Is Ananta a Gacha Game?

Is Ananta a gacha game?

No — not for characters. This is the single most important thing to know about ANANTA, and it is officially confirmed rather than community hopium.

Producer Ash Qi stated it directly around Tokyo Game Show 2025: gacha for characters would clash with the game's high-freedom design. The commitment is that every playable character is unlocked through playing — through story progression or through organic encounters in the open world. You start as the Captain and recruit the rest as the story unfolds.

If you are coming from other anime-styled action RPGs, this is a genuine structural difference. It means you can plan around the full roster rather than around which banner is running, and it means no character's story sits behind a payment wall.

Now the part most sites skip

Being useful here requires saying the thing that cuts against the good news: the ANANTA Steam page lists both "In-game purchases" and "Chance-based in-game purchases" in its content descriptors.

Those two lines are not the same, and only one of them is addressed by "no character gacha". The producer's statement covers characters. It does not, on the public record, rule out randomised cosmetics, a cosmetic gacha, loot-box-style containers, or a battle pass. Ash Qi has described a battle pass as under consideration rather than ruled out.

So the accurate position is:

• Confirmed: no character gacha; characters come free through play; cosmetics, vehicles and home decoration are the revenue backbone; outfits are gender-shared and adapt across tall, short and curvy body types.
• Not confirmed: whether any cosmetic is randomised; outfit and vehicle prices; whether a battle pass ships; currency names and exchange rates; whether any purchase affects progression.

Anyone telling you ANANTA has "no gacha at all" is going past the evidence. Anyone telling you it secretly has character gacha is contradicting the producer. The truth is in between, and the shop details simply are not public yet.

Where the money actually is

Based on what the developers have said, ANANTA monetizes three things:

1. Outfits — clothing for your characters, gender-shared with automatic body-type adaptation.
2. Vehicles — a natural fit for a game built around cars, motorcycles, helicopters and yachts.
3. Home decoration — the player residence is a confirmed customisable space.

That is a coherent model for a free-to-play city game: sell identity and space, not power. Whether it holds up in practice depends on pricing, which is the missing piece.

Why players are still suspicious

If you read the community side of this, you will find a lot of "all characters are free, but where is the catch?". That reaction is rational. Free-to-play games have a long history of moving monetization pressure from one slot to another, and a game with this much production cost needs a revenue line.

Two things would settle it, and neither has been published: a transparent table of what is earnable versus purchasable, and a statement on whether any purchase affects progression or power. Until then, the honest advice is to wait for the launch shop rather than pre-committing.

For how this shapes the launch roster specifically, see the characters index.

FAQ

Is Ananta a gacha game?

No character gacha. Every playable character unlocks through story progression or open-world encounters. Other monetization forms are not yet detailed.

Are all Ananta characters free?

Yes, in the sense that none are gacha-locked. You unlock them by playing. Whether any can also be purchased outright — for example, to skip a grind — is to be confirmed.

Does Ananta have loot boxes?

The Steam page lists chance-based in-game purchases, which is the standard descriptor for randomised purchase mechanics. What is randomised has not been explained. To be confirmed.

Is Ananta pay-to-win?

Not confirmed either way. No pay-for-power system has been announced, and cosmetics are the stated focus, but no official statement guarantees it.

Will Ananta have a battle pass?

Described as under consideration by the producer. Not confirmed.