Nothing here is exactly breaking news, but it's a nice wrap-up of smaller happenings over the past week.

Gambling Hard, or Hardly Gambling?

With the v1.8 Realm of Illusion update, you'll have the option to choose between two types of gacha banners. One is the existing 50/50 that you know and (don't) love, while the other guarantees you whatever featured SSR is on the banner, but with a higher hard pity cap. The old system is referred to as an ST gacha, while the new one is referred to as an SP gacha. The differences between each shake out like this:

While there's speculation on the SSR rates of the ST banners, nothing official has been published, so we can only wait for more information to be available for now.

Devblogging

So there was some recent controversy regarding differences between the CN and international trailers for the Realm of Illusions update:

While some took it to be a form of censorship, the real culprit was the greatest evil of all: last-minute revisions. From my Seasun contact, I was told that the CN production team initially used the same line that global did, but decided to change it at the last minute, making it so that it wasn't possible to have the JP VA re-record the new lines in time for the scheduled release date. I was initially asked not to cover this, as the EN team did not want to escalate the situation and would have preferred if it was quietly resolved, but ChongChong, one of the CN side producers for Snowbreak, later made a Bilibili post confirming what had happened. It also confirmed that the change of wording in one of Acacia's inbox letters was due to localisers avoiding possible controversy.

Another of Seasun's CN side staff, MuMu, also made a recent post detailing plans going forward regarding in-game cosmetics, specifically their monetization. Katya's upcoming "Private Secretary" skin will have two different variations of legwear, and it was initially planned to have one come with the purchase of the skin with the other being an additional purchase. This decision has now been reversed, and as the development team is still reconsidering their monetization plans, this skin in the meantime will come with both variations on purchase. Some other points that were made including wanting to make variations more extensive so that they would be worth their price, as well as allowing for players to choose either variation as the initial purchase, with the other remaining as a separate purchase.

First Drafts

Not particularly news, but very cool to see: number木, one of Seasun's in-house artists, recently posted a collection of concept arts that they had worked on. You can view their Weibo profile here to see the full collection, but here are some that caught my eye:

Bonus: Seasun Throws a Party

This is actually from a while ago - Guo Weiwei, CEO of Seasun and VP of its parent company Kingsoft, held a company celebration of the game's recent success.

This is just a fun fluff piece and not something I usually bother reporting on. However, I do have some exclusive information on the party from my Seasun contact:

The cake was delicious.