The decline of SIFAS (Part 1): How KLab lost the trust of its players

What’s most important to a business isn’t money. It’s trust… There’s no future for a business that’s lost its trust.

Masato Sanada, High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even In Another World

Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS (SIFAS) is a rhythm action RPG mobile game that combines the rhythm game and RPG genres. In this game, players collect and train cards representing their favourite Love Live! school idols to clear songs. Unlike conventional rhythm games where stamina is lost every time a player misses or hits a note too early or late, in this game stamina always gets depleted regardless of whether a person hits a note or not. Hence, players have to employ unique tactics to score in songs while maintaining enough stamina to finish the song. Personally, I enjoy the game as it involves intellect and strategy to build teams to clear songs. 

However, since the game was launched on 26 September 2019 in Japan (JP), the game has been on a slow but steady decline in revenue and player counts. These are a result of the game’s many problems which have not been sufficiently addressed by the developer KLab. These unresolved problems have generated a bad reputation for SIFAS and broken the trust of its casual and serious gamers who have quit SIFAS to play other games. SIFAS’ decline has also motivated KLab to move the game’s development to MyNet Games, a developer with a bad reputation for shutting down mobile games. This post will present the declines in SIFAS’ revenues and player counts, and explain how KLab’s missteps during SIFAS’ second year have contributed to its decline. 

Tracking declines in revenue and player counts over SIFAS’ lifespan

Over 2021, I have been tracking Japanese (JP) revenue of both SIFAS and SIF from game-i. game-i is a Japanese forecasting website for mobile apps which reports on revenue for all JP mobile apps based on data from both the iOS App Store and Google Play. Revenue data can be used to judge the performance of mobile apps in Japan, including mobile games. From there, one can distinguish strong mobile games (e.g., Fate/Grand Order and Genshin Impact) from weak ones (e.g., 22/7 Ongaku no Jikan which was shut down on 22 December 2021 due to persistent low revenues). Hence, I used revenue data from game-i to track the financial performance of SIFAS over its lifespan. 

Looking at SIFAS alone, we can see a decreasing trend in SIFAS revenue. Initial revenue during year 1 of the game was high, averaging around 300-400 million Japanese yen/month. However, revenue constantly dropped during year 2 of the game, particularly from January 2021 onwards. By July 2021, average monthly revenue had halved to 200 million Japanese yen/month. This decrease in revenue is sustained even in year 3 of the game, even experiencing a 26% drop in November 2021 to 135 million Japanese yen. This dip in revenue had motivated KLab to run guaranteed UR gachas throughout December 2021 in an effort to deplete players’ free star gems (the premium currency of the game), forcing them to pay for more star gems to roll for stronger cards. 

The decrease in revenues is mirrored by the decrease in the number of players participating in SIFAS events in JP. In item exchange events, the number of players participating in July 2021 was 82,324. However, that fell to 70,032 players by November 2021. Similarly, for story events, 77,772 players participated in the event in July 2021, but that fell to 64,813 by November 2021. In both event types, the decreases are equivalent to losing around 3,000 players per month in JP, amounting to around 4% of the player base.

Given that revenues remained steady but player counts have fallen from July to November 2021, these results are indicative of two things:

• First, casual players that are free-to-play (i.e., they do not pay money to play the game) are dropping out of SIFAS due to being disengaged. This represents a loss in potential customers who are willing to pay for the game and to spread the positive word about SIFAS.
• Second, KLab had not done enough to attract and retain new players in the game due to various problems that I will explain later. Instead, they are relying on the existing player base, particularly the whales (players who pay a lot of money to play the game), to keep SIFAS afloat. While it can maintain constant revenues, it precludes the game from further growth and also exposes it to potential dips in monthly revenue (as seen in November 2021). 

How does SIFAS’ revenues compare to other KLab games?

In contrast to SIFAS, Love Live! School Idol Festival (SIF) is a conventional rhythm game, where players tap notes in time with the music. Stamina is only depleted upon missing a note or hitting a note badly. How does SIFAS’ revenue compare with SIF’s? 

During SIFAS’ lifespan, SIF has maintained consistent, albeit lower, levels of revenue. SIF averaged around 150 million yen per month in 2020 before dropping to 100 million yen per month in 2021. Other than that, there was no general decreasing trend in SIF’s revenues. 

What is more interesting; though, is the revenues of both games during their anniversary periods (represented by the green points in the above graph). Anniversary periods in SIF are associated with a doubling of revenue to 200 million Japanese yen in April 2020 and April 2021. These increases in revenue are fuelled by players buying paid sets to roll for limited edition cards and/or obtain level up materials. In contrast, there was no ‘anniversary bump’ in SIFAS’ first and second year anniversaries as they did not increase monthly revenue. Worse, SIFAS’ revenue have slightly decreased between September and October 2021. 

The absence of an ‘anniversary bump’ in SIFAS’ 2^nd year anniversary is a result of the underwhelming 2^nd year anniversary rewards in SIFAS, as lamented by most players. Compared to the 1^st year anniversary, the 2^nd year anniversary:

• Nerfed the rates of free pulls to 1% and 2% for UR and SR cards respectively (vs 5% and 10% in the 1st year anniversary), making it harder to obtain stronger cards; 
• Did not give out a free UR ticket on anniversary day, unlike the 1st year anniversary;
• Reduced log-in rewards; and
• Replaced sparkable gachas, where you can obtain a UR card after doing a certain number of pulls, with step-up gachas that are random in the cards obtained. 

SIFAS’ anniversary rewards pale in comparison to the anniversary celebrations of other games that were run at the same time:

• BanG Dream!, a rhythm game that was half way through its 4^th year, announced a lot of things that exceeded what players were expecting. In summary, they re-introduced a gacha that was highly demanded by players, introduced a new game mode and set the roadmap for the next few months. These announcements have kept players engaged in the game, assured players that the game will keep running and provided information on what to expect in the future. This livestream set the standard of what SIFAS’ 2^nd anniversary needed to deliver, something that KLab did not meet.
• Additionally, Project SEKAI COLORFUL STAGE!, another rhythm game, held its 1^st year anniversary in JP. As part of the celebrations, they ran a competition livestream at the same time as SIFAS’ anniversary livestream. That livestream attracted more concurrent viewers than SIFAS’ anniversary livestream, highlighting the contrast in reputation and interest between the two games.  

Combined with the general decline in revenue and player counts, these results show how out-of-touch the developers were in keeping SIFAS competitive in the JP mobile gaming market, both in engaging existing players as well as attracting and retaining new players.

What has fuelled the declines in revenues and player counts in SIFAS’ 2^nd year? 

Given the results in this post, one question has to be asked: what has contributed to SIFAS’ decline? I argue that it is mostly KLab’s fault for bringing SIFAS down to its current state. Although much discussion has been made on this question, the responses can be condensed down to three main elements. 

Controversial game story

Season 2 of the game story, which was run in SIFAS’ second year, was controversial and negatively received by most players. In brief, the first chapter of season 2 introduced a new character who shut down the old school idol club and replaces it with a new school idol club. This splits the existing characters of the game into two factions. Due to the controversial nature of the first chapter, the game writers had to write on the run, dropping unexpected events in the story that retconned previous chapters and were left unresolved. What resulted was a game story with a pointless conflict that was not resolved to a satisfactory standard. The negative reception of the game story can be backed up by the data.

Firstly, redditors in the SIFAS subreddit have generally reacted negatively towards each chapter of season 2. Sentiment analysis of SIFAS subreddit discussion posts for each season 2 chapter has indicated that as much as twice the number of negative words were used in the comments than positive words. In particular, chapters 21, 23 and 27 were highly negatively received by the redditors (chapter 21 due to the fallout of chapter 20, chapter 23 due to the many retcons introduced in that chapter and chapter 27 due to the negative reaction towards Lanzhu’s actions in that chapter).

Secondly, from Reddit polling data, the redditors were split on how they viewed SIFAS’ season 2 story. While around half the redditors did not care about the story, of the remaining respondents, there was a split between those that loved the story and those that hated the story. This is in stark contrast to RAISE A SUILEN’s band story 1 in BanG Dream which touched on similar events as SIFAS’ season 2 story. Here, the story was more positively received, with 52% loving the story and only 2% hating it. These results show how out-of-touch the writers were in planning and writing SIFAS’ season 2 story which have made most players angry, resulting in them disengaging from the game. 

Stagnant gameplay

Not only is the game not friendly to new players, the gameplay is also repetitive, disengaging players from SIFAS. First, SIFAS is not beginner-friendly. It takes time for new players to learn the unique mechanics of SIFAS, particularly the fact that you can fail the song even if you play it perfectly. This is not helped by the game offering scant detail to its mechanics and leaving it up to the player to work them out. Consequently, players have to resort to an external teambuilding guide to play and enjoy the game. Additionally, for new players, the game is overwhelming in terms of the amount of things they need to do such as going through two seasons’ worth of story to collect star gems. As a result, players are likely to drop the game very quickly. 

Secondly, there is little flexibility in how one plays SIFAS. The introduction of new skills in the game has not dislodged the core concept of pairing two scorers with one defender to clear songs or three scorers to score high. There is little flexibility beyond these formations, making the gameplay stale as you can simply use the same team to clear songs. Additionally, the harder songs, particularly the Challenge difficulty songs, require specific cards to clear them. Not having the right cards precludes players from clearing songs, demotivating players. 

Lastly, the game cycle is repetitive. Each month, the same game modes are being played in the same order, consisting of SBL (SIFAS Big Live Show), item exchange event, DLP (Dream Live Parade) and story event. Each mode has its problems that disengages players from the game:

• Item exchange and story events do not involve much as players can skip songs during the period to accumulate enough event points and currency to obtain the desired items.
• SBL is time-consuming. It takes time for players to play the same song three times each day to acquire SBL medals and rank highly in voltage ranking. This has come to the point where some players forget to play the songs on a particular day. This massively hurts their voltage ranking which affects the rewards they can receive. 

These problems are not helped by KLab not introducing any new game modes that would keep players invested in the game as well as use their cards differently. School Idol Channels, a new game mode that was introduced in the middle of 2021, quickly became stale as it involved a repetitive gameplay cycle of collecting shouts, skipping songs and playing the weekly song. It has become an afterthought for some players, making them not exciting for the overall player base.  

Outperformed by other games

SIFAS covers both the RPG and rhythm game genres, but it is a master to neither of them. Consequently, SIFAS is being outperformed in terms of revenue and player counts by other games that specialise in one genre. Here are some examples of similar games that are better than SIFAS.

An obvious RPG game that is similar in some aspects but better than SIFAS is Uma Musume Pretty Derby. It is safe to say that Uma Musume has been a raging success for Cygames, not only generating a lot of attention and revenue but also regularly being in the top 10 in monthly game rankings. Much of the success of the game can be condensed to two things. First is an addictive gameplay cycle that involves training horse girls to use in horse races and passing off their traits to other horse girls. This keeps the player invested as they strive to build the best horse girl that can compete against other players. Second is the widespread promotion of the franchise through celebrity endorsements (including VTubers) and other media such as anime and manga. These all funnel into the game which translate to new downloads, new players and increased revenue. 

In contrast, SIFAS had a repetitive gameplay cycle that did not keep the player engaged in the game. In particular, once a player obtained the most powerful cards, they were able to clear most of the game, making the players bored as there was no accessible challenge for them. Additionally, there were no voice actresses, celebrities or VTubers that were promoting SIFAS and its best elements, hurting both SIFAS’ reach and reputation. This is in contrast to other games such as Genshin Impact and BanG Dream! where voice actresses of these games actively play them and even pay money to pull for their desired characters.

Idolm@ster is another franchise with games that excel in either the rhythm game or raising simulation genres. There are some Idolm@ster games such as Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage that are pure rhythm games, with players tapping notes in time with the music. The rhythm game elements take centre stage, with other elements such as the gachas and card raising elements accompanying the rhythm game. Other Idolm@ster games such as Idolm@ster Shiny Colors are pure raising simulation games. In the case of Idolm@ster Shiny Colors, players collect idols (in the form of cards) that they then raise via different activities to perform in lives and festivals. By separating the rhythm game and raising simulation genres into different games, Idolm@ster appeals to different types of players, both those who like playing rhythm games and those who just want to know more about their favourite idols.

In contrast, SIFAS tries to do too much in balancing both the rhythm game and RPG elements in one game. The rhythm game is paradoxically easy and difficult. It is easy in that there are only two buttons to tap in time with the music. It is also difficult in that there are two side arrows to swap subunits. Swapping to the correct subunit while hitting the notes in time with the music, particularly if the notes are dense, and paying attention to the song requirements can be difficult in some songs (for example, Daisuki Dattara Daijoubu!). In contrast, the RPG elements of the game is tacked on with a lot of moving parts. In addition to levelling up cards, players also have to deal with unlocking nodes and limit breaking cards to make them more powerful. Players also have to deal with bond levels and bond boards to make school idols more powerful in general. These all contribute to the steep learning curve that is not made clearer by KLab, demotivating players from continuing with the game. 

One additional thing to note is that Idolm@ster is also famous for its excellent character stories. The storytelling in Idolm@ster games is top-notch with a lot of detailed back stories for each character. As a result, players become invested in their favourite characters and are willing to learn more about them, leading to increased engagement with the games. In contrast, the storytelling in SIFAS is not good which is capped off with the very controversial season 2. The game also introduces characters that are not universally liked by the fandom. Additionally, the character side stories are mostly not linked to the main story, so it is difficult to get players invested in these characters.

How do these results explain SIFAS’ move to MyNet Games? 

The growth share matrix is a tool that companies use to decide where to invest their resources based on the current market share and potential growth of each part of the company. We can use the growth share matrix to plot where SIFAS sits in KLab’s strategy. From the data presented, KLab did not see potential in SIFAS: 

• SIFAS’ market share is low. SIFAS is being outperformed by other mobile games that do a better job in either the RPG or rhythm game aspects. This results in lower revenues and player counts in SIFAS.
• SIFAS’ growth is, I would argue, also low. Although SIFAS earns more revenue than SIF, its future growth is either non-existent or even negative. This signals the unattractiveness of SIFAS from both players who will avoid the game and KLab who will invest less in the game.

Taken together, SIFAS belongs to the “pet” category of the matrix, meaning that KLab should liquidate, divest or reposition SIFAS. It is this decision that has motivated KLab to sell off SIFAS to MyNet Games. Of course, the growth share matrix is not the only deciding factor. There are other factors that motivated KLab to move SIFAS to another developer, something that I will cover in the next post. 

Conclusion

Stagnant or decreasing revenue and player counts highlighted the huge problems SIFAS faced in both its story and gameplay and how it was being outperformed by other mobile games. There is enough data to explain why KLab had to sell off SIFAS to MyNet Games. KLab saw SIFAS as a sinking ship that could not be saved with its financial and human resources. Hence, they decided to ditch SIFAS and re-invest their resources to other mobile games. Future posts will explain further why KLab had to hand off SIFAS to MyNet Games and its further decline from here.