UPDATE (March 25, 2025): We've made some progress, although nothing too significant yet. Here's how.
On February 27, 2025, we received the following response from Pharlain, a member of Team Gimkit:
[Hi] [hexaheximal],
Thank you so much as always for your passion for Gimkit. It never ceases to amaze me and we appreciate the time and effort you put into this respectful response.
I think a good thing to keep in mind is that you’re talking about something that hasn’t been released yet, and so you don’t have all the information required for an informed opinion yet. We don’t even know everything about it yet, as it’s still being actively designed.
The announcement was just a teaser to let people know a change is coming. We’re still ironing out the details of precisely what these packs will look like. There will be some random elements, but the intent is to ensure players get more cosmetics, not fewer. Packs will cost very few gimbucks, so you’ll will be able to purchase quite a few at a time. There will also be visibility into what is in each pack so the ‘chance’ aspect will be minimal.
Additionally, there will always be a few Gims you can buy directly. We’re not 100% sure how this is going to look yet; likely there will be a random cosmetic or two available each week, and then occasional season gims that aren’t random. So, at any given time, players will be able to choose to either purchase a specific Gim for say, 2000 gimbucks, or purchase a bunch of packs in a theme they like for maybe 50 gimbucks a pack (these numbers are speculative).
There are a number of things driving this change. For one thing, the current shop system requires our tiny team to manually design and update the shop every week. As we add more and more cosmetics, this process has become more and more unwieldy and it’s not a great use of our resources. While I love your suggestions about things like student voting, the goal of changing the shop is to make it take up less staff time, not more. 😊
This new system is designed to help new students gain more cosmetics quickly, but also give older players like yourselves more opportunity to catch older gims. After three years of cosmetics, right now if there’s a specific gim you want, you have to wait for us to decide to bring it back. As the selection of Gims grows and grows, this wait with the current system might end up being years. With the new system most, if not all, Gims will be available at any time in a certain pack.
Finally, these changes allow us to add other highly requested features, like the ability to sell back Gims and also keep the shop running through the Summer. Things we weren’t able to do with the current system.
As far as your concern about gambling, this is definitely something that has been at the forefront of all our discussions. All of the bans we’ve looked at are specific to things that involve real-world money (Which these never ever will). Our packs will involve a lot less chance, and are not designed to encourage the same level of addictive “purchasing.” There’s also a huge amount of research on the effectiveness of variable reinforcement, particularly over time. We’re absolutely cognizant of the balance here. And if we don’t get it right, on our first try, we won’t hesitate to pivot quickly.
Hopefully this clears up a few things. But if you have any other questions or concerns let us know!
We saw this as a non-response. In fact, there was an opinion poll asking how much community members thought Team Gimkit actually read the open letter before making their official response, and the “Glanced over it” option won with 74% of the votes.
On March 5, 2025 (the original release date for Packs), the following announcement was silently made in the official Gimkit Discord server by Josh Feinsilber:
Packs are coming into Gimkit next week!
Based on your feedback, we are also going to keep the Item Shop around!
The Item Shop will rotate weekly with a random set of cosmetics, so you can decide where to spend your GimBucks.
Many of us believe that the open letter played a role in this (especially since the randomized Item Shop was one of our suggestions!), but this has not been confirmed.
Finally, after delaying the release to March 12, 2025, Team Gimkit chose to ignore the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the Packs system by the Gimkit community, as well as the open letter that followed, and release Packs.
The first approach is to ask your school/district to block Gimkit. We understand that this might be hard to do, especially if you’ve been playing Gimkit for years, but it’s the right thing to do.
To do so, find a way to contact the IT department (or administrative staff) of the school/district you are in and tell them to block Gimkit. Make sure to include a link to https://gimkitopenletter.hexaheximal.com as well.
If you do not have the time and/or skillset to carefully write an email, you may also use the template below:
[Subject-line example: Request to block a website associated with child gambling addictions]
Hello!
Gimkit recently added a feature called Packs. Packs are a form of loot box involving in-game currency.
The problem with this is that it is a form of gambling. You can find a detailed explanation of this at https://gimkitopenletter.hexaheximal.com, which was made collaboritively by several community members.
I ask that you block gimkit.com (and subdomains of it) as they are now promoting child gambling addictions.The second approach is to ask for a refund. If you have purchased the Season Ticket, or have a Gimkit Pro subscription, we recommend sending an email to hello@gimkit.com asking for a refund. Make sure to include a link to https://gimkitopenletter.hexaheximal.com as well, and cite your concerns regarding Packs as the reason for doing so.
If you do not have the time and/or skillset to carefully write an email, you may also use the template below:
[Subject-line example: Refund request]
Hello!
I recently learned about the serious gambling problems with Packs, as well as the lack of willingness to listen to the Gimkit community on the issue, from https://gimkitopenletter.hexaheximal.com.
Please cancel my [Season Ticket/Gimkit Pro] subscription. I am not comfortable with financially supporting this.If you use this template, make sure to replace the text in brackets with either Season Ticket or Gimkit Pro depending on which one you pay for.
On top of those first two things, we recommend sharing a link to this open letter (https://gimkitopenletter.hexaheximal.com) as well as this update page (https://gimkitopenletter.hexaheximal.com/update1) as much as you possibly can. We especially recommend spreading the word via social media platforms.
The more people know about this problem, and what to do about it, the better.
The source code for this open letter can be found here. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please send an email to hexaheximal@proton.me.