Neural Cloud x Steins;Gate Collab Goes Nuclear: Early Pullers Get Backstabbed as Pre-Event Pulls Don't Count Toward 260-Skin Milestone

Everyone's been laser-focused on the Reverse:1999 drama, but turns out Neural Cloud also just detonated — and it's a spectacular mess.

Neural Cloud launched its Steins;Gate collaboration event today, along with a skin milestone system where players convert pull counts to claim the skin and other rewards. The event includes free pulls (similar to FGO's Friend Point gacha or Arknights' Recruitment system) and paid gacha pulls. However, Sunborn hard-capped the rewards from free pulls, meaning you MUST pull on the paid gacha banner to hit the threshold — a whopping 260 pulls. One full pity (guaranteed) is 180 pulls, so you need roughly 1.5 pities worth.

Here's where it gets scummy. Before the skin event even launched, a new character banner (male character An Yue / 黯月) went live on December 7th and runs until January 5th. Because the character's decent in terms of power and male characters in Neural Cloud are practically semi-limited (they don't share rate-up pools with the usual female character banners), many players with extra resources pulled early — the OP themselves hit full pity on it.

But plot twist: this December-through-January male banner, despite overlapping with the event period, somehow does NOT count toward the skin milestone. All pulls made before the skin event's launch today? Retroactively zeroed out. Players who already pulled on the Steins;Gate dual-character banner and hit the unit before reaching 260 pulls now have to keep pulling JUST to hit the skin threshold.

The loyal day-one pullers who dumped resources the moment a banner dropped? They're the clowns now. Players are joking they wish they could Steins;Gate themselves back to early December before they ever pulled — painfully on-brand for a Steins;Gate collab, honestly.

The comment section erupted instantly. One player flatly stated: 'If this happened to me I'd just quit the game on the spot.' Another self-described '冤种' (wronged fool) lamented: 'Same exact banner, same exact pulls — pulling on day one vs. pulling today costs you an entire skin. I've literally never seen this before.'

One sharp commenter exposed Sunborn's playbook: 'They're running a bait-and-switch using information asymmetry — the collab livestream was suspiciously scheduled AFTER the male banner already launched,' meaning the company deliberately let players spend resources first before revealing the event rules.

The individual horror stories are almost comical. One player shared: 'I pulled half a pity on the An Yue banner, got the collab character in 40 pulls today, then had to dump another full pity just for the skin — 50,000 quartz sand down to 7,000.' Another had a razor-sharp take: 'This milestone skin system is actually friendly to unlucky players (大非酋) who always hit pity, but absolutely brutal for lucky players (欧皇) who get early pulls' — the luckier you were, the more you now need to spend.

One commenter broke down what they called Sunborn's 'multi-layered defense' rhetoric: '260 pulls is a blessing for pity-hitting players! Everyone gets equally wiped out waiting for the next limited banner to whale on — how dare you not praise the devs' genius? Oh, you didn't hit 260 and don't want to keep pulling? Typical gacha flexer problems.' They also pointed out this skin literally cannot be purchased outright — the ONLY way is through pulling, and previous pulls don't count. Worse than the last Yunbo skin tower event.

A player compared it to other gacha dramas: 'I was already fuming over Reverse:1999's character banner shuffle trick, but compared to THIS, that was absolutely nothing.' Another player who noticed the issue the moment they logged in raged: 'So pulling on the male character banner makes me the idiot? I've played since launch and never felt this disrespected.'

The core contradiction is crystal clear: same banner, same number of pulls, but because of WHEN you pulled, you either get or lose an entire event skin — for free. Sunborn's 'previous pulls don't count' stunt is a precision backstab targeting their most loyal day-one spenders. Community outrage continues to build, with many players demanding an official response.