Okay, serious question. Has Nutaku ever given me reason to believe that a newly-created system of theirs wouldn't devolve into a whalefest?

I was critical of their first batch of sales, like the infamous Bridal Cactace step-up gacha. I stopped when they made up for it with the Bridal Oncidium gacha and basically the entire month of November. Now, even if they host bad sales, I assume they bounce back. But even back when Bridal Cactace gacha happened, I was getting brushed off with "don't like it, don't buy it" apologists. As if there wasn't reason to believe that 5* variants of 6* girls would get paywalled the same way if no one had spoken up.

Now? There's no reason for me to believe that Nutaku will handle this well, and I'm not crazy for voicing my concerns. Frankly, I'm more concerned that people aren't scrutinizing Nutaku further after last month's batch of closures.

And no, you have it wrong. A paying playerbase that has no freemium playerbase to feed off of will eventually shut down on its own. Look at games like Angelic Saga, that was a circle of whales that barely kept it afloat. Then look at current popular gacha games like Fire Emblem Heroes, which, as much as the playerbase would have you believe otherwise, doesn't neglect its F2P players and gives them reasons to keep logging back in.