The Biggest MMO Scam In History
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ม.ค. 2024
- Well known MMO developer and publisher Nexon has received a massive fine after an official investigation revealed they have been decieiving customers for over a decade. Selling loot boxes that never contained the ideal outcome players bought them for, and manipulating the odds of getting rewards based on player activity.
KFTC Fine www.kedglobal.com/korean-game...
Story Source www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR2024010...
Nexon Response maplestory.nexon.com/News/Not...
MapleStory Footage By:
Decatei: • MapleStory - Cubing Guide
x3TheAran59: • MapleStory Nexon CAUGH... - เกม
Nexon: Makes 420 million from a scam and is fined 9 million.
Also Nexon (probably): Let's do it again! :D
That's pretty much how these types of things always play out.
Anytime, I think of small charges for companies that gained a ton. I think of Finland and Germany. They do something called progressive charging
“”Anders Wiklöf, one of Finland's richest men, was fined about $130,000 for speeding. At 76 years old, he was caught driving 82 km/h (about 51 mph) in a 50 km/h zone in the Aland Islands, an autonomous region in Finland. This fine was calculated based on his income, as Finland's traffic fines are linked to the offender's daily disposable income. Wiklöf, who is the chairman of a $10 million holding company, had previously faced significant speeding fines, including one for £80,000 in 2013 and another for £54,900 in 2018 [oai_citation:1,Millionaire fined a record $130,000 for speeding in Finland, where penalties are based on income””
I mean, if you can get 411 million in profit by simply scamming, might as well ey
Every other Korean gaming company would be dumb not to do this now. The government just told them it's ok as long as they get their 2% kickback. Beware of all Korean made games now and in the future.
@@yahootube90 The cost of doing business. By business I mean scamming.
"If the punishment is a fine, it is legal for the rich" certainly feels like it applies here.
Right? It’s more profitable to cheat people, so why not.
Fines should be a flat percentage that's more than what was made off it. Say, 150%. Nexon made $400M? Fine would be $600M. Steal a $2k computer? Fine would be $3k.
Fines themselves aren't bad. It's just implementation.
Just pay a fee, and you are okay to scam
yeah in china last time a company ppl did this, the ceo is missing and get fck, in south korea like this one, or japan big motor and fck USA, the ceo getting richer after scamming customer, still think china is bad guy right?
@@danij5055 Percentage of *company revenue* would hurt them good. 3 years of 3% company revenue would put the squeeze on.
This is the kind of deception that should put a company out of business if not put people in prison.
Now if it was a smaller company. Or even an indie company? Oh yeah they're be HELLA outta buisness. But there's a term called "Too Big To Fall" They made WAYYY MORE then they're being fined. Lol
Disney ring a bell?
Should have opened a casino if he wanted to get away stuff like this. In larger establishments fines are considered just the cost of doing business because the profits dwarf them.
maybe the player base should quit then, not suck it up and keep playing
Their games should also be removed by Steam. They are literally a scam company.
dynamic drop rates based on activity and even buddy lists is absolutely insane and probably some of the dirtiest examples of corporate greed I've ever seen!
Imagine robbing a bank for 420m and they catch you and ask you to pay back just 9m. That’s. Fucking. Nuts.
Except your avg. MapleStory player is more like an addiction prisoner. Don't worry, they will find enough reasons to rationalize it and continue to play this game. Whales will be whales regardless of what you do to them.
@@dingzhuxi What does that have to do with what the comment you replied to said? Right, nothing.
@@VenoXj1 You see... robbing a bank takes planning and effort. Taking money from addicted prisoners has none. :)
@@dingzhuxi And yet that has nothing to do with the point the op made. Are you this dense?
@@VenoXj1 Maybe I am, but yet you are still here Does your reply have anything to do with OP's comment. yeahh didn't think so :)
What's worse is that 1 week after this was announced they introduced a change where you can only buy cubes with Mesos(farmable in game currency). This likely done because they can skirt around the law that requires them to report rates of cubes because cubes are now not purchased with real money anymore.
They also placed a cap on how much Mesos you can farm and reducing the rate you obtain mesos by 6 TIMES. Leaving the player's only real way to get cubes by buying NX(real money) then converting it to Meso, and then buying the cubes again. All of this just so they have can have no obligation to reveal cube rates. This shit is so fricking thinly veiled its insane.
Also they are being very vague in yesterday's roadmap and not saying whether or not the nerfs are coming to GMS (america/europe servers) but in the same roadmap (GMS) confirmed a paid booster is coming that basically fast tracks your progression of 6th job skill leveling if you pay up, as well as re-releasing vacuum pets at the same time too (premium 100$ pets + 15 a month that have massive loot grab radius). Because if these nerfs come to GMS a vast majority will probably quit so they're milking us in the meantime
It's always been like that on Reboot tho.. so.. idk. If anything, the pets and gacha boxes are where the real gouging begins. x.x
The Korean FTC is actually already on this and said they're ready to launch an investigation the second those changes come to live, so they probably won't happen.
Aaaaand yet, ppl will still play the game so nothing will change. Sad how addicted some ppl are :/
@@Julietmateus Not trying to doubt you but may I know where do you get this info?
I can’t stand Nexon, the companies they own aren’t all bad, but Nexon themselves are sickening
Whistleblowing isn't a thing in Korea because the corporation runs the country, they lobby the government like no tomorrow.
RIP Wizet when Nexon bought them.
Edit: I just did some research and apparently Wizet was always a satellite company of Nexon. Nexon did originally create most of these games, just with separate teams/companies. They only reincorporated Wizet after they saw how successful MapleStory was becoming.
All companies should have to get their chance system investigated every so often. A situation like this has always been in my mind, just because it says i have a 10% chance doesn't mean it is telling me the truth.
All the chances and underlying net code for it should be open source. It should also tell consumers what the average spend in their local currency is to get each item in the box
I live in Belgium and here games that have drops with IRL money need to give the exact drop rates/have lootboxes removed or they aren't allowed to be published (or something along those lines, I don't really know the specific law). But for example when the law/rule got approved Overwatch boxes got removed, CSGO Case keys couldn't be bought through the official store anymore, Lost Ark never got on my steam store,... I think it's the same in The Netherlands.
@@gowanlock Not even that is good enough. Every game where money and RNG is involved should have that part of the game reviewed and stored by a trustworthy third party. In real life, this has been the case for years. For example, slot machines in the US are controlled by Control Commissions and Gambling Commissions. This means that the part of the machine that involves RNG is controlled and sealed by these commissions. It should be the same with any online system.
To trust a company to fairly regulate their own gambling systems is complete madness. Even a 0.1% discrepancy in their own favor represents a huge monetary incentive to them.
exactly. been saying this to the gacha communities for years and they act like i am insane
I stopped playing gacha and going for rng boxes/pulls because it's just a scam. With the state of how they're investigated and fined, there's no way. As fun as random items are, getting addicted or dropping money into it just isn't worth it
how is this not insanely illegal ? i find it wild that they only got a 9 mil fine when they likely made 20x that.
It is, this is why the Korean FTC stepped in.
What do you mean "likely made 20x that"? Force literally says a second before saying they were fined 9 million bucks, that they made 420 million bucks. That's not 20x more, that's 45~46-ish times more.
@@Sly_404 Forget FTC company management should be in jail
South Korea is as corrupt as North Korea, just in different ways.
Meanwhile the people on the top spenders list will actively defend nexon and rmt in video games...
This sounds like an inevitable class-action lawsuit. Players deserve their money back.
Korea dude, Korea.. the first corporate state in the world.
Not in korea. Its corporate first citizens second. Poor people can just look on in horror as they are stripped of everything else they have.
Korean players will actively defend this system as the ones that spend the most (a large number of them even go into debt for it) got the good items before the changes were implemented and see them as a financial asset instead of just an item in the video game. So nothing will likely happen.
@@mercutiobr3814 No, there is a lawsuit going on. And this just boosted the chances.
Source: Korean ytuber 김성회의 G식백과 has an interview with the man who sued.
and then some, screw nexon
I remember talking to this guy in like 2016 or 2017 in the game who claimed he had a second job to literally spend money on rolling cubes. He was pretty geared up so there wasn't any reason not to believe him. Crazy.
MapleStory player here. Im so glad to see this addressed. It always felt like all these years that something wasn't right with the probability of the rolls. Hopefully they find more on Nexon.
I just want my game to be fair.
well their response was to nuke reboot server so personally id have enjoyed if they never got caught lmfao, granted ms global prob wont get that update...
@@yksol8649it’s over 😂
The most shocking part of this is : this is just one of MANY, MANY possibility-scam the Maple Story made.
Right?? And not just Maple I'd love to see about Mabi, Vindictus and their other titles.
@@JeyUUAs a very long time Mabi player. Its so "pay to win" its ridiculous.
that's why i never play korean games
@@namingshard17 they're pretty great games, but some of them are much better on private servers.
This isn't the first time. They pulled similar things with bunch of their other games, especially DFO along with Maplestory. They have long history of scamming users. But this time, it's much bigger since individual users decided to go on with a lawsuit in groups.
As Korean, I am glad that people now know more how corrupt Nexon truly is. And I might add, they are the very first company to popularize pay to win/loot boxes. EA only took this concept and made it notorious in the West, but Nexon is the true OG douche company that started all of this.
I love how the funds does not go back to the customers, but the $9 million fine goes to the government. It's a thieving world.
The customers just throw together a class action lawsuit, pretty easy. The fine + that class action would likely end this shady company.
Yea you as the person wronged have to go have a $100000 court case to get ur losses back lol
@@DOEfatstarrdont think everywhere is like america
Yeah, that's not a fine; it's a tax. And not even that big of one.
In the very least, I guess there's some recognition for the players now that facts are all laid out with all these mess. If anything, I've never been this happy to have quit the game for more than a year ago despite my friends still sticking to it.
Man, maplestory was my childhood and I loved playing the game. I quit the game a few years ago because of how grindy it was. It’s sad to see how far the game and Nexon has fallen
The funny thing is that it used to be better when it was grindy. Now it's just a money pit.
I am not surprised that Nexon would do this - while it's pretty expected across Korean MMO companies, Nexon is probably one of the bigger ones out there doing every conceivable version of this. The blackly funny thing is that there are game company CEOs who will lionize this sort of behavior and insist that their teams follow similar practices to maximize profit at all costs.
I'm glad you super emphasized how little they got fined for the money they made. Because that's freaking insane
Who the F playes this muppet game tho xD
I'm going to be honest this is the first time I've ever legit seen maplestory and holy shit people pay money for that?@@Gurupimp10
This is literally International dishonor and shame... I am sorry as Korean I will apologize instead of that director...
That’s how it works. If you’re gonna steal, steal big. Fines are never equal to the amount stolen.
@@Gurupimp10 A ton of people who are stuck in the past gaming world 15 years ago. Yeah, those people. I always saw this type of game as a scam game due to how loot tables work even if they weren't scamming. Rate manipulation was and still is a problem in mobile gaming too, because they can publish rate %, but who's actually validating it?
If a company isn't charged all of their profits for criminal activity, then it's just a business cost.
...ones that they'll usually find a way to shift their Books and get a tax write off out of nowhere to cover
I would love to see them sued in other courts. Other markets should be looking at this and wondering, did that happen here. Get the evidence, take them to court.
get a lawsuit in EU pretty sure they would be happy to slap some cooperate cheeks for some digital scam and gambling.
I wouldnt be surprised if Nexon was only the first to get caught for this sort of thing. Its possible that tons of companies do something like this, including the RNG manipulation based on playtime. I cant even begin to count the amount of games where a friend logs in one every 2 months and gets the rarest drop in a gacha or probability roll lol
yo its brax
A scandal like this should end this company's career for good, how the hell would anybody continue playing their games after this scandal ... people need to sue those bastards and get their money back.
Because MS and all of the games they have is so much more profitable in Asia. Also micro-transactions and loot boxes are normal there.
It’s Nexon, too big to fall to this event.
Welcome to America/communism/capitalism.
This happens on a daily basis.
Law enforcement doesn't care.
They aren't paid to protect people.
They should have been fined for an amount greater than what they earned and sent into total bankruptcy. This kind of thing keeps happening because there isn't actually any consequences for the companies doing it.
No the scandal is that people are not even checking the loot rate themselves but rather trust without checking yet they are able to complain on trivial aspects xD
I was addicted to Maplestory for a while. Luckily I never purchased cubes, only pets which still amounted to over $500. The pressure of getting the best gear while in a guild was pretty intense. Your worth in game is basically tied to your gear and the rolls on them. I got out, after 5 years of playing almost daily and the guild leader would contact me every day asking where I was and if I was going to do the dailies and guild dailies. It was like a full time job. This game sucks and I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy. I hope Nexon gets sued to the ground. The cube probabilities is just the tip of their manipulation.
You should try out some Private Servers, you don’t have to pay for a single thing and most times you CANT pay money for anything. You have to earn everything in game and they’re usually the older versions which takes a lot of boring bloat out of the game
@@withoutrhythm4009 whats the best one? looking for something with a community, casual if possible.
I had so much fun back in the days. This is like 12 years ago. It was very grindy but the community was awesome and loads of fun.
I was all in spending hundreds on maple. I don't regret it. Was really fun chasing that damage cap. But only for a while. Cubes were so fun but so bad for the game ultimately. Set the standard for that ever elusive power creep.
Glad I got out before it became that grimy.
This will be happening in almost every game that has some form of virtual item gambling. Even if they get caught it's essentially just a slap on the wrist. The money they make far outweighs any downsides if they get caught. I'm sure it's especially true in the mobile market where nearly every game uses predatory monetization .
I've played plenty of games with RNG that feel like your luck reduces the longer you play, probably because it is.
This breaks my heart to hear, Nexon is slowly but surely destroying all of my fond memories and nostalgia for this game.
slowly? they destroyed maplestory a long time ago
@@BeetleBuns Yup...peak maple was pink bean and shortly after that.
This isn't even the first time they've been exposed for rigging game mechanics and lying about it. You'd need extensive research to fully catalogue their scummy practices over the past years. Yet the game is still thriving because players are way too addicted - to the point where quitting doesn't even cross their minds.
@@RomeosReefAquarium so what youre saying is you're exactly what @ohohana is referring to
@@RomeosReefAquarium I am sorry for your loss man.
But playing a game for 18 years and saying you are not addicted dont add up. You are.
Hope the future helps you recover for your loss. Stay atrong
At one point I played for roughly 24 hours straight in middle school. Long before the cubes were even introduced. This game is horribly addictive
I played Maple Story. I gave up when they let a hacker do whatever he wanted for successfully hacking their anti cheat system.
I played the game and quit once before in 2021 because of nexons straight up disrespect to it's community
came back to her last year like it's my toxic ex hoping it will get better. quit again for good
Disrepect shouldn't be tolerated and I hope many more players join me in hopes that nexon realises they destroy their game. korea especially have to do it because i doubt nexon cares about their western playerbase
Holy SHIT an actual coverage on Maplestory. Thank you for covering this!
The fines of scams like this HAVE to be HIGHER than the amount lost for people to change their ways.
The biggest gaslight of the gaming industry, and they get a lightweight slap on the wrist.
Meanwhile, the players/customers get absolutely zero reimbursement despite the clear evidence of a long-ongoing scam.
That's just completely insane. We truly live in a society.
Fun fact: The RNG doesn't just apply to upgrades for items. They have a store that can sell you $5-10+ items and those items only last 90 days, then the cosmetic item that you bought with your money... disappears! Not only that they have loot boxes for cosmetics, like hair, outfits, but these last forever. Except you can get dupes, and the weights for the items you want to drop are very low, so you might never even get what you want. It's about $3 for one of these boxes. This video and my comment are just a drop in the bucket of how scummy, predatory, and absolutely pathetic the people at Nexon are
rental items have no RNG, they are just direct purchase.
royal hairs and faces, and surprise style boxes, all the rates are equally weighted. You are just as likely to get one item over another.
Been a nexon signature for more than a decade. I remember when they introduced this model into Gunbound and new characters had maxed out temporary gear for 7 days. Even when I was like 9 years old, I was like wtf is this 😂
@@MasterStacona He wasn't trying to argue the 90 day items were RNG. It's the fact you're paying any amount of real money to have your items disappear in 3 months. Doesn't matter if it's been in the game since day 1 it's the single worst costume system in any game ever and I have never met a person who would defend it.
@HoneyedOasis Man, I haven't seen someone mention Gunbound in years, glad there's still someone that remembers that ancient relic of a game.
@@JP_KI I have to agree that having certain cash shop items be temporary is one the worst paid item systems to ever exist. Each one of those purchases might as well be akin to a subscription service that you have to renew if you want pets or other random nick knacks.
The craziest thing from this is that in response to this, they're changing the system. If you look into it deeper, they have gone completely scummy... They're stopping the sale of cubes all-together. To roll your potentials (your passives on items), you will have to use in-game currency DIRECTLY. This is a good thing, right? No. So, to top it off, they have limited the amount of currency you can FARM FROM MONSTERS to a daily limit. This limit can be achieved in about 2 hours. Maplestory is a hardcore grind game, and people grind for 8-10 hours on some weekends. Stupid, I know, but it's what people like, that's why we still played.
To top this off, the non-trade server is getting this system as well. The non-trade server never had the ability to purchase these cubes for irl money to begin with. You farmed, and you bought with in-game currency, and you went about your day. It takes a lot of farming to get a good amount to cube with. Cube packs sold for 120mil for 10 Red Cubes, 240mil for 10 Black cubes. With the daily limit implemented, you can only farm 150mil a day. This is an incredibly massive nerf to the non-trade server because not only does it limit that, they're removing the benefits of the server. The difference between the non-trade server is there is no scrolling system (a % based upgrade to item power, like +1 +2 +3 etc), no bonus potentials (a second passive bonus to items), and increased rewards for playing a no-trade server. These will STILL REMAIN, however the new system is essentially turning the server into a low-powered tradeless server. The server is no different from regular servers that have trade now.
Now the thing I want to bring attention to, is that with this in-game currency based system being globally added to the game, Nexon is no longer legally required to disclose the % rates anymore. Since there is no money transaction for these items, they can fully manipulate the system however they feel internally, as it's no long an item sold for real world money. This is a painfully obvious scummy action from the company...
Nexon Korea has an incredibly obvious hate towards the non-trade server, due to their lack of wanting to spend so much money on progressing their characters. They play the game they love, and progress without spending so much money like regular players do. Nexon has made multiple efforts to discourage users from joining the server. In 2021, when the investigation happened, the non-trade server saw a massive influx of users starting new accounts there in response to being treated poorly on regular servers. In response to this, Nexon closed the ability to register on these servers. Their hatred was already shown in the past, but this is quite clearly a hostile action against it. Now, they've pull this sort of thing and have alienated the playerbase.
To make matters EVEN WORSE, the community on Inven (Reddit for Korea, essentially, but 1000x more popular over there) have been laughing at the treatment of these users. Asian culture is fueled by showing off your wealth. It sounds horrible, but even after users are being treated like this, Inven was flooded with threads and comments laughing at non-trade users calling them poor, homeless, jobless, etc. Saying that they all deserved this. They neglect the fact that they have been lied to, manipulated, stolen from by Nexon, to laugh at the users who don't spend money, because of some sunk cost falacy they are feeling.
The whole situation with Nexon Korea over the last 6-12 months is abysmal, and the leadership over there is outright packed full of greed riddled managers who are squeezing everything out of the game so many people fell in love with over the last 20 years. So many of my guild members on the NA version of the game have quit the game in response. Not "I'll stop playing, maybe come back in the future" quit. No. They deleted all of their items, unable to get them back. They're gone for good. The accounts are entirely ruined, to the point they can NOT be salvaged. This is how bad it is.
what do you expect from a petty society that believes a high income makes them a better human.....
After what they did to Masters of Eternity several years ago I thought people would have learned. I haven't touched a Nexon game since. They've been a shit company for years.
#cringe
I felt a little scummy for going to private servers around 2009-2011. Now I'm happy that I did.
Not saying private servers aren't scummy because a lot of them really are. A few gems out there keeping the old spirit of the game alive though.
@@supercyberdigi I support private servers for few games due to the game either being:
A: Dead/shutdown
B: Content that is fun and not locked behind a 4 month grind
C: Nexon.
I switched to pservers when I lost my 144 bowmaster around v60 era. I was dumb and stupid and fell for a phishing scam. Learned my lesson. It was sold off and eventually banned. You lose an account THAT high back before big bang and you lose all will to enjoy the game anymore.
I came back to reboot because friends started playing it again, and well.. Here we are... Quitting once more.
the elsword Ice Burners... OMG... Such memories. In Elsword (a NEXON game), the ice burners (lot items that you had to buy) there was NO PROBABILITY RATE, to drop the featured item, it was TOTALLY RANDOM until 2022. Nexon was FORCED to disclose probability rate starting from 2021... Amazing
I swear to god that I was thinking about that, and I’m pretty sure they were involved in something like that
When I used to play Lost Ark, I noticed them doing this as well. It was during an event when the success rate for upgrade was increased by a lot. So I got a long streak of success since it was 100%. I even put the mats to increase the odds to make it 100% after reaching a higher rank. Then I gave less mats to increase odd and made it only 90%....it failed 5-6 times in a row and took me to pity when I had 90%+ for success.
Yup. KMMO rates are 0% or 100%*, anything else is a lie.
*And they may round up, so you can still fail on a listed 100% chance.
what a shocker to hear you cover about this major fkup by nexon. Really appreciate the spread of awareness.
is this sarcasm?
@@pickle7769I assume, at least he tried. Nexon if fkin whore, a cancer of gaming along with EA
@@pickle7769 how and why?
If I was a gaming company in Korea, I would take this as the government just gave me the greenlight to steal and lie to my customers. They got taxed 2% for screwing all of their players!?!? It's not a fine if the punishment is a fraction of the money you made from your illegal activity, it's just a bribe via tax to the government.
Congrats on hitting 1mil subscribers Force! Long time viewer here, you deserve it ❤
Good stuff! I'm a Maplestory player for many years, and you did a great job of explaining!
The worst part is that for the red cubes, the probability of you ending up with a WORSE result than you started with is a lot higher than with a better result
When things like this happen, not only should every transaction be refunded, the same amount should be used as a separate fine against the company. Any amount that can't be paid should then fall to any parent company, board member, and executive to personally pay out... at a bare minimum.
lmao they are scummy but you can't violate a corporate structure (and its illegal btw). The whole idea of a company is to limit liability of your business within the company. You can't lose more than what you put in. Absolutely impossible and actually illegal.
@@jamesyong7826 amassing billions of dollars in personal net worth from your company while underpaying employees and stealing from your customers should be illegal but here we are
@@jamesyong7826 also just because something is legal or illegal doesn't determine its morality. if you base your entire world view off of what is legal and what isn't, you will inevitably support systems of inequality which are perfectly "legal" and yet disenfranchises people. slavery was legal. so was sharecropping and jim crow. a ceo should be bankrupted if he is found to be stealing from his customers, and yet, legally, he cannot be. i find this disgusting and despicable and a true example of a law which is not moral.
@@soupstoreclothing Great point on morality. unfortunately the law isn't there to regulate morality. They're basically the rules of the game and as long as you play within the rules you're fine. Again, I'm not saying what's good or bad, it's just facts here. Also, I'm also gonna say everyone's standard of morality differs to each other. Even within different cultures and traditions it's going to be different, so obviously the legal system cannot be based upon morality.
And nobody would be willing to be CEO of any company if your example happened. He is basically going to be the Scape goat should anything go wrong.
This has been a worry of mine for a long time wrt all closed-box systems like these (amazon included): there's not hing really stopping companies from dynamically adjusting your drop rates based on whether they think you;ll be retained as a customer. Our whole lives are being turned into a gacha system which can only be discovered with rather a lot of effort
In 2012, they accidently patched the odds and people were getting affixes they wanted. Nexon then rolled back the servers a full week later, removing all affixes, loot/Mesos, levels/xp gained in that time, and only refunded the points spent so players would have to once again gamble to gain affixes that were impossible to get.
That's what broke me, it's why I quit, along with about 20 other mates of mine.
People forget that before there is EA hitting us with "sense of pride and accomplishment", there was always Nexon. They're the creators and pioneers of loot box mechanics btw.
"The first known instance of a loot-box system is believed to be an item called "Gachapon ticket" which was introduced in the Japanese version of MapleStory by Nexon"
Everything bad that we know of that ruined gaming, came from Nexon.
I thought it's Valve? Ya know, with the lootboxes in TF2?
@@sapasanantajaya7997 TF2 came out in 2007, the gachapon tickets came out in 2004.
@@lightspeedrescue Yes. All this started out in eastern mobile gaming. It spread from there, notably to me in western MMORPGs next and contaminated the rest of gaming.
@@sapasanantajaya7997wasnt those free, only available to get from playing? I don't remember.
@@sapasanantajaya7997 I like how you necessarily did no research whatsoever to think that TF2 came before maple story loot boxes
Honestly there should be class action laws suit against them. If not this is bad precedent. It shows other companies its in their best interest to lie, cheat and steal from their customers.
Other companies already know and litrerally work out the cost of a fine compared to projected profits. Happens in all industries, sad and horrible fact of our world.
Pharma companies have done this for decades
So glad I got out of my Mapestory addiction before getting into their new system. After Bigbang or a few updates after nothing really felt the same anymore and I held on due to it being by my childhood. It’s sad to see what you use to think was a fun game become scummy 😔
Unrelated, but what is the game featured in the beginning of this video?
There is a game that came out not long ago. They started paying content creators and asking to link Twitch accounts to our game account so they could track our views for the payments.
On the first stream, after doing that, I got my first double legendary hero summon and the most legendary heroes summoned with the fewest summon stones I've ever pulled.
Yeah, my first thought was that "streamer rng" is a very real thing in that game.
This is theft, plain and simple. They got a slap on the wrist when they should have been dealing with criminal charges and facing jail time.
Nexon gets: 420m
Government gets: 9m
Players get: Nothing
Did I understand it correctly!? That's insane.
They dynamic rate based on player activity just vindicates what my friends and I have felt over a long time with various games where it really seems like if you take a break then come back your luck is great for a short time before going back to being horrible.
More Context to this Video for those interested (long):
-Item Potentials are rolled through cubes (the topic of this video)
-These cubes do two things, reroll the item stats and also have a slight chance to increase the potential tier.
-Potentials have different tiers, starting out as rare, then ranking up to epic, then unique, and finally legendary.
-Late Game players will have around ~20-30 items at legendary rank
-Cubes account for two of three paid ways that someone upgrades an item (Flames, cubes, additional cubes)
Nexon got in trouble with the FTC because originally these cubes had a rank up rate of 1.8% which was then lowered to 1.4%. Over the next few years Nexon continued to lower the rates until they hit 1% chance of tier up. Keep in mind that at no time did Nexon inform their players that they had been lowering the tier up rates, instead actively stating that they hadn't been changing them. Meanwhile they had been causing players to buy more cubes to try to upgrade gear. Nexon later did raise the tier up rate back to 1.4% to which it stayed until this controversy. Again players were not informed of these changes.
On a less controversial note, but still brought up in this video, Nexon made certain potentials unobtainable overtime and cited "game balance" as one of the reasons. To my knowledge there were three unobtainable potentials (60% item drop, 3 line boss damage, and 3 line ignore enemy defense). In all honesty you would not be looking for these potentials in these amounts/you would be able to use other gear to make up for things like more item drop.
Nexon's Response: Nexon decided to remove Cubes from the game and instead make potentials rollable through using in-game currency called Meso. At first glance this seems like a good change, but it is overall a very strange one. Nexon could of just been more transparent on cube rates instead of changing the whole system. So why change the system? Well if you start to roll potentials through in-game currency it no longer is regulated by the FTC as you do not use money to purchase the item that is rolling the potential. Where this line is blurred is in the fact that they capped the amount of in-game currency that the player can get through grinding (they claim it is an effort to stop botters). An end-game player can only grind enough meso to roll an item 3 times per day. With the avg rolls taken to complete an item in the hundreds. So, how do you get around this cap? While other ways of gaining meso exist in the game, the most reliable method is to spend Money. That's right, you can exchange NX(Nexons paid currency) for meso(in-game currency). Essentially Nexon has found a loophole so they aren't regulated by the FTC while they continue to make crazy amounts of money on the same thing they were just fined for.
At 5:04 you allude to a previous controversy Nexon had in 2021 with flaming. This is another way to upgrade items that you can pay for. Others may be more knowledgeable on the subject, but from what I remember they essentially made getting a good weapon flame (Bonus Stats) on an item really hard. What they would do is often pair the good stats to get a bonus on with the worse without letting players know. For example, you would get a good bonus stat like extra weapon attack, but it was way more likely to come with another useless stat like Jump instead of a second useful stat like boss damage. I was pretty casual during this period so others may provide more accurate descriptions. Something Nexon did do during this controversy was attempt to compensate the players as well as ASSURE THE PLAYERBASE THAT NO OTHER SYSTEM IN THE GAME WAS UNFAIRLY MANIPULATED (lying) they also promised more transparency.
The chart at 11:27 is only the amount of money those players spent on specifically cubes and not on other aspects/ item upgrading systems
Anyone else with more knowledge of the situation or what I talked about in this post feel free to point out or correct.
Definitely enjoy your takes on the predatory practices in the game industry. Keep doing the good work of getting this info out there. Maybe we will learn our lesson some day.
This ^. A conversation that needs to be had, repeatedly. Games like Wizard 101 targeted at kids where they target them with loot boxes. Predatory is definitely the correct nomenclature.
We won’t. We’re too fucking stupid
We've already learned it but are too complacent. F2P and or P2W gigantic companies and games dominate gaming. Most people in the world don't have money or time to buy a lot of games.free to play games with gambling or predatory practices are at the top of every genre with hundreds of thousands more players. This whole generation of youth, the first things they ask is "is it free". There's a giant part of the gaming community that only plays free games. I hate to see the entire standard of the industry lowered, meanwhile smaller, decent devs with good ethics games won't be seen by any of these players. It's gonna get ugly.
Dynamic RNG would technically be things like legendary guarantee and duplicate protection like in Hearthstone. Where the legendary guarantee is how you would have increased odds until 100% to pull a Legendary from a card set after a certain number of draws (if you didn’t get one from pure RNG until then); and duplicate protection is self-explanatory
The funny thing is back when I was learning computer programming, such simply method of controlling the outcome is very necessary to affect people like or dislike your game
What's sad is I once enjoyed Nexon's Mabinogi, but hitting a wall where it's either buy the item off another player or farm for thousands of hours...killed it for me. To those who can spend life times on an MMO for 1 item, props to you for that dedication.
I played Mabi religiously 2008~2012 and unfortunately was stupid enough to spend a LOT of money on that damn game. Even as a teen making minimum wage through high school. My own idiocy but I really felt like I had to to keep up with my friends. I feel like when reforging came out shit really started hitting the fan. If not for corporate greed that is still one of the most unique MMO titles I have seen, it had its issues but otherwise a fun game with an interesting storyline and game mechanics. "Good Games Ruined By Nexon" should be a category on its own.
my issue was them not really expanding on the game, they mostly had temporary events that required you to spend hours upon hours grinding an event, or paying for advantages to grind faster, but when event goes away and the map is not expanding, not sure if they expanded now, but that game just had this content wall where you keep having to wait for things to rotate back in and too many grinding options due to certain things expiring@@JeyUU
Thank you. My nightbringer Lance will take about 2 to 2.4 billion gold to fund..... :)
Props to you for wasting precious years of your life for absolutely nothing
Mabinogi and Vindictus are great... Vindictus has the best combat in an MMO for me, but sadly its in the claws of this shitty company
Also note that the gear cap in this game is insane. A player can easily spend 6 figures and not even be close to bis gear. Top spenders last year are only showing cube purchases, not including other items or rmt. I've also spent a couple grand and ended up with worse gear than what I started with. It's actually the most p2w game in history. It puts gacha games to shame in terms of p2w.
In the case of rng manipulation that is veried it can help with quests such as go kill this thing for this item it drops. It can be used to improve player farming and grinding by detecting them continually fighting or are quest flagged. This is a great idea if they implemented it right it could make that dopamine hit easy to find even doing mindless stuff. Of course this would come with the issue if your grinding starter slimes for a while then pivot to something else you may find bad RNG and drop rates/rarity decreased when you initially switch. However for the normal player who isn't there grinding away and just doing quests which could be another trigger to boost your targeted RNG they will find the game loves them because of this.
It was the same way in the 80s and 90s with the companies disposing of toxic waste. You know they it might cost them hundreds of millions of dollars to properly dispose of it but the fines you know are gonna be tens of millions of dollars it’s just easy math
Corporations in the industry have been doing stuff like this without the player knowing for years, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the most popular games have some sort of scam mechanic built into their games.
Thank you for bringing this information into the light.
I really hope there is a major effort to stop this sort of activity throughout the industry.
WE NEED TO ORGANIZE EFFORTS AGAINS THIS SORT OF ACTIVITY NOW. THESE SORTS OF THING NEED TO STOP
This is why I never play these types of games, or if a game has loot boxes, I don't purchase them. Most games with loot boxes are the types of games that I refuse to play (MMO's mainly). This is gambling period. And it's even worse that the house was fixing the odds.
Now let's look at Bungie, EA, 2K Spots, etc. who all have loot boxes in their games.
You don't have to buy them.
Bungie has Destiny 2 and there isn't any loot box in em and even if there is, it absolutely does NOTHING to the game play.
There's no lootboxes in Destiny.
Let's take a look at Valve. It's long been speculated that the rarest item only drops a set amount of times, so anyone opening boxes after that set amount will never get it despite it being advertised they can.
Not surprised. Korean game company often do this, there is many lawsuit out there. Similar, there is a case where a youtuber won his cases against a Taiwan game company ( a game agent for Korean game) for lying the drop rate after spending ten of thousands. The case was disgusting since the company lawyers are very manipulative and lied to make the youtuber seem guilty despite the evidence is very clear.
Getting fed up from player complaints. China actually does something good which might influence the rest of the country seeing how China game companies is one of the biggest game developer out there.
China are going to implement rules which will hit gacha hard and make players day by banning rewards for spending money within a game for the first time, ban rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions, and ban rewards for daily log-in.
Weird to say this but its a huge W for China seeing how they also losing profit since Tencent, a huge company known for their greed is their partner.
Rates changing based on inventory is to award the best drops at a higher rate, but duplicated of the items they already have and are probably not looking for.
Thank you for covering this BS… I play maplestory as my main mmo and I want as much attention to this as possible man thank you
Looool 😂
the dynamic rates based on activity is 100% a thing in other games' gacha elements.
i have been having this thought for years now, as i see how my rates in games as returning player or forgotten/less played alts are suspiciously good.
Yeah.. It was thought to be a mechanic in one game I played. We would give the loot boxes to farmers / alts since they didn't "spend" and there seemed to be first time luck / return luck. I wouldn't be surprised honestly, and I wouldn't really imagine it would be hard to have a hidden luck stat, with hidden advancements to increase / decrease it.
Hearing about that "dynamic RNG" definitely confirms everything that those disgusting lootbox RNG games have. Whaling the game? Well time to reduce your rates since you have a higher chance to spend. Getting your feet in the water? You got pretty lucky! You should open a lot more!
The government isn't supposed to be the only people seeking financial penalties from Nexon. It isnt a large fine, I agree. They should be barred from utilizing RNG for currency and also barred from using premium currencies in their games. They should be forced to have to sell items for a set price moving forward but you cant get a random item for any currency at all (in-game or IRL) anymore in any of their games or any games they are directly or indirectly affiliated with or maintain any stake in.
Now that the investigation is done everyone who purchased "cubes" should speak to a lawyer and sue the company for all of their money back. If enough people do that then you could even start a class action lawsuit which would heavily outweigh the fine the government pushed to them. The government did the investigation and gave the consumers the evidence they need to have a strong case against them for their own personal damages. Nexon can't fight 100,000 court battles. The government is not here to make you whole if you do not start the process yourself. They will take a lot of them to arbitration and refund your money so its out of the public space.
If you want corporations to pay through the nose, be willing to leverage the judicial systems to make it happen and don't rely on everyone else to make you whole without any effort on your part. It's absolutely rediculous.
I remember one time I suggested on Reddit that the developers of a different game might be secretly manipulating the odds behind the scenes, and immediately got dogpiled by fanboys saying that the developers were unquestionably fair and honorable and even suggesting the possibility that they could be manipulating rates was verboten.
Gotta love reddit
Happened to me as well when I posted on reddit that one game is probably collecting data on popular decks to match you up versus your counter if you have a high win rate to drop you down to around 50%.
I also posted my own statistics that I gathered over 100 games played with and without changing decks/playing meta vs off meta decks.
Boy oh boy, the white knighting was real. I had more hate coming my way than actual debates and critisicm 😂
@@noobanub6169 Just curious which card game you are referring to?
@@sayit8ntso Older Hearthstone, when Ben Brode was still the lead designer.
@@noobanub6169 man.... those guys are stupid and crazy.....
If it makes you feel better, majority of people (at least the Korean community) is bashing the hell out Nexon right now, with some class action lawsuits preparing.
What a shock it is to find out that games that are build to be manipulatory and exploitative ends up being manipulatory and exploitative.
It would not surprise me the least to find out this is going on in a bunch of these games.
Any that have microtransactions like this are doing it. Its an evil practice that preys on the gambling addictions kids can easily develope
Good thing there is zero oversight on tech companies. GLHF finding out, surprised to see this be in the news.
They are not manipulators and they are not exploiting. They are totally fair and nothing to see here. If you disagree you're just a normal sane person with a grasp on reality.
The most upsetting thing about this is, it probably won't stop some people from playing the game. Bad developer practices won't end tell consumers stop enter acting and buying there products.
I used to love Maplestory. Played it more than a decade ago. Its sad to see this and the state Maplestory is in.
I think that stuff like this is happening way more often than one would think. Even if developers disclose rates there is so much room for interpretation, like varying the rates based on certain criterions for certain players but having the overall, average rate across the player base and instances as advertised.
There should be much more and much harsher supervision when it comes to games that have gambling mechanics and some form of cash shop
This is exactly why fines should be a percentage of revenue, this crap would stop tomorrow if we did that
i used to think that but now i disagree with this thinking 100%
if you do that, most of the people who would get hurt will be employees that had no involvement with the decision making. instead when you fine a company a % of their revenue, the first measure executives would take is downsizing and cutting salaries to not affect profits too much.
instead we need laws that target the individuals directing frauds like these, this would deter such practices when the people directly involved in such frauds are personally held liable. but that's not mostly not possible or very difficult because "the company" bears the liability
@@GemayelDaniel i feel like an NDA and hiring someone as a scape goat would be more common then, but thats just me being skeptical. Can you expedite proper NDA's?
What distinction do you draw between loot boxes and packs of Hearthstone or Mtg Arena cards?
Well you can earn packs in mtga without spending $$, and get blank card tokens that can turn into any card. I've played mtga free for years, it's a grind.
Same, and I have a well stocked collection, but if we're being honest, packs are loot boxes. You get loot boxes for free in plenty of games too, League for instance.@@Idellphany
I played combat arms back when it was owned by nexon, the loot boxes had a really weird mechanism. There were certain times when it was possible to get a good drop from one, and it also announced good drops in the server. So you could get extremely good pulls by waiting till someone else had just pulled something and you had a few seconds window to open your own crate. Opening them at any other time you would consistently get nothing good, though someone had to take a shot in the dark to reveal the correct time to everyone else. Don't think too many people knew about it.
This is why people should avoid any cash shop MMO at all costs
Yes this limits your options, but its for the best.
Whales paying to loose. What we really need is for the whale community to start slinging lawyers.
Just avoid gamba items. Like some counties are doing banning these items
Any Eastern MMOs
As a quick aside: it 1000% happens in TCGs. Its not "dynamic" but the best cards of a set are often shortprinted (some card sheets are printed less than others, chase cards weirdly end up on said sheets more often than not)
Its straight up expected to happen in digimon tcg and ygo
I know digimon and ygo are predatory scum, but that seems… intended? Like, they’re chases because there were less of them printed, no? If they were printed in SR numbers, they’d be an SR?
@@capnandy462 To keep it simple, let's say that if you buy 10 booster packs you will likely get 1 UR (ultra rare), 3SR (super rare) and 6R (rare). These numbers are advertised and as such it is encumbant on the TCG sellers to abide by that probability ratio. The idea here is that UR's are seen as equally valuable, SR's equally valuable and R's likewise respectively, the whole basis in theory is that they should be equivalent in value How do you as a seller tweak the numbers to sell more boxes? First you make cards in each respective category (UR, SR, R, etc.) not equivalent in value, basically some UR's are super powerful and sought after and some are worthless. Then you short print the chase cards, the cards you know are going to be the most sought after. Both of these things together you could very well sue for in court, as they completely undermine the consumer protections laid out for you to honestly asess your purchase. Short printing should not even be a thing anymore, it used to happen with some printing products because of limitations in machining and manufacturing, but now doing it is entirely on purpose.
@@capnandy462so no what he’s saying is that sometimes cards or a certain rarity are short printed even at that rarity, making it less likely to appear then other cards at the same rarity meaning there is less of them then their should be. Famously this happened with Nekroz of Brionac in yugioh
@@rebound1340 wow. I’m not sure, but I believe, the technical term for that is “some bullshit”.
@@rebound1340 do you know if mtg does this? i know they recently got caught using AI to make cards, so i'm already so over them. it sucks because i love magic, but companies always ruin art like inevitably. it's like a sure fire thing you can always count on with capitalism.
This just confirms all the theories people have about gacha or chance mechanics in games. I guarantee the corpos behind these games dynamically adjust drop rates to keep the whales engaged and to try and hook new players. I’ve seen numerous times new players will use the systems in these games and they would win far more often than players who have been playing for awhile. The beginners luck, is just a manipulative ploy to hook people on the dopamine hits you get from gambling. This is a serious issue that will be the opiate epidemic of the next generation. The players of these games are being exposed to gambling at such early ages and the exposure is insanely frequent cause so many games have real money gambling as a core part of them. Gambling is extremely addictive and needs to be taken seriously, these real money gambling systems need to be illegal.
0:53 That is exactly why I fully agree with them passing a law that says if you're going to have loot boxes like this, there has to be something that tells you what your percentage chance of winning is so that people know if they're spending $50 on a loot box. There's only a 0.001% chance of them actually getting what they want instead of leaving it blank and then going well. How hard could it be?
It's obviously time to decide that loot boxes need to be removed from every single video game in existence. If Nexon is doing it, who else is doing it? Every video game company is incentivized to do this and no one would know unless there is massive investigations into each company individually. We cannot trust these publishers to do the right thing when their bottom line is involved due to loot boxes exponentially increasing micro-transaction purchases.
I think there was a bearded man from the 1840s who mentioned this I believe.
Nexon has been known to be one of the scummiest companies. Don't doubt many games do this, but I expect Nexon to be one of the worst big companies.
It was nexon bro, Korean law are protecting them, that's why all Korean MMO are pay-to-win
There should be massive investigations into each company individually. Video games are a $200 BILLION industry. If crane games and slot machines can be audited to ensure rates are accurate, so can video games.
@@Jarekx2007 Absolutely. Video gaming is now larger than music and movie industry I believe.
I love how they are customer's and not players. They knew what they were doing the whole time
For companies, they are not even customers but just walking moneybags from whom you can steal money. Why? Because when you see your customers in this way, you can put any morals aside and rip them off with a clear conscience. For companies, nothing is more important than keeping as much distance from customers as possible, because that makes it easier to rip them off. And with online games you never see your customers, they are just data and nothing more.
This isn't an isolated incident, this occured years ago in Second Galaxy regarding elite wingman and cost a lot more than a dollar. Players spent thousands of dollars USD on the item for hundreds of this loot box that dropped it for 1%. Yet not a single player I knew had been able to get it to drop. The devs after denying it was bugged admitted it was a bug. Instead of refunding the money they gave 5 of the broken item and said it was being fixed while keeping it in the store for months before it was supposedly fixed. Players that went to Google and Apple for refunds were banned with 3 completely different reasons in separate announcement given for the ban
If we have the spending numbers for the top spending players, could we not track what every player has spent? Therefore, in addition to the penalty, could the KFTC not enforce a repayment of mislead purchases to the accounts which bought those boxes?
The word "scam" often gets thrown around in relation to gaming but in this case this is a clear-cut case of flat out fraud!
Nexon needs a much stronger penalty than just $9M. I'd go as far as to say some upper level management who, if it can be proven, knew and implemented these systems should face jail time.
Don't know Korean laws but in a lot of countries a fine like this would open up the possibility of successfully suing the company. Now it's on them to prove that you would have bought the item knowing the real (lower) chances as well, or it's your money back (with interest).
So they might have to pay most of that money back in the following years.
That of course could be. Depends if that is a thing in south korea.
Did not expect it to be such a noteable game when you started. Never played Maplestory but i played Combat Arms for a brief period forever ago. Never put a dollar in but the monetization in that game was impressively predatory, so maybe i shouldn't be surprised...
And there have been people who argue FOR this kind of market behavior to come to the US and be considered the norm; where as a gamer, you just expect to spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on your favorite game, or you just stop playing them altogether. Companies also seem to think that the concept of us 'leasing' games from them is going to continue to work if they start making it fluid, where they actually come back after X number of years and take back the games you paid for with not even a partial refund. It's insane that companies think this kind of thing is acceptable; it's even moreso when you realize that, slowly but surely, the playerbase is ALSO starting to think it's ok with nothing out of the ordinary.
How is this massive scam not resulting in criminal charges and jail time? Some inconsequential monetary fine isnt gonna stop companies from doing it again.
nexon still pays taxes to the korean government, if they shut down nexon they lose a lot of money too
@@diddykangable You have no idea how this works do you.
antiquated laws that weren't prepared to handle such massive video game scandals, so they can only give their arbitrary max fine of 9mil
These people aren't even human, how horrible and scummy.
Nice headphones, what are they called ?
Also the reason they make the items impossible to achieve is because of this very simple formula even Gacha games use.
Unrealistic difficulty/odds => Player spends more time on game => Player spends more money on game => Company earns more rating & income off individual players.
If player ever achieves endgame => Player is likely to stop needing to spend as much money / will stop playing game => Company loses money.
It's literally that black and white sadly. I used to be pretty deep with the Gacha game sphere, and every item shop/battle pass, etc is just complete dogwater.
Thanks for covering this man. As an on and off MapleStory player it baffles me how cubes were even legal to begin with. Imagine playing Diablo 4 but the only way to enhance your items to get stronger is by spending real life money for a % chance at certain orders of stats….. but than having a % of that percentage to tier up your item. it’s truly bonkers.
Screw regaining trust, the government findings must be sufficient for people to sue for a full refund.
The worst thing to happen to the videogame business is that they discovered the game business.
The worst part is that they figured out that in this business you never see your customers in person, so you can reduce all your customers to numbers in a database, and that makes it super easy to push any morals aside and scam them and mainly to make their investors happy, rich people.
Anyone know what the first game footage was before Lost Ark?
For those who want more context about gear upgrades, there are 5 ways to upgrade a single piece of gear in maplestory (3 ways in reboot server). Items can have potential stats starting from rare to legendary. You can use an item called cubes to reroll those stats and potentially teir up to legendary, hence why we call it cubing. There are certain cubes that are free but they typically do not teir you all the way to legendary. The ones you need to spend real money on offer the highest chance to teir to legendary.
In reboot however, those same cubes only cost "mesos" which is what the in game currency is called. There is currently no way to directly purchase mesos with real money in reboot.
A little clarification for @6:50, the possible cube options that were impossible to roll (such as 3 lines of Boss Damage% and 3 lines of Ignore Enemy DEF%) were not ideal rolls, they were in fact horrible compared to the other available options. (ATT% which scaled higher for damage even against bosses) One could say it was a good thing that it was impossible to roll, but it was still VERY bad that it was never disclosed to the players until ~2019 and was always suspect to legal troubles for Nexon. The players essentially came to a community-conclusion that this was already the case, with nobody ever seeing those results on their cube rolls with even the biggest sample sizes imaginable.
Then why would they even do that? it helps getting better gear. how do you know they didn't lower the chances for ATT?
@@troglobb We don't know, but I've rolled enough 3 line ATT to say it's not the hardest thing in the world. The whole problem was saying things like 3 lines of boss damage or ignore enemy defense was possible when it in fact was not. They are very far removed from the ideal lines so the video gets that wrong big time.
@@Rainbowstunting I wouldn't say it's too far removed since there are situations where 3 lines of Boss Damage could be ideal for certain classes. If you somehow get 3L ATT/MATT on Emblem and Secondary, you would probably want 3L Boss damage for your Primary. And although ATT/MATT is generally better than Boss Damage and Ignore Defense, those two are definitely the 2nd and 3rd most desirable rolls.
should also note that one of the other options that was impossible( 3 lines of Drop Rate) was an ideal roll
@@Nimbly1617 Maybe I haven't seen those classes mained then because all I've seen is an optimal spread of 9/0/0 of full ATT or 8/1/0 either with one line of IED or boss. But that might be a GMS difference as well I guess.
I grew up playing Mabinogi, another one of Nexon's games that also has gacha, and I have so many good memories of it. I played it from the age of 11 or 12 up to 15 religiously, like every day, every spare second, then after that, on and off until I was about 20, and then tried again a couple of times after that before finally deciding I wasn't a fan anymore. I'll still occasionally check in on how it's doing and what kind of updates it's had. The last several years of me playing just saw more and more reliance on the gacha, and the inevitable power creep it made and I didn't want to spend so much money only to still be left behind. For context, I'm almost 29 as of writing this.
So, I'm pretty familiar with Nexon. I'm not at all surprised by this. Disappointed, but not surprised. Nexon has had a shitty reputation for as long as I've actually paid attention to stuff like that, so over a decade they've been disliked by their own playerbase. 💀
I remember I played this game called Combat arms by Nexon. They made you rent weapons and owning one was literally like $30 bucks. You could rent them with in game currency and to be fair the in game currency wasn’t the hardest to get.
First time I ever played a FPS shooter that made you rent weapons to this day imo that’s pretty scammy
I don't remember Nexon ever having "public trust" after what we got to see in the west how they handled DFO.
That was like 10-15 years ago or so?
I know they have always been known for bad mtx similar to NCsoft so maybe they just mean gain trust with KR because with the west it's impossible imo.
Nexon having public trust is a joke, every single game ever that is in any way related to them was sold off or has more micro transactions worth of money than an entire high end PC
Honestly appreciate that this video was made as a former MapleStory player myself, I've never spent money on cubes because they had those available for ingame currency in the Reboot servers, so I'd just grind it out, and probably still get scammed of my time because of the dynamic reduction for active players. Absolute L move by Nexon when their game could be so much better if it was nurtured with care instead.
That's the saddest part to me, Nexon has absolute gems of titles under their belt, essentially ruined because they've all in one way or another became P2W and extremely predatory financially.
I remember when it was a game and not a job.
After playing Aliance vs Empire (AxE) from Nexon in 2019 I can absolutely confirm that the more loot boxes I purchased, the fewer blade upgrades I got, I spent over 2 grand in that year and it ended with less and less drops to zero for the things I was trying to get.
I’ve been playing Maplestory since 2006, and stopped last year because of lack of time, every time I fancy playing again, I remember how Nexon treats players, and this was just the icing on the cake. So sad after growing up with this game.