Update 8:58 PM EDT: Added some strings.
Buying Arcane Dust? Blizzard Gets Around Loot Box Regulations in China
This evening a new patch hit the Hearthstone CDN for the Chinese servers. Included in this patch are some minor text adjustments and an interesting couple of new images which change the store over to a "purchase Arcane Dust" mode.
This is very likely only to ever be China only change.
- It has been confirmed that players in China now purchase Dust from the in-game shop.
- Upon purchase of Arcane Dust, players receive a gift from Blizzard with Card Packs equal to the amount of Arcane Dust Purchased.
- This is to get around the new gambling laws (see speculation section below) surrounding loot boxes in games.
Thanks to nobravery for the image provided via iyingdi.com.
Datamined Images
A new file for the StoreSwitchButtons was added which contains a CN suffix. This is usually an indicator that this image is only going to be used on clients which connect to the Chinese server. This file has an Arcane Dust Jar button in the usual spot for the button for card packs (see difference below).
In addition to this image, a StoreFrontIcon was also added for Dust to match the button above.
New Strings
There's some great new strings available.
Quote from HearthPwn
- GLUE_CHINA_STORE_BOOSTER_GIFT - Gift:\n{0} Packs
- GLUE_CHINA_STORE_WELCOME_BUNDLE_GIFT_1 - Gift:\n\n10 Packs
- GLUE_CHINA_STORE_WELCOME_BUNDLE_GIFT_2 - 1 Legendary Card
- GLUE_STORE_PRODUCT_DETAILS_HEADLINE_DUST - Dust Bundles:
- GLUE_STORE_PRODUCT_NAME_DUST
- {0} |4(Dust,Dust) with {1} {2} Gift |4(Pack,Packs)
- 0=quantity of dust, 1=quantity of packs, 2=pack type
- GLUE_STORE_PRODUCT_DETAILS_FIRST_PURCHASE_BUNDLE_DUST
- 10 Dust which also includes: 10 Classic packs and 1 random Classic class-specific legendary minion
- Each pack has 5 cards, with at least 1 Rare or better
- Dust can be used to craft cards in the Collection Manager
- GLUE_STORE_PRODUCT_DETAILS_DUST
- Your Dust comes with a set of packs
- Each pack contains 5 {0} Hearthstone Cards and at least 1 card will be Rare or better
- Dust can be used to craft cards in the Collection Manager
Speculation
Update: This isn't speculation anymore since it's now live. Leaving this information because its important.
Out of pure speculation, my guess would be that this could be a backup plan in case Chinese regulatory agencies aren't happy with the way Blizzard presented the drop rates of cards thanks to the Loot Box regulations law. Should China ultimately want more information on the card packs, forcing people to buy dust instead of card packs would be a good way around giving up their secret sauce. It's even possible that you buy some arcane dust and as a reward, Blizzard gives you "free" card packs along with that purchase as a "bonus". Time will certainly tell!
What Do You Think?
Expand upon your response in the comments below!
My only question is WHY China always has some exclusive things? Has Blizzard relocated to China now or something?
And China is a market too big for Blizzard to ignore.
And if you want the same thing, lobby your gouvernement officials the pass a similar gamble law.
I wouldnt mind the OPTION to buy dust.
We all know how much value you get from packs when you dont have cards from the set, but at some point you are like "yea... another 40 dust pack". In the future we will have the "legendaries you dont own" system, but if you miss 1 good legendary and 5 bad legendary it still sucks if you have to dust 2-3 bad legendarys to get the one you want. Why not just buy the dust and craft the card direcly? Those who want to gamble can... i dont mind, but for me this would be the consumer friendly way.
Or let us trade cards? maybe i would like to buy them and we meet in the middle. You dont dust it for a "joke value" and i get the card that isnt part of the meta cheeper then by crafting it.
Or let me "upgrade" cards to golden. Yes, its not needed... but why do i have to dust a legendary that i own for 400 dust (value 1600) and then craft a card for 3200, losing 1200 dust?You know something is wrong when even progamers cant get thier tournament decks golden. Hell, even Kripp... a person that does play arena almost every day and gets like 1000 packs per release cant get a all golden set... this is insane if you think about it!
As much as i liked Adventures for the pure card value (20€ for 5 or more legendarys) i disliked that if you want one of those cards in gold you had to dust the real card, because there is no other way to get a gold version.
Kripp could get an all golden set, but I think Rania wouldn't be happy with him spending the extra money.
I think all of those are very bad ideas. I'd rather just make things cheaper directly.
Swapping cards between accounts or upgrading to golden or any such things all have the same basic result: it becomes cheaper to craft the cards you want. This may be a very good goal, but trading is a bad way to address it. There would have to be some sort of elaborate UI built to facilitate it, which would eat into developer time, either increasing expenses for Blizzard or delaying content or other meaningful changes (18 deck slots for each of wild and standard?). I don't want Blizzard to waste time and money building a trading system, or alternate upgrade-to-golden features, when there are far easier solutions. Blizzard would be better off to increase the amount of dust you get from disenchanting cards, or decrease the crafting costs while keeping the dust values the same, or decrease pack costs, or increase gold payouts. These would be far simpler in terms of coding, likely only requiring a few values to be changed, rather than building a new UI.
For example, if you still got 5/20/100/400 for dusting a card, but crafting costs went down to 30/80/300/1200. Or if the costs were the same as now, but you got 10/40/150/600 from dusting an existing card. And if quest gold values all went up by 50%, and perhaps the win-three bonus increases to 20g, but still caps at a daily 100g cap.
These would all have the same basic impact on the game economy as allowing folks to trade cards between accounts, but with significantly less coding effort required.
Now, they surely know better.
But if purchase is systematically on dust + bonus... Well the bonus is practically part of the purchase. The main part, if it is the biggest.
In other words, you buy the bonus, when it is guaranteed systematically.
So i am unsure on how it ca ne a workaround.
Multinational corporation trying to get around local laws? IMPOSSIBRU!
Oh I thought Hearthstone was owned by a small Indy company...
Let me comment the very same thing I did on the arena thing that was posted a few hours ago:
They can't be transparent, if they did that'd make 'em look really bad.
Generally I am against government regulating what your private company can or can't offer as a service/product, but given how hearthstone is terrible at getting its sh*** together, I just want this to go bad for everyone. Nothing like a sh**storm to get a company to start trying a little harder.
ez
China seems kind of fucked up with their priorities... Oh, wait...
Seems like a really dumb workaround, this is so obvious I hope blizzard will be fined for such a move it's very clear that the players don't puchase arcane dust, but packs it's the other way around.
You need to be extra dumb to not notice it's a way to manipulate the law in china.
People literally do this all the time in America at least with no problem. Such as breweries selling food at inflated prices and you get a free beer with it, among other things.
No one will be fooled by the new system, but I don't see why Blizzard should be fined. It fits within the letter of the law, and the law is ridiculous to begin with. A ridiculous law should be met with an equally ridiculous solution (but legal) solution.
But its in China. And if it fits the law then it fits it, even if it is ridiculous.
I don't think you understand how loopholes work. Companies around the world use them all the time to get around laws that inhibit their normal operations. A judge isn't going to say, "Hey, I know what you're trying to do here! You're following the law but the players are really after the packs so it's actually like the dust is the free reward part! Gotcha!" No, the transaction is money for a set amount of dust, so there is no random element, and you get free packs for every "particle" of dust. All that matters is how Blizzard words it. This gets around the law and the players get the packs they are after. I can't imagine an alternative to get around such an insane law.
Blizzard isn't the only company that have done that. Yeah everyone know it's a workaround but nobody care, how easy it is to "bypass" the law just show how stupid it is.
78 "packs" for 56 USD
what a bargain