And so the war against loot box shenanigans claims another victim. A fine of just under one million dollars has been dolled out to two Korean developers, for shady business practises.
Much as we all love the video game industry, there’s no doubt that it can be a darn unpleasant place at times. Accusations of misogyny, decrying of violence, deeply uncool on-disk DLC, the evils of season passes… it’s rough around here, there’s no denying.
All of these issues have become increasingly troubling in recent years, and in ways that developers and producers just cannot ignore any longer. In the past, the backlash against these sorts of practises has just amounted to whining on internet forums, and/or one-person boycotts of a certain title or dev studio. More and more, now, the higher-ups are wading in, and that’s what we sorely needed.
In South Korea earlier this week, news broke that games development companies were being hit with hefty fines for deceiving customers with their loot boxes. The total bill for the companies concerned reached just shy of one million dollars. The message is clear: stop this crapola already.
Wielding the almighty Sword of Justice For The Average Joe’s Wallet was the Korean Fair Trade Commission, who first took issue with the content of Sudden Attack. The game offers prize boxes of sixteen different varieties, and handsomely rewards the player who manages to gather all sixteen. As Viral Riff reports, your chances of getting any one of these prizes are not equal and random, as the ambiguous title suggests. For some, they’re as low as 0.5%. One enthusiast spent over $350 to gather a full set.
Unimpressed with this sort of chicanery, the KFTC hit Sudden Attack producers Nexon Korea with a hefty $884,000 fine. Next on the list was Netmarble’s Monster Taming, which alleged that the chance of acquiring a certain special monster was less than 1%. What are the odds, in reality? 0.5%, that’s what. And so Netmarble were hit with a fine of $42,000.
Netmarble did, at least, accept their fate and issue an apology, the report goes on. However, Nexon Korea aren’t having any of it. Announcing their intent to appeal the decision, they said in a statement, “In our puzzle event, we used the phrase ‘random provision’ to suggest the items would be provided at random, and that the odds of obtaining each puzzle piece were different. However, the FTC interpreted the phrase as suggesting equal odds.”
So, yes. There are always loopholes to try and slither through, excuses to make, but the fact remains: these are some of the harshest penalties ever doled out for this offense. Countries around the world are working to find more aggressive ways to regulate loot boxes, and this is just another step in the right direction.
