Blue Archive Executive Producer Young-ha Kim has issued a lengthy public apology following heavy criticism over planned changes to the game’s recruitment system. Players raised concerns that the new gacha mechanics could be less favorable despite introducing new features, prompting Kim to admit the announcement was poorly communicated and had damaged the trust the development team had built with its community.
The controversy began after the developers announced a revamped recruitment system introducing a new “Recruitment Charge” mechanic, allowing players to accumulate points that can be carried over between banners.
The update also included a limited-time 10-pull ticket as a recruitment milestone reward. While the changes were intended to improve the summoning experience, many players questioned whether the overall value of the gacha system had actually become worse, leading to widespread criticism across social media.
Blue Archive’s Steam reviews dropped to “Mostly Negative” as a result of this chaos:
In response, Kim admitted the team had announced the changes far too close to their implementation and acknowledged that reposting discussion about the update from his personal social media account had further undermined player confidence:
“I am Young-ha Kim, Executive Producer of Blue Archive.
Regarding the recent renewal of the student recruitment system, we have caused our teachers great anxiety and confusion.
I sincerely apologize for the trouble we have caused.
Although this renewal would have a major impact on the gameplay experience, we announced the information only shortly before its implementation. In addition, I carelessly reposted content related to this matter from my personal social media account, which further damaged your trust. I sincerely apologize for both of these mistakes.
With the approval of the operations team, I would like to explain the background behind this decision.
As the development team, we believed that the most stressful aspect of recruitment was when players reached the “Recruitment Point” (pity) without obtaining even a single copy of the featured student. We have therefore been searching for a way to reduce that frustration.
We believe that allowing as many teachers as possible to meet the students they want is the foundation that will allow Blue Archive to continue being loved for many years.
The method we came up with to reduce that stress was to increase the chances of obtaining the featured student earlier.
As announced through the official X account and other channels around 2:00 p.m. on July 28, 2026, this is the purpose of the new “Recruitment Charge” system and the feature that allows those points to carry over.
Furthermore, so that players could better feel the benefits of the renewal, we also introduced a “Recruitment Count Reward” in the form of a limited-time 10-pull ticket, reducing the effective cost required to guarantee obtaining the featured student.
However, regardless of our intentions, we ended up forcing players to calculate for themselves whether these changes were beneficial or detrimental, causing even more anxiety. More importantly, we damaged the trust that we had built together with all of you.
After the announcement, we received many messages expressing concern and confusion from teachers. It made us realize that our preparation and communication throughout this process had been inadequate.
Going forward, our highest priority will be delivering a stable gameplay experience for our teachers. Throughout development, we will approach changes with greater care and provide more thorough explanations in advance.
We take this matter very seriously, and with a stronger sense of responsibility, we will work to gradually rebuild your trust.
Once again, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and concern we have caused everyone.”
Kim’s explanation emphasized that the team’s goal was never to make the gacha system harsher. Instead, the developers believed the greatest frustration came from players reaching the pity threshold without pulling the featured character at all, and the new system was designed to improve the odds of obtaining featured students before reaching that point. The carryover mechanic and bonus 10-pull ticket were intended to further reduce the effective cost of securing featured characters.
This “apology” isn’t even much of an apology. He says that he’s sorry that it wasn’t communicated better, but in no way says that the change to the more toxic new system will be reversed. It’s only “We’re sorry you’re mad about it but we’re doing it anyway” which means the suits already told them it’s happening.
Stop paying. I threw in for the monthlies because I liked what the BA devs were doing with frequent fantastic designs, but I’ve gone F2P until they make that effectively impossible (because they will). I don’t have to play the game to like the cute and funny designs, so when it becomes a chore you buy your way out of I’m gone.
I dunno for sure, but I’m pretty sure one of the things people hated about this change is the Pity Points you build up (10 points per multi, 200 points to get the featured unit) vanish the second you get the featured unit.
So let’s say there are 2 characters up you might want, You go all in on one of them, get lucky, and you get them on the 10th Multi, so you got 100 points, so all you need is 100 points more to grab the second unit, but with this change, those 100 points you built up reset to 0, So you got to start that 200 point journey all over again.
THAT is one of the main things I’ve seen people despise about this change.
This whole situation makes no sense to me. The players were already getting screwed by gacha, but they never fought it until there was a slight change to how it worked. And I bet if they revert the change they will actually be happy instead of realizing how shitty gacha is to begin with. I guess they all have Stockholm syndrome at this point.
Blue Archive had by far the best gacha ststem of gacha games, I know that you hate gachas but not just because you dont liked it, means that gachas are shitty
“Best gacha system”
……Yet I went to 200 to get both Armed Rio and Armed Aris, got spooked to death, even during the Fes, Blue Archive’s Gacha is nowhere near the “Best”, Here’s a hot take: I’ll take less 3-Star’s to have a better chance at getting the “””””Featured””””” character, than getting spooked to death by either dupes or units I’ll never use, sometimes out of spite, lmao.
So they’re trying to add a carryover system along with a free 10x pull for the next banner? This almost sounds like what they are doing in Arknights: Endfield of sorts for a Pity System.
Throwing away over $1000 on 2D/3D animated images was a slap in my face 6 years ago. Yall better wake up from this hype scam. Thats all it ever is, only the content creators are making a living on this. Only to bait you into spending more. That Dev is just sorry his hand got caught in the cookie jar. He knew what he was doing.