remained high – the 29th of April was just around the corner.
THE BUBBLE BURST
On the 29th of April, the Bubble Season dropped, warped, and burst on impact.
The problems began before players even logged on, for the singular reason that many couldn’t. PS5 players were locked out. Mobile players were locked out. The few who found ways in were met with a blank screen or a crash. And that was just the beginning.
The only people who could consistently log in were PC players, and even then, problems were giant and glaring. 1.5 opened onto an unskippable cutscene introducing the new Sea of Stars, but for many, this cutscene was buggy – not launching, or pixelated beyond comprehension, or soundless. This disaster led into an unskippable tutorial that was glitchy and laggy and generally unpleasant to get through, before eventually dumping you into the new Sea of Stars area.
Also a disappointment, for the area is far too small, far too underdeveloped, and far too glitchy, so that only precious few tasks are even possible. Collisions are missing; story-markers are broken; there’s untranslated text – these are alpha-level basic testing bugs that have been, for whatever reason, completely missed.
And this sequence replaced the opening sequence of the game. Exactly zero people were happy with this. New fans were confused because the new opening did nothing to provide context for who Nikki was, and how she was iseki’d into this world, or even the significance of the dresses; old fans were displeased that the lore so far had been retconned for a multiverse plot that was written for the sole reason of canonizing the co-op aspect, with everyone’s Nikki’s trying to prevent the end of the universe.
And the co-op aspect doesn’t even work! Multiplayer lobbies lag and disconnect frequently. It’s as buggy and broken as the rest of the game has become. And it doesn’t even stop there.
Turns out, the data-miners had been right: the new 5-star dresses were, in fact, 11 pieces each.
As previously illustrated, 11 pieces each would mean a max pity-draw of 220, which is already a massive slog. But that’s only for the base outfit and one recolour. For the dress’ final evolution, you need to get each piece again. Now that’s 440 pulls.
And it keeps going. Because now, new decorations had been added as functionally useless cosmetics that can’t be equipped to Nikki as outfit pieces and have little relevance to the cosmetics available so far. Such as the “bathtub” cosmetic. This can’t be equipped to Nikki’s outfit, nor does Infinity Nikki have any houses to decorate, rendering them only useful as props for photo-ops. And the prices of these decorations are even more preposterous – the bathtub was 70 dollars with a -79% off price tag stamped on, falsifying a good deal under a very thin pretence indeed. Absolutely nobody was falling for it.
The new, custom colour palettes were also behind a paywall of an extra currency, which can only be acquired from the monthly shop, and each palette must be re-bought for every single outfit players own. Functionally, this means that even if you saved this monthly currency for a year, you still wouldn’t be able to unlock every palette for just one 5-star outfit.
That was the new, big update that the fans were treated to.
But these are just inept and iniquitous game design aspects. It’s awful, but not unlawful – just nakedly greedy. No, the worst part is that Infinity Nikki is now breaking the law.
Serious reports from a subsection of Infinity Nikki gamers have claimed that the developers removed and invalidated currency from players without proper notice or consent. Since these were purchased with real-world money, it constitutes unauthorized withdrawal of purchased digital goods, which violates consumer protection laws in many jurisdictions – such as in the EU.
This is not the only misdemeanour Infinity Nikki has against it. The pricing policy for their props are also outlawed by many governing bodies; the bathtub decoration, for example, was never sold at $70 dollars, and was only discounted so heavily to make people believe they were getting a good deal. False price reductions are banned by the 2022 EU Omnibus Directive and the USA’s Section 5 of the FTC Act of 1914, which both prohibit fake discounts designed to pressure consumers into purchasing and require those discounts to be based on a real, prior price from the last 30 days.
The price was eventually rectified, but not before it had already violated the law.
Finally, gacha pulls require a clearly displayed probability rate in several countries, otherwise it’s considered an illegal gambling practice. Failing to disclose odds, as Infinity Nikki does, violates consumer transparency laws – such as in Belgium and the Netherlands. However, Infinity Nikki does not make the effort to display odds for these countries, and as such, infringes on their consumer regulations.
In everything, but especially within the flagrant disregard for other countries’ legal restrictions on gambling, it’s clear where Infold’s priorities are. By making it almost impossible to acquire anything in the game without transactions, they want people to break down and start buying.
Once a gacha game, always a gacha game.
CLEANING THE SPILLAGE
In the aftermath of the new season’s drop, Infinity Nikki’s ratings have tanked on all platforms, a mass boycott (amongst participants dubbed the girlcott) was called, and players are taking photographs of the “greedy pouch” enemy in the game and sending it to Infold as part of the message. The girlcott stipulates that no money should be spent on Infinity Nikki, and no pulling of the limited dresses, until the following demands have been followed:
- Bring back the max guaranteed pity for all 5 stars or higher to 180 or lower
- Bring back the old intro & storyline
- Fix ALL the issues and bugs
- Streamline the dyeing system (i.e. universal palette for all outfits)
- Add useful tutorials for all new features
- Send players more free pulls as compensations
On the 17th of May, Infinity Nikki’s developers issued an apology, however it has not generally been accepted, as it promised nothing to reverse any changes they’ve already made – only a half-hearted vow to improve the quality of the technical issues, a “round table” initiative to respond better to player feedback, and the offer of 120 diamonds plus an energy crystal every day from the 5th June to the 12th.
As a final testament to their avarice, in that apology, they made the end-game contest cycle every 16 days, which is worse than the originally stated 14, and directly reduces income for all players.
As of publication the girlcott is ongoing, as is the greedy, criminal business practices.
The bubble has most definitely burst on Infinity Nikki, revealing only a slime of scummy, gacha-typical monetization practices and a sticky mess of a game. It’s certainly a disappointment, but no surprise for Infold Games. Its previous scandal in 2020 had them withdraw their previous game, Shining Nikki, from the country after offending them over their “Hankbok Fair” event, and terminated all services, blocked downloads, and only notified the end date of their service without offering refunds or compensation procedures to those with subscription transactions. It’s also been caught hoarding data from its consumer base.
It’s not all without hope. In the slippery, soapy remains of the burst bubble, one positive takeaway is that it has highlighted, now more than ever, the unlawful and deplorable practices undertaken by gacha games. In fact, many are calling for real, enforced restrictions on them. If these are put into effect, it would be an enormous victory for the gaming community, as not just gacha games but any games with loot boxes or lottery draw features would be forced to abide by these restrictions.
With any luck, this Infinity Nikki scandal could yet still yield actionable change. And considering the state of most gaming companies these days, I really hope it does.
