WeMade headquarters in Seongnam. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEJONG, Apr. 18 (Korea Bizwire) – The Fair Trade Commission of South Korea has launched an investigation into allegations that the online game “Night Crows” manipulated the probabilities of obtaining in-game items.
According to industry sources, the commission dispatched investigators to the headquarters of WeMade, the game’s developer, in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, to secure data related to the item probabilities in Night Crows.
Night Crows is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that WeMade released in South Korea in April 2022. It was previously a hit title, topping the sales charts on domestic app markets.
On March 29, ahead of the implementation of a new law mandating disclosure of loot box probabilities, the Night Crows team announced through a notice that “the probability information on the website for a certain random item differed from the actual probability.”
The random item in question provides materials for enhancing character performance.
The developer corrected the listed probabilities as follows: For legendary-grade items, from 0.0198% to 0.01%; for hero-grade items, from 1% to 0.32%; and for rare-grade items, from 7% to 3.97%. This meant the actual probabilities were only half or one-third of the originally stated rates.
Conversely, the probability of obtaining the lowest-value items was adjusted upward from 91.9802% to 95.7%, indicating it had been understated.
While the developer attributed the discrepancy to “a mistake during information registration,” the Fair Trade Commission is investigating the possibility of intentional probability manipulation by the game company to boost sales.
This is not the first time a probability adjustment disclosure has sparked manipulation allegations. Last month, the online game “Ragnarok Online” also announced that the probabilities for some items had been incorrectly displayed.
The commission is reportedly conducting on-site investigations at Gravity, the developer of Ragnarok Online, as well.
Additionally, an uproar ensued when it was revealed that in Webzen’s “MU Archangel,” the probability of obtaining certain items was set to 0% until a specific number of attempts, a system known as “bottom fishing.”
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
