The Biggest Gacha Cash-grab of 2024... (So Far)

This may just be the first case of a game announcing its launch and termination in the same post. In a bizarre twist, Love Live: School Idol Project 2 has had a runtime of a measly 4 months, spanning from February of this year until May 31. In this video, we will take a closer look at this strange case, and speculate why it was even released at all.

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Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
1:32 – What is Love Live?
3:37 – Overview of the game
7:18 – Explaining Gacha and monetization
9:23 – Why was the game released?
11:39 – Final thoughts

Music used:

Outro music:

References:

LL: SIF1 gameplay footage:

Ensemble Stars gameplay footage:

D4DJ gameplay footage:

Project Sekai gameplay footage:

BanG Dream gameplay footage:

LL1 Gameplay footage:

#gacha #lovelive

v1.1
Fixed minor naming mistakes

[brodydoggo]

honestly I don't see why they don't just rerelease gacha games with a offline patch and a few tweaks for a few extra dollars on pc, I mean just seems like a waste to just make a bunch of content for then game, release something online only, then just delist it and shut severs down. I'd like it if they made like an offline patch or offline version available to buy/download for a few freedom eagles (or insert currency here) instead of just taking down the servers forever with no way to ever play the game again. I mean hell just letting people host their own servers for the game is enough.

[glasscier]

i played the original LLSIF for 7 years, and was a big fan of love live! as a whole. its a widely known and popular franchise in japan still, i think. to see it go like this is heartbreaking.
when they killed LLSIF1 for the release of 2, they didnt even let me transfer ANYTHING i've gathered and achieved over the years (that function only worked for jp players).
i know not everyone care about the gacha system, but just to show how lazy and batshit insane the devs got, listen: they kinda stopped drawing new cards for characters completely. just slapped screenshots from the anime and sold it!!! WHAT!! second, the events with freebies stopped. third, when new cards /were/ being drawn, they were all labeled as "ultra mega rare limited dont miss out or its gone forever!!!!", each new card powercreeping the others.
llsif, despite being a literal veteran, was falling behind any other rhythm game and getting... outdated. the competition they tried to pull with LLSIF2 (or ALL STARS) is just so... sad, man. there's no games left to the love live! name. its all gone.

[kazw]

To me, one of the craziest things the Global team did for this game was announce EoS, AND still accept in-game transactions??? Like... wanting players to cash on a game doomed with a 3 month life is honestly WILD. The messily shuffled event schedule, the countless bugs, etc etc... What a mess.

[TheChowderr]

Just to comment, JP on release was super buggy, nearly unplayable, and the first few multi-player events had constant disconnect issues, which the people waiting for global such as myself expected to be fixed on global release, not only they weren't, but we had a lot of visual bug and untraslated text for a good time lmao

[chivalrix]

it's still crazy to me how Love Live shut down *2* games in favor of SIF2, and it didn't even make it to a first anniversary. It seems like they prioritized making the gacha as predatory as possible over making a game people actually want to keep playing.

[caotuannghia]

Regarding the cash shop not being closed, I think it's a shame you didn't mention their final banner.
They ran a "Thanksgiving" (more like "Thanks for playing") banner between May 20-31, with a UR drop rate of 50% (yes, FIFTY percent). Free gems (earned through gameplay) can only be used once a day on a 10-pull (3000 gems), but paid gems (obtained through the cash shop) had *no spending limit*. (Plus, the 1-pull option is also only available with paid gems, once a day for 300 gems.)
I'll let y'all decide on how awful that is.

[strawberryflavored]

the impact lovelive! had on idol culture as well as mobile gacha game culture is unreal, paving the way for so many of the gacha-based rhythm games today.

i’m a long-time fan of the franchise that played the original llsif on and off since its global launch, even creating a japanese apple id as a kid to be able to download and play the japanese version, too. the lovelive franchise was huge in western anime circles and an even bigger deal in japan.

it’s so depressing to see a titan and trailblazer that inspired so many beloved titles today be reduced to cheap cash grabs and vapid reboots.

part of me hopes and prays for another strong game title in the coming years to “redeem” the lovelive! franchise, but the other part of me is mourning the death of a beloved childhood memory.

sorry for being an essay andy lol, i get sentimental for my silly aidoru girls

great video, by the way! definitely a topic that should be discussed in both the gacha and rhythm game circles as a lesson of what absolutely *not* to do.

[frayar]

Look how they massacred my favorite mobile rhythm game .-.

[aoibirb]

as a fan of love live since like 2015, i can say that the community was not happy with SIF2 with the quality of it not being any different from the first AND it made them shut down their other 2 games that people still loved (SIFAS and SIF1). seeing all the bugs, the translation errors, and etc. was just really heartbreaking and i couldnt really be sad about this game shutting down too

[raibyo]

What's worse is, SIF1 was already performing quite well, yet they shut it down for SIF2, only for it to EOS within a year. Imagine this, shutting down a game that has been running for 10 years and was quite proffitable only for a game that failed and shut down in 1 year. It's extreme stupidity. Not to mention, in the Mobile market, Love Live was one of the first games in the genre and the only other competition it had back then, the Idolmaster, didn't even have a Global version. Nowadays, there's a lot of mobile Gacha rhythm game but when it first started, it was either Love Live or Idolmaster, and nothing else. How they managed to fumble such a game is just astounding. Also, D4DJ and Bang Dream are also from the same company so it's not like they're lacking in experience either in running a more modern Gacha rhythm game. What's worse is, before this, they already had another Love Live game, SIF All Stars, that shut down in 2023, so it's like they learned nothing.

They basically made an entire new game for what could have been a simple update to the original SIF, only to shut it down in a year.

[TheWayOfTheWott]

6:37 hilarious that you mention this, because early into the first SIF's lifespan, you could only "idolize" (limit break) a card with a duplicate of that exact card. they eventually made a system where you traded in unwanted cards for "Seals" to use for LBing instead, which got streamlined in SIF2 into the lightsticks.

[maplmage]

In a way, SIF2 was a massive change from SIF1. The game went from taking less than 3gb of storage space to taking over 10gb. For a game that doesn’t even have 3dcg.

[rekapotato]

as a lifetime love live enjoyer, watching whatever had happened with the games go down live hurt me PHYSICALLY

[superpikaof]

The reason for the transfer codes is because people will play on the same account in order to tier events. Project Sekai locks the number of transfers you can do once you hit tier 1000 to try to prevent this but people still find a way around this.

[TheArkhamjester]

This feels like a contractual obligation, like it was suppose to launch earlier or something but contracts said it had to launch, just didn't say for how long.

[ayngrand]

Oh boy, I remember when the game came out, the general reaction was something like "This is what they shut down SIF1 and All Stars for?".
The economy in this game was really stingy and the game was also a buggy mess, with constant DC errors and a bug where, if your selected system language uses decimal commas instead of periods, would make the entire game unplayable because you would overflow the score counter and then get kicked out of the game with an error message.
This entire "sequel" just seemed like an excuse to get rid of KLAB, the developers of the first game and formerly All Stars as well, and develop the thing in-house.
The "carrying over progress" part was only for the album, btw. You couldn't actually use those characters. And KLAB was supposed to handle the transfer, but couldn't be bothered to deal with EU data protection laws, so anyone who ever logged into the game from an EU wifi was permanently locked out of using this feature. And they were really sloppy with this, so countries like the Philippines also counted as EU for some ungodly reason.
BTW, the first game actually had an account system, but that was also tied to KLAB.

[v_i_z_i_o]

Was so sad with the entire Love Live game catalog being completely wiped from existence for nothing without Nikke I probably wouldn’t be playing any gacha games rn lol

[OkageWhiteRose]

About the transference from SIF1 to SIF2, a lot of people both EU and not, lost their SIF1 data in the shut down because they were not ever issued a transfer code. I was one of them, I played for 8 years and lost my account because it was somehow labelled as being from the EU. Support just shrugged at me and that was the end of that. I was so distraught I never attempted to play SIF2 despite my love for the series persisting. I didn't see the point. Especially since EoS was announced before the server even opened.

[Chimibot]

A bit of a clarification behind why this game even exists in the first place is that the developers of the original SIF and SIFAS, KLab were mishandling the IP in a way that was tarnishing the brand and the rights holders Bushiroad decided to take the IP away from them and develop a "newer" game with a different company

[daisukesenpai]

They already did on SIFAS the 3D one and they suddenly shutdown the server out of nowhere. They announced that they'll release the new love live, but I learned my lesson that devs just shutdown the service out of nowhere. Well that's what happens when they don't read surveys nor listen to their player based.