What if a gacha game locked your character's full animation behind pulling duplicates? That's not a joke — that's apparently what Wuthering Waves just did.
A player recently posted on NGA forum with evidence that Wuthering Waves (鸣潮, developed by Kuro Games) has gated character animations behind its constellation system (命座, the equivalent of Genshin's constellations where you unlock upgrades by pulling duplicate copies). The original post included two screenshots showing incomplete animations at lower constellation levels.
A GIF in the replies made the difference even more obvious:
The comment section erupted almost immediately. In a twist nobody saw coming, players began using miHoYo — the very company that's been synonymous with constellation-based monetization and has received endless flak for it — as the "reasonable" comparison point. Apparently Wuthering Waves managed to make miHoYo look generous.
One of the top-voted comments put it bluntly: "I don't think miHoYo ever pulled something like this — Wuthering Waves really outdid them." Another player went full roast mode: "The student surpasses the master, literally inhaling exhaust fumes until mutation. Congrats to Kuro Games on making bank lol." In Chinese gaming slang, miHoYo is sarcastically called Wuthering Waves' "wild dad" (野爹) — implying that as a follower in the gacha space, Kuro Games didn't just copy the monetization playbook, they cranked it to eleven.
One commenter dragged two recent miHoYo titles into the comparison, calling out the Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin communities: "I thought Star Rail's 'you're not human without high dupes' was peak greed — turns out there's 'you don't deserve a face without high dupes' now?" A screenshot accompanied the post, showing a direct comparison of constellation mechanics across both games:
Players took the satire even further with a darkly hilarious suggestion: "Why not just remove an eye, a leg, and an arm at C0, then piece the character back together with each constellation — truly earning the 'stone block' title." The "stone block" (石块) is a long-running gacha community joke about characters being broken into fragments through the dupes system — here, it was escalated to an absurd image of literally reassembling a body part by part.
Another player laid out what they see as the inevitable corporate playbook: "Test the waters with the worst possible version, change it before launch, deploy the PR shills to do cleanup — wait for the full combo to trigger." A reply elaborated: "We've seen this exact playbook from so many games already. If they're doing a pressure test and don't even respect the players enough to be subtle about it, just die already. I'm waiting for the inevitable 'Kuro already changed it, what more do you want?!' crowd." This refers to a common cycle in Chinese gaming: devs float an outrageous monetization scheme → gauge backlash → walk it back → paid astroturfers (水军) flood forums telling players to be grateful.
Even the casual collectors weighed in: "Low damage, incomplete mechanics at C0 — fine, whatever. But now even the ANIMATION gets cut? Are non-whales not allowed to play the game?" Another commenter noted that miHoYo's otome game Tears of Themis once locked interactive content behind dupes too, calling the two practices "birds of a feather."
Interestingly, some players pointed out that this isn't entirely unprecedented — a previous female-oriented gacha game had already locked character voice lines and personal story chapters behind constellation upgrades, suggesting Wuthering Waves is continuing a troubling industry trend rather than inventing one.
As of this writing, Kuro Games has not issued any official response. But if the community's prediction plays out — test the waters, quietly fix it, then gaslight everyone into thinking it's fine — then Wuthering Waves might just win the race to the bottom of the gacha constellation wars.
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