They did this in Sweden too. Then people stopped buying energy drinks, because most people self checkout and you had to wait for an employee to come check that you are an adult. And swedes being swedes, they would rather die than go through that.

Now they have a permanent employee checking from afar with a tablet, approving people without any intervention or interruption. I wouldnt be surprised if the energy drink brands partially pay for them.

Sure but then you only waste your time. Some more casual gachas, like star rail, are deliberately designed to be casual, in order to increase their retention rate(ie keep most of the players playing in the long term). They dont require much time daily(you can afk do the dailies in the background within 5mins) and while there is replayable content, it isnt necessary and eventually you will be done with that too.

Some gachas are more hardcore, demanding more time, which enables them to have a smaller pool of players who are more dedicated(ie less likely to quit because of sunk cost).

I assume addiction rates are higher on those gachas, then again mainstream casual gachas like star rail, have tens of millions of players, so maybe they have more “addicted” players(total, not as a percentage).

A better comparison would be alcohol. Many people consume alcohol but very few people become alcoholics. Maybe it is genetic predisposition or environmental/mental factors that lead people to abusing it.

Similarly with gachas, millions of people play them as free to play, without ever spending money. A lot of people spend 10-20€ a month and very few people spend hundreds or thousands of euro every month.

As far as honkai star rail is concerned, i enjoy the story, environments, music and the characters and i recommend it. You dont need to spend and you can do everything(or miss like 5% of the rewards, if you dont want to tryhard) without ever spending money.

The main selling point of the game is the story and you can do that with any characters. If you dont want to participate in the endgame, you can ignore it. Ultimately it is a singleplayer turned based “rpg”, though it is actually just an anime+idle game. Every 40 days, you get a new episode/season.

Volvo already has electric car factories in Europe(and in the US), ie in Belgium. It is only Polestars(and some early electric Volvos) which are made in China.

So far the chinese owners are pretty hands off. They have provided unprecedented capital and electric car platform technology to Volvo. In exchange they got access to all Volvo knowhow about car interior design and safety(and profit from car sales).

I didnt know Canada was Australia. I always thought Canada was too cold for this shit.

Not to be confused with CRAM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-RAM