Japanese gacha developer spent $520K on his own gacha games to understand big spenders
Yoshiki Okamoto – a veteran game industry producer who previously worked at Konami and Capcom – has admitted to spending over 80 million yen (around $520,000) on microtransactions in gacha games he himself produced. He revealed this on a Japanese television show dedicated to people who have both made and lost large fortunes.
Okamoto is best known for producing Street Fighter 2. After leaving Capcom, he founded Game Republic, but the studio couldn't stay afloat, and by 2011 he found himself $11 million in debt. Around that same time, he announced he was done with console games and pivoted entirely to the mobile market. It was during this period, while working at Japanese social network Mixi, that Okamoto created Monster Strike – a mobile RPG that went on to become the highest-grossing mobile game in the world at its peak.
When asked why he would spend so much money on his own games, the producer gave a straightforward answer:
"I'm always diligent with my work. Even if there were such things as admin privileges, if I were to use them, it would be hard to understand players' feelings."
According to Okamoto, he regularly spends money on microtransactions to personally assess how fair the game feels for its highest-spending users – the so-called whales.
There's a certain logic to it: gacha mechanics are built on artificial scarcity and randomness that create the reward loop players keep coming back for. Gacha, blind boxes, and similar marketing tools tap into the same psychological mechanisms as gambling – and verifying whether that system is balanced is simply impossible with an unlimited budget.
Notably, Okamoto also played an indirect role in the creation of Rockstar's Red Dead series – the original Red Dead Revolver was conceived as a spiritual successor to his game Gun.Smoke and remained in development until he left the company. The title languished in limbo until Rockstar purchased the intellectual property rights and saw it through to release.
On his personal YouTube channel, Okamoto announced that he plans to retire at the beginning of 2027.
