Chapter 93: The Launch of Cosmic Ossuary and Cosmic Origin

“It’s better to work together if you’re offering all that for just 10% of the net profit, don’t you think?”

At  Yuseong’s words—currently ranked number one as the most annoying cousin who acts like he’s on the Hanbus selection committee—I shook my head.

“It’s hard to work together when our ideas don’t align. I could already see us clashing down the road.”

“But it seemed like they were giving you full decision-making authority. Isn’t that appealing?”

“That actually makes it less attractive. I prefer when someone else takes care of the tedious stuff outside of game development.”

“Fair point. If you’re doing it yourself anyway, you might as well go solo. And most things can be solved if I put in the legwork. Giving away 10% of the net profit for that isn’t worth it when I could just offer you hefty incentives instead—it’s more economical.”

“Sometimes, I wonder about your limits, Yuseong.”

The fact that he thought everything could be solved by putting in the legwork was baffling.

Wouldn’t his life be much better if he expanded globally rather than working under me?

Or maybe not.

Anyway.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m not a huge fan of mobile games.

I don’t hate them—I just don’t like them.

And there’s a huge difference between the two.

Hating mobile games means believing they’ve ruined the gaming industry.

It means thinking that the gacha business model is a plague on gaming and that the existence of gacha games prevents the development of AAA titles.

On the other hand, simply not liking them means they just don’t suit my taste.

It’s like how some people don’t like console games or MMORPGs.

Disliking MMORPGs doesn’t mean you despise them—it just means they’re not your thing.

That’s exactly how I felt about mobile games.

I understood that mobile games had to be light in gameplay and controls for convenience on the go—but it just didn’t suit me. Please, spare me.

For context, I once poured truckloads of money into Fate/Grand Order just to make an offering to Nasu Kinoko. So, I was far from hating mobile games.

To sum it up, I’d tried mobile games a few times but eventually quit because they didn’t match my taste.

And yet… there was one thing I did like about mobile games.

The gacha.

You might wonder if it even counts as liking the game when the thing I enjoyed most was the gacha—but what can I say? It was the part I found most thrilling.

Of course, I didn’t love every aspect of gacha systems.

I firmly believed that complete gacha should be banned, and I hated gacha systems without a safety net.

What I loved about gacha boiled down to one thing—the thrill of victory.

Not the act of spending money itself.

Sure, fighting those low odds inevitably meant spending money, but with monthly subscription packages and a well-planned gacha strategy, my expenses weren’t that bad.

And yeah, you could still lose miserably—but that was part of the fun. Without the risk, the thrill of winning wouldn’t be as sweet.

If you’re thinking, “Isn’t this just gambling?”—well, you’re not wrong. But I’d argue it’s a bit different.

The principles of gambling are everywhere. Even social media and short-form content rely on similar mechanisms.

So, isn’t gacha just a more evolved version of that?

No?

Alright, fine—it’s just gambling.

But hey, it’s fun, so what can you do?

Like I said, I’m not exactly an artist.

If I think something works, I’ll adopt it—I’m not the type to reject a good idea just because it might “compromise artistic integrity.”

And this time, it was gacha’s turn.

In my opinion, this game was a perfect fit for a gacha system.

Of course, not all gacha games are the same.

Players aren’t simple enough to spend money just because there’s a gacha system in place.

There needs to be a compelling reason to spend, which is why most game companies adopt one of two approaches.

The first approach? Competition.

This was Alpha’s specialty.

In simple terms, it’s a business model where spending money makes your character stronger.

While the next method also involves getting stronger by spending money, the competitive model is fundamentally different—it’s all about becoming stronger than others.

That’s the key.

The strength of this model lies in how much you can ramp up the spending requirements. Humans will stop at nothing to win, after all.

If your opponent spends ten million won to get stronger? You spend ten million won too.

If they drop a hundred million won? You do the same.

Simple.

Unfair power imbalances?

Even better.

Whether players spent money out of frustration from being outmatched or the desire to flaunt their dominance, the result was the same—revenue.

Of course, there were downsides to a gacha model based on competition.

Its biggest flaw was player burnout.

It was a grind-heavy model, and Alpha’s players often complained that the company was “squeezing them dry.”

The competitive model was psychologically and financially exhausting.

Yet, people couldn’t stop playing—which meant the model offered a unique kind of enjoyment.

Still, the fact that it was an easily replicable business model posed a problem.

If a profitable model is easy to copy, why wouldn’t other companies follow suit?

And that’s exactly why Alpha was struggling now.

They didn’t come to me for help without reason.

The competitive gacha model was faltering due to market saturation and increasing player fatigue.

Existing players were leaving, and new players weren’t joining—a telltale sign of a game on the verge of collapse.

Well… at least they made a lot of money.

Cheers to that.

Now, onto the second gacha model—affection.

The method was designed to trigger players’ desire for ownership and make them open their wallets.

There was a lot of debate about who started it, but I’ll use Fate/Grand Order as an example since it was the most enjoyable for me.

Objectively, there was no real reason to spend on gacha in Fate/Grand Order.

Competitive elements? None.

Ranking systems? Didn’t I just say there were no competitive elements? There was nothing in the game that compared you to others.

Story? Having good characters made things easier, but not having them didn’t prevent you from experiencing the narrative.

From a purely gameplay perspective, there was absolutely no reason to spend money on gacha in Fate/Grand Order.

In fact, many people questioned whether it even qualified as a game.

Yet, despite that, Fate/Grand Order became a juggernaut, generating $1 billion in revenue every year.

How?

It was all thanks to Kinoko Nasu.

The original Fate series he created, the scenarios he wrote, and the emotional attachment they fostered toward the characters in Fate/Grand Order were the driving forces.

After all, otakus don’t buy figures just to use them, right?

It was the same principle.

In short, this emotional attachment-based gacha business model was essentially a “digital figure” business.

And that concludes the rough explanation of the gacha business model.

So, if you’re asking which of these two gacha models I chose to use…

I used both.

[Alphas: You’re insane.]

Don’t worry, Alphas. I’m not trying to invade your territory.

I only make what I find fun, after all.

I’m not interested in creating a system that drives excessive competition. That’s not the direction I’m taking.

It’s more like adding just a spoonful of competitive spirit.

You get what I mean, right?

[Alphas: You’re just insane.]

I ignored the clingy Alphas (which never actually happened) and turned on my computer.

Since I had already laid out the general framework, all that was left was the fine-tuning.

Using the information I gathered during the Cosmic Ossuary beta test, I started adding new elements to the game.

About a day later, two games were uploaded to the store:

Cosmic Ossuary and Cosmic Origin.

Yes, both of them.

Han Yurim’s games had finally been released, and countless people began downloading them.

Cosmic Ossuary, in particular, experienced a massive surge in downloads due to unintentional but widespread publicity.

Cosmic Ossuary required players to host their own servers for multiplayer.

As a result, those who wanted to play multiplayer didn’t use their own computer resources to host.

Instead, they relied on the official server hosting service provided by Han Yurim…

And everyone was shocked.

[Hey, what’s with this official hosting service?]

There were no limits on server capacity, no restrictions on the number of users, and it wasn’t even paid.

It didn’t even lag—how was this technically possible?

– It’s not like this is the first time Han Yurim has pulled off something crazy.

– The cloud service technology alone is unrealistic. I have no clue how she solved the packet problem. There’s no way she secretly built a super-high-performance network infrastructure for the entire world.

Usually, when a game company adopts a player-hosted server model, it’s for economic reasons—reducing costs and distributing resources.

So, during the Cosmic Ossuary beta test, many people questioned the logic behind it.

I mean, if you can implement cloud service technology at this level, wouldn’t it be a hundred times better to just make it fully online?

But, of course, all those questions were answered when Cosmic Origin was released.

Ah.

She was planning to release an online game too.

Got it. Makes sense now.

“Gacha games, huh… Not really my thing.”

Gajunsik muttered to himself while downloading Cosmic Origin.

As someone who had been a pioneer in pay-to-win RPGs, Gajunsik didn’t mind spending money on games. But gacha games? Not so much.

It was simply a matter of interest. He wasn’t the type to get excited about collecting figures.

[User  has donated 10,000 won.]

– So, are you not going to play it?

“Of course, I’m playing.”

In the streaming world, not playing the hottest game meant falling behind.

Besides, he had already uploaded plenty of content from the Cosmic Ossuary beta test on MeTube. Now it was time for Cosmic Origin.

Without much thought, Gajunsik launched the game.

Really, without much thought—he assumed all gacha games were pretty much the same.

For a moment, he forgot that the person behind this game was Han Yurim.