Veteran Street Fighter Producer Spends $515K of His Own Money on Gacha — Here’s Why

Why this caught my attention – and why it matters

This one landed like a mic drop. Yoshiki Okamoto – the Capcom producer behind Street Fighter II and Final Fight who rebuilt his career after a ruinous debt – told a Fuji TV program that he deliberately spends about 80 million yen (roughly $515k) on each personal account in the gacha games he produces. He says he does it to feel what the highest-paying players feel so his teams can design monetization that keeps those players satisfied. For anyone who follows mobile monetization, that’s not just a quirky anecdote; it explains, in human terms, how some of the psychology behind gacha systems gets engineered.

• Okamoto spent 1.7 billion yen in debt after Game Republic collapsed and later helped create Monster Strike, the title that revived his career.
• He now earns ~1.2 billion yen per year at Deluxe Games and claims to bankroll heavy spending on personal accounts to understand top-spender behavior.
• His approach — using real money rather than admin access or free currency — frames monetization design as empathetic research, but it raises ethical questions about optimizing for whales.

Breaking down the numbers and the comeback

Okamoto’s story already reads like a case study in video game resilience: after producing Street Fighter II, Final Fight and contributing to early Resident Evil lineage, Game Republic’s collapse left him with ~1.7 billion yen of debt. He later helped build Monster Strike — a mobile giant that topped global mobile revenue charts — and that success is central to his financial rebound. According to his interview on Fuji TV’s Where Did That Money Go?, he now makes about 1.2 billion yen a year at Deluxe Games and owns a large Malaysian property; he’s said he plans to retire in early 2027.

Why he actually spends half a million per account

The headline number is stark: 80 million yen per personal account, which converts to around $500-520k depending on the exchange rate. Okamoto insists this isn’t vanity — he rejects the shortcut of using admin or test-money privileges, arguing on X (formerly Twitter) that free in-game currency “would make it hard to understand users’ feelings.” His framing is clear: if you want to design for high spenders, you have to live their emotional path, not simulate it with developer cheats.

From a product-design perspective that’s defensible — firsthand experience can reveal frustrations that analytics miss. From an industry-ethics perspective it’s more fraught. Deliberately reproducing expensive user journeys can lead teams to optimize mechanics to retain and extract value from a tiny cohort of whales, rather than improving product health for the broader player base.

The gamer and community perspective

Reactions on social platforms have been split. Some players praise his diligence: spending that money to understand top spenders could reduce bugs and create smoother premium experiences for those customers. Others see it as cynical — a confirmation that the highest returns in live services come from engineering addiction loops and scarcity around a few whales. The debate matters because gacha mechanics already face regulatory scrutiny in multiple regions; transparency about why and how companies tune payout and limited-time offers is increasingly demanded by players and lawmakers alike.

What this means for Monster Strike and mobile monetization

Monster Strike’s decade-long performance helps explain why Okamoto’s approach exists: hits like it have sustained enormous revenues, and product teams prioritize retention and revenue optimization. But the interview didn’t specify exactly which Deluxe Games titles received his personal spending, and public reporting doesn’t detail how these personal accounts influenced specific mechanics. That lack of transparency is an important gap: it’s one thing to say you spent huge sums to “learn,” another to show how that learning changed design choices that affect millions of players.

What to watch next

• Okamoto’s planned retirement timeline and whether he leaves a transparent report of his “research” or design notes.
• Any Monster Strike or Deluxe Games updates that explicitly show mechanics altered after his personal testing.
• Regulatory and community responses as more details about designer-funded spending surface.

TL;DR — A veteran developer spending roughly $500k per personal account to feel what top gacha spenders feel is a blunt, revealing tactic. It explains how live-service teams can engineer experiences for a tiny subset of players who drive revenue, and it underscores why the ethics and transparency of gacha monetization remain a live debate.