Three game companies fined for loot box systems

Loot boxes and microtransactions are two words that have become rather controversial in games, especially in the last year or so, with games like Star Wars Battlefront II receiving particular heat for their approach to monetising their games, and now The Korea Herald has reported that NextFloor, Netmarble, and Nexon have been fined almost a million US dollars by Korea's Fair Trade Commission over their loot box practices.

Nexon received the heftiest fine of $875,000, while Netmarble got $55,000 and NextFloor got $4,600, and the reason the former received so much more is mostly for its game Sudden Attack. The company reportedly advertised loot boxes for a Sudden Attack event, where two of 16 pieces of a puzzle were offered in sales of $0.85, granting an in-game bonus when the puzzle was completed.

The FTC believes that consumers thought the odds of obtaining each piece of said puzzle was the same, but some only had a 0.5% chance of appearing in a loot box. They used the example of a player who spent $430 to get all the pieces as an indicator that it was negatively impacting players.

Do you think we'll see more fines like these?

Thanks, Kotaku.