Gacha game release schedules, explained

Nearly every modern gacha game ships content in numbered versions (also called patches or updates) rather than continuously. A version bundles a batch of new content — story chapters, events, areas, and most importantly new limited characters — and goes live all at once after a scheduled maintenance window. HoYoverse titles like Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero settled the genre standard: a roughly six-week cycle, numbered like 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and so on.

Not every game follows the six-week beat. Infinity Nikki and Neverness to Everness run a slightly faster ~5-week cadence, while Goddess of Victory: Nikke skips version numbers entirely and organises its calendar around in-game events and a roughly two-week banner rotation instead.

The countdown on each game's page targets the moment that game's next version actually becomes playable — when maintenance ends and servers reopen — not just the calendar date.

A quick comparison of how the games we track are structured. Tap a name to open its live countdown, current banners and full version history.

Pity figures refer to the limited character banner: the pull count that guarantees a top-rarity unit, and whether it's a 50/50 for the featured character. Weapon/Light Cone banners have separate rules.

Within a six-week version, most games split the limited gacha into two banner phases of about three weeks each. Phase 1 launches with the version; Phase 2 swaps in a different set of featured characters partway through. So a single version usually debuts two to four limited units in total.

Pity is the safety net that guarantees a top-rarity pull within a fixed number of tries — 90 in the HoYoverse games, 80 in Wuthering Waves. On a limited banner this is usually paired with a 50/50: the first guaranteed five-star has an even chance of being the featured unit or a random standard one. If you "lose" the 50/50, the next guaranteed five-star is locked to the featured character. That's why players talk about being "guaranteed" — it means they already lost a 50/50 and their next one is safe.

Because pity carries across banners in most games, knowing when the next phase starts lets you decide whether to pull now or save. The countdowns and banner windows on each game page are built for exactly that decision.

For the actual patch, almost every game updates every server at the same global instant, so the countdown is identical worldwide — only your local clock differs. That's why each page has a timezone selector rather than a separate timer per region.

Banner end times are the exception. In Genshin Impact, the first banner phase ends at the same local time on each server (Asia, Europe and America), which lands at a different UTC moment per region, while the second phase ends at one global time. Games on a single global server — Wuthering Waves, Star Rail, ZZZ, Endfield and the rest — don't have this split. Where it matters, the game page includes a server selector so the banner timers match what you see in game.

The predictable cadence is what makes planning possible. A practical approach:

• Check the countdown to see how long until the next version — that's your saving window.
• Look at the current and upcoming banners to see who's featured now and next.
• Estimate your income (daily currency, events, and the update's rewards) over that window.
• Decide whether to pull now or hold for a character in a later phase, keeping your pity count in mind.

Because premium currency accrues at a fairly steady rate, a countdown of "N days until the next patch" translates directly into "roughly X pulls I can still earn" — which is the real question behind most people's planning.

Confirmed release dates come from official sources — livestreams and special programs, in-game notices, and developer announcements — and are added here as soon as they're published. Versions that haven't been officially dated yet are shown as estimates based on each game's established cadence and are clearly labelled, so you can always tell a confirmed date from a projection.

Every game page has a "Report" button if you spot something out of date — corrections are welcome and help keep the schedules accurate.