New 'Loot Box' Regulations in China
China has just passed new regulations concerning to online games that includes some interesting clauses relating to 'loot boxes' and other similar systems. The new law requires developers to be transparent about the exact 'draw probabilities' of these items.
What this means for Hearthstone is that Blizzard will be required to reveal what the exact chances are of opening specific card rarities in your card packs, as well as confirm the existence of other systems and algorithms related to this. For example the 'pity timer' that was discovered by players but has as of yet never been officially confirmed / talked about.
While we already know fairly accurately what the average chances are for Hearthstone it will still be nice to have it officially confirmed.
Blizzard will be required to display this information either on a dedicated page on their (Chinese) website or on a prominent spot inside the game.
You can read the relevant sections of the new law below that was translated by /u/czhihong over on reddit:
- Online game publishers (who provide virtual goods or services with any form of random mechanisms) shall not directly request gamers to to indulge in such activities through a direct injection of cash or virtual credits.
They shall promptly and publicly announce information about the name, property, content, quantity, and draw/forge probability of all virtual items and services that can be drawn/forged on the official website or a dedicated draw-probability web page of the game. The information on draw probability shall be true and effective.
- Online game publishers shall publicly announce the random draw results by customers on the official website or in a prominent spot in-game, and keep records for government inquiry. The records must be kept for at least 90 days. When publishing the random draw results, appropriate measures should be taken to protect user privacy.
- When online publishers are providing virtual goods and services with any form of random draw properties, they shall provide players with an avenue to trade for other virtual goods, either using virtual cash or any other ways to obtain similar virtual goods and services.
It is not certain how China will act on developers who do not comply to these new rules, and so far Blizzard has not yet commented if they are planning to.
These regulations only apply to the Chinese market but because Hearthstone is identical across regions everyone benefits from it! So far people around the internet have reacted very positively about the new law. Tell us how you feel about it!
^This. They'll probably just hand over the information tbh, they already do with rare drop % for WoW items. Some things only have 0.01% chance to drop (mounts, etc.) and you can only farm that raid once per week. We have it quite easy here in HS.
Once you have 3/4th of the whole set, 3/4th of the cards you get will be duplicates, that's just math.
That makes sense. The more of the collection you have, the greater your chances of pulling something you already have. That's fairly elementary statistics. It's frustrating of course, but if the cards you draw are independent of the cards you have that's absolutely what you'd expect to happen.
With the probabilities figured out by the community it would be quite lucky if you were able to complete an entire expansion in 250-300 packs, since you get only 15 Legendaries on avg in 300 packs and the probability to not open a single duplicate legendary in 15 Legendaries is 19/20*18/20*...*6/20 = 0.061% I don't see any conspirancy here, it's just simple maths.
I mean, we have the numbers (roughly) anyway, so why should Blizzard be mad about making them official? This is the first thing the Chinese government has done for the Internet that makes sense.
We already have pretty good stats for Hearthstone packs so I think it won't be very useful
I love China, I have many friends in China, I like doing business with China
*in Donald Trump voice*
Any randomness based game with professional competitive scene and/or random purchasable rewards should also have to get their RNG system certified by a reliable authority, like gambling sites do. Not only centralized servers, but LAN servers too, when hosting "big money" e-sports events.
Seems legit. Perhaps we get same rule here, it's only fair. The again, I remember when they stopped telling you how many people were on a server, and just said it's up or down. If your competitors know how many servers you have and how many people pay $x to play a month, easy to draft a rival business plan or project, get capital and sink you. That being said, casinos are transparent about their payout and even use it as a selling point (we got that loosest slots in Vegas). Diablo 3 would frequently announce double gold, xp, legendary loot drop rate for promotional purposes. Why not a double legend drop rate weekend? This could actually be an incredibly positive thing.
+ 1000 to you! Blizz could also make a killing if they added pack discount sales like they do in Heroes of the Storm for Heroes and Skins.
China's legislative probably are hearthstone fanboys who bought 500 packs and got 4 shadow ragers and a gadgetzan ferryman in every pack.
By all known laws of aviation, the chance for that to happen is basically zero. But they are so unlucky that they don't care, they get that unlucky anyways and create a law.
Cygames used to hide such stats in every game just like every other apps, then, in another title called Gran Blue Fantasy, some people paid more than 6k dollars to get a certain seasonal (powerful) character from the lottery, which caused social controversial.
Believe it or not Cygames is still considered one of the sneakiest gaming company in Japan.
Makes you wonder why they don't just tell you the chances in the first place.
Oh, that kooky Chinese government at it again!
Well, atleast this time it's not passing another law to make it's people more complacent.