Recently, Nexon was fined nearly 9 million USD by the Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) for deceiving customers. According to reports by Korea Times and Business Korea, Nexon is fined about 8.85 million USD (about 11.6 billion won) for being accused of degrading Probability of some items loot boxes has the ability to upgrade ingame equipment, called Cubes, without notifying the player. According to the Korea Times, this is the largest fine ever imposed for this type of violation.
The ruling claims that Nexon carried out these practices for more than 10 years starting in 2010, including secretly lowering the acceptance rate of certain items to near zero. These findings are reported based on Nexon’s internal documents.
“Nexon made announcements about changes in games hundreds of times from 2010-2021, but omitted information about probability adjustments,” KFTC said. We assess that the company had the intention of trapping customers by providing them with false information and using fraudulent methods. Cheat.” Nexon apologized in the KFTC statement and will appeal the ruling.
Players have gradually turned away from loot boxes in recent years. Therefore, most developers are switching to the battle pass model pioneered by Dota 2 and Fortnite. However, loot box systems still appear regularly in mobile games as well as sports games and are a prominent issue for regulators.
Nexon has long been famous for its “blood-sucking” activities. Last year’s controversial “New Age” update MapleStory has made it difficult for players in some regions to collect a currency while the prices of some items are inflated. The update led to large-scale protests in the MapleStory community.
