We have laws for data protection in today’s day and age, and we have law enforcement that protects you against scams and fraudulent transactions. But there is a bigger issue that I see in the gaming industry that is not talked about much.
Time for some back story and my personal experience:I used to love playing DotA 2 a lot and used to spend many an hours on the game. In 2018, during The International event, Valve came out with a battle pass, a concept they had brought into DotA 2 in previous years. I succumbed to making purchases of the levels/battle pass points/loot boxes, not having purchased any battle pass previously.
What is the main issue in microtransactions/loot boxes?
Showing the odds of drops to the end users?
No! We have laws protecting us from this kind of issue. Or do we?
Valve has been known for paying attention to the r/DotA2 subreddit’s top posts. Exploits and bug fixes which make the front page are usually fixed immediately, even the most useless bugs. And the most annoying ones aren’t fixed if they don’t make the cut.
Back to The International 8’s battle pass story. The subreddit filled up with many front page posts about how people were not getting the rare/ultra rare drops from the treasures of the battle pass. Valve, notorious for their communication with the community, stayed silent for a while. They eventually broke the silence saying that they checked their server code and found no issues with the drop related algorithm. There was still an outpouring number of posts from people about not getting rare drops. Valve posted some time after that, that they did in fact, find an issue with the algorithm, and that they had fixed it then. Valve said that they gave out rewards to random users who had faced this issue. I did not get this reward drop either, even though I just spent a lot of money, getting to more than 2000 battle pass levels that year. (Not going into detail there, that’s not the point here. But it’s worth mentioning that the algorithm of this fix itself could have been a problem and we’d not know). Was this issue fixed on time? I don’t think so. It was about half the time of the entire battle pass event that this issue was persistent. Many people like me already spent a ton of money because they wanted to reach a particular level.
Let’s see how things work in gambling.
RTP. It stands for Return to Player Percentage. The basic idea is that if a player puts in $100 for a spin, and the game has an RTP of 90%, then you will win $90 back. It depends on the number of spins you do, so it’s random. For example, in an ideal world, in the above example, you will get a $90 return on the very first spin itself. But let’s say you run out of luck, and you get a $2 reward on the second spin. This is not favorable for the player as the average goes way down after 2 spins. Now on the next spin, you hit a jackpot because you got lucky on the random, and you got $900 return, your average shoots up really fast. Simulating millions/billions of spins, the % of return is evaluated. This does not guarantee your return %, it is just a general average of what you’d get back as rewards. This logic transfers very easily into gaming, mainly loot boxes and similar RnG related algorithms.
What does gambling have to do with loot boxes and where is the real issue in gaming?
You’ll discuss with any gaming enthusiast, and the topic of whether loot boxes are a form of gambling or not, will spark a pretty interesting conversation almost always. I definitely think they are. I do not find that to be a bad thing though. The rush of gambling is nothing different than the rush of gaming and killing that pesky boss that you’ve been trying so hard to kill.
So where is the issue? Gambling laws are region specific, and having slot/casino games in certain jurisdictions need the relevant government lab’s approval. Any gambling game that is to be put out in any jurisdiction, has to go through rigorous testing to make sure that there’s no funny business going on behind the hood. (I’m not really sure about how the legal stuff works in this regard, but there definitely are strict regulations here).
Now we go back to the DotA 2 lootboxes opening issue I mentioned before, how does the end user know that they’re really getting what they paid for? Valve describes in their battle pass page about the different treasures in the battle pass, and how the hero sets from the treasures are tradable on the steam marketplace. Assuming that any one person buys the battle pass or levels for the battle pass to get the rare/ultra rare sets from the treasure, then it’s immoral (maybe even illegal) if the algorithm is not working as it is intended. Valve also gave out a non marketable and non tradable courier to everyone with the battle pass. If they would have given out non marketable and non tradable rewards to people affected by the faulty algorithm, while the players would normally have received tradable and marketable items, it would be immoral/illegal.
What’s the fix for this problem?
Solution #1: Government organizations have their own testing centers for server patches in games. This might not be a practical solution, as testing can take a long time, and gaming environments are much more agile than gambling. Gaming would have more frequent server updates than in case of gambling.
Solution #2: Government organizations have access to all versions of the server that have an algorithm. If any issues arise, and players report issues, then these organizations can verify if there is an issue with algorithms. Testing can continue even if end users do not report issues.
tl;dr
There needs to be some oversight on server code/algorithm, not just client side virus/malware checks on platforms like steam, epic games, etc.
Comments