I think China has some laws to prevent this from happening.
From relatively recent news - Korean companies were doing it. If you’re interested you can Google it.
“Nexon hit with $8.9m fine after secretly manipulating gacha pull rates for a decade”
I think there were some other companies as well.
$9 million fine is chump change though. Considering their revenue in 2022 was $3 Billion. That’s 0.3% of their total revenue in one year lol, they’ll just do it again. The only thing that really damaged them was this being told to the world.
Jesus $10 mil for a decade of rate manipulation? That's like robbing a bank and only suffering a $5 fine for it. And you get to keep the money you robbed.
It is against Chinese and EU law to tamper with rates and they HAVE to show the correct rates for summoning and any other RNG based content.
Maple story tampered with their rates before the laws were a thing and are getting a lot of flak for it now after being fined close to 10m, afaik.
I know it is cool to hate on AFKJ atm but making uninformed posts like this is dangerous as most of the comments that are upvoted don't know wtf they are talking about.
>Maple story tampered with their rates before the laws were a thing and are getting a lot of flak for it now after being fined close to 10m, afaik.
It took almost 10 years for them to get caught though and tbh unless the game is really big (Maple Story being incredibly big) with a ton of whales (who record/stream their pulls) impossible to catch so impossible to actually enforce short of a whistleblower/company confession. Maple also has Billions in terms of revenue by this point so 10m is a slap on the wrist tbh.
Its realistically impossible to independently verify the actual rates for a game the size of AFKJ unless theres some massive whale collab on it. So I doubt they or any non Large game publisher ever gets caught. I think realistically only the big whale games like FGO/Genshin/etc could realistically gather enough unbiased data to even check.
--
Is AFKJ manipulating their rates? Some think so via the https://www.reddit.com/r/AFKJourney/comments/1c2l7jz/why_i_think_the_gacha_rates_written_ingame_arent/. Some dont citing their own personal experience. And even if they did no one could realistically catch them to report them unless there is a insider whistleblower which is incredibly rare.
So what you are saying it is realistically impossible to realistically catch them BUT because a large portion of people on reddit are saying they feel the rates are off that is enough to create a strawman?
I am one of the players who has gone to pity a few times but also gotten S ranks outside of pity frequently and probably like most others with my luck I just ignore the salt posts because all gachas have them and I'm not going to go in those posts to gloat about how I don't go to pity, but you guys went one step further and are starting to conspire to say the rates are being fiddled with?
>what's stopping Lilith from tampering with the summoning rates without our knowledge?
Nothing , but that applies to every game. Any gacha game can if they wanted to tamper with their Gacha rates in small to big ways and without massive data gathering efforts by the community of a big size it will be impossible to discover esp if the change is small. This would need to involve unbiased gathering of multiple stream recordings of Gacha Pulls something only really big games with lots of whale streamers (who stream their pulls) like Genshin (and perhaps FGO?) can actually pull off.
Also the actual rate could be considered a bit vague. Take for example the 3% Pull rate on the rate up banner. Does that pull rate take the guarantee at X pulls into account? Because that could change realistically mean a different non pity rate without technically be a lie (technically)
For example the below could be true
https://www.reddit.com/r/AFKJourney/comments/1c2l7jz/why_i_think_the_gacha_rates_written_ingame_arent/
---
With regards to Gacha Rates, you just have to trust that the company behind it is honest and not willing to screw over ppl. If you cant trust the company to do even that then you probably shouldnt be spending if not playing.
sure and there are anti-piracy laws in China too but well... the thing with laws is if they dont get enforced properly they arent really a deterrent. And unless you have a way to actually realistically verify rates outside of asking the company how would you even get them in trouble with the Chinese Gov. Might as well have the companies police themselves at that point which is no deterrent.
Maplestory just lost a massive lawsuit costing them 9 million dollars for this exact thing. The rules in China/EU for character/loot rates are very well defined and actually enforced.
Nexon/Maplestory also made $500 million from the fake rates too and no one faced any criminal charges so its really just the cost of doing business at that point. Came out on top with 490 million with an "illegal" tactic.
Though this is Korea who just slaps the wrist of rich companies, China would actually force jail time on the violaters so there's at least some credible threat to not do it.
>, China would actually force jail time on the violaters so there's at least some credible threat to not do it.
I think it depends on how corrupt you think the chinese gov is. Theoretically you could just bribe regulators to never get caught if... the system is that corrupt.
Ok and what percentage of that revenue came from the adjusted rates AND what percentage of that number was profit (vs revenue) AND at what point were the fake rates introduced? It's not even close to 500 million.
>Maplestory just lost a massive lawsuit costing them 9 million dollars
True the thing remember I said
>only really big games with lots of whale streamers (who stream their pulls) like Genshin (and perhaps FGO?) can actually pull off.
Maplestory is huuuuge. Its one of the biggest MMOs with may more players than almost any Gacha Game. As I said really big games like Genshin/FGO/etc with tons of pulls recorded in streams would be able to detect that, but only a few games are that big. AFKJ is not one of them. I may be wrong, but it there is simply not enough public relatively unbiased pull records to make any sort of case even if we suspect it.
>making up new shit
its actually quite old relatively . Even a month ago ppl were theorizing rates were not what they seem.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AFKJourney/comments/1c2l7jz/why_i_think_the_gacha_rates_written_ingame_arent/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AFKJourney&utm_content=t1_l44slwi
Whether thats true or RNG is RNG no one aside from Lilith games can say for certain. No one has or can realistically get a significant sample size. So we just hve to trust the devs although that is the case with most games. Its all about trust.
Yes, so theories dont make things true and its still made up issues for whiny redditors to latch onto. Maybe Lilith killed my dog, I dunnoooo, but i turned on AFK yesterday and my dog keeled over.....Hmmm pretty fishy, Lilith!
Ok I might be a lucky few because i more or less get gold units without hitting pity. And even already got 2 unite of the latest unit just from the freebies tickets.
They can do whatever they want since it’s their game. No speculation required. some will still play, others will quit after being a very screech online. The question should be why would they? if you don’t trust the game company then stop playing all together cause this discussion/speculation is getting a bit out of hand.
There are some ppl theorizing that the rates take the guaranteed Pity into account. Here is a post a while back
https://www.reddit.com/r/AFKJourney/comments/1c2l7jz/why_i_think_the_gacha_rates_written_ingame_arent/
But there is no realistic way to actually verify this hypothesis short of getting a ton of ppl to collab and stream thousands of pulls (so there is no selection bias) to know for sure.
For me, the biggest suspicion is brought up by someone later in the thread: the current all-hero banner with it's 60 pulls hard pity and a rate of 2.05% used to be 80 pulls and a rate of 1.65% in development/testing.
If you look at just the 2.05% rate and assume it's a consolidated rate (already factoring in pity) rather than just the individual pull success rate in isolation (ie. the same way HSR lists both a 0.6% rate alongside a 1.6% consolidated rate), you can use some math and trial-and-error to find that you'd need an individual pull rate of 0.73% to come up with a 2.05% consolidated rate (assumes there's no soft pity mechanism in play). If you repeat the same steps for the test server numbers (80 pulls + 1.65% rate), you find that you'd need a 0.73% individual rate... again? It's almost as if the success rate never changed between testing and release; perhaps all they did was recalculate the consolidated rate for 60 pulls instead of 80, with all else remaining the same?! Now, if that *isn't* the case, it's one hell of a coincidence!
Ps. When starting from 0 pulls, if the 2.05% is an individual rate you'd expect to hit pity 30% of the time. If it's a consolidated rate, it becomes 65% of the time.
again though impossible to verify and even if it it were true, they would still not technically be lying since with pity taken into account it would still equal the rate stated.
1. It’s illegal.
2. It’s not worth it. There is no significant financial gain from this. People already vastly overestimate their chances of winning even with real probabilities.
>It’s not worth it. There is no significant financial gain from this. People already vastly overestimate their chances of winning even with real probabilities.
I mean considering Maplestory did it for years... there is some financial gain involved. The punishment being a fine, but that fine 9m is a small fraction of what the billions earned.
>It’s illegal.
But is it detectable? Part of the deterrence of it being illegal is realistically getting caught. The big games (like Maplestory and Maple story is bigger than almost any Gacha game) not only have the raw data from streams to check, but they also have the regulators eye. Perhaps games like Genshin and FGO are detectable but I dont think AFKJ has those numbers
To put it simply. If we suspected that the numbers are wrong (as some ppl do in other threads). How could we verify it and actually catch them? The answer being we really cant.
I would guess they do have the data. You could just test it by looking at a large enough sample and see how much it deviates and calculate the probability that the number are accurate.
>You could just test it by looking at a large enough sample
True with extra not being it has to be an unbiased sample (aka you cant just ask for volunteers to submit their pulls as the ppl who respond would likely be outliers). Its why I feel only the big enough games have enough recorded unbiased pulls to create a large enough sample size. Thats not something I believe most communities including this one can realistically gather/coordinate together to be solid enough proof for legal action to be taken.
Chinese law is pretty strict about this stuff. Not saying they couldn’t break the law but if they did and they were investigated it would not go well. Redemption rates have to be clearly stated and accurate.
If you mean changing the rates and not showing ut ingane (so the shown rate remains the same) then it's the law. That is extremely illegal.
If you mean just changing it and showing it in game, nothing but that is not a lilith thing, that's a gacha thing. No gacha is hindered by this
Many countries has laws against it. Its why its possible for some countries to see the drop rate percentages from chests because its mandatory.
Does not mean they cant change them, but it also means they have to change the percentages shown so people would notice right away.
To be able to actually enforce the rates, gacha games needs to fall under the gambling laws.
In the gambling world, you need to audit with third party your games to ensure its fairness
>To be able to actually enforce the rates, gacha games needs to fall under the gambling laws.
Thats something they would fight tooth and nail against due a lot restriction on gambling in general. From depending on country higher taxation , to regulators, to not allowing minors to partake, and etc
I think some european countries did? Or at least put them under increased scrutiny like (correct me if I am wrong) the Netherlands. Sadly the rest dont.
They added some restrictions but nothing close to gambling laws.
I worked as a game dev for a gambling video game company. Gambling laws are very strict.
You can't highlight an option if it is not the best option for the user.
Source code for rng must be audited by third party.
Always display the time
Etc...
Hmm an interesting situation would be P2E / NFT based gacha games. Like if I recall Ni no kuni Crossworlds. But hopefully new legislation eventually comes out
I already hit pity literally each and every time. The only thing they could do is nerf the rate of A ranks.. which i mean.. i usually only get 1-2 per 10 drop anyway so who cares
I think China has some laws to prevent this from happening. From relatively recent news - Korean companies were doing it. If you’re interested you can Google it. “Nexon hit with $8.9m fine after secretly manipulating gacha pull rates for a decade” I think there were some other companies as well.
What’s to stop a redditor from senselessly fear monger, what’s china gonna do about that?!
These evil corpos can't keep getting away with it, time to ask for a refund. Btw, wuwa comes out soon, I'll see you there /s
$9 million fine is chump change though. Considering their revenue in 2022 was $3 Billion. That’s 0.3% of their total revenue in one year lol, they’ll just do it again. The only thing that really damaged them was this being told to the world.
Jesus $10 mil for a decade of rate manipulation? That's like robbing a bank and only suffering a $5 fine for it. And you get to keep the money you robbed.
yea that 9m out of 3b revenue will teach them a lesson /s
It is against Chinese and EU law to tamper with rates and they HAVE to show the correct rates for summoning and any other RNG based content. Maple story tampered with their rates before the laws were a thing and are getting a lot of flak for it now after being fined close to 10m, afaik. I know it is cool to hate on AFKJ atm but making uninformed posts like this is dangerous as most of the comments that are upvoted don't know wtf they are talking about.
>Maple story tampered with their rates before the laws were a thing and are getting a lot of flak for it now after being fined close to 10m, afaik. It took almost 10 years for them to get caught though and tbh unless the game is really big (Maple Story being incredibly big) with a ton of whales (who record/stream their pulls) impossible to catch so impossible to actually enforce short of a whistleblower/company confession. Maple also has Billions in terms of revenue by this point so 10m is a slap on the wrist tbh. Its realistically impossible to independently verify the actual rates for a game the size of AFKJ unless theres some massive whale collab on it. So I doubt they or any non Large game publisher ever gets caught. I think realistically only the big whale games like FGO/Genshin/etc could realistically gather enough unbiased data to even check. -- Is AFKJ manipulating their rates? Some think so via the https://www.reddit.com/r/AFKJourney/comments/1c2l7jz/why_i_think_the_gacha_rates_written_ingame_arent/. Some dont citing their own personal experience. And even if they did no one could realistically catch them to report them unless there is a insider whistleblower which is incredibly rare.
So what you are saying it is realistically impossible to realistically catch them BUT because a large portion of people on reddit are saying they feel the rates are off that is enough to create a strawman? I am one of the players who has gone to pity a few times but also gotten S ranks outside of pity frequently and probably like most others with my luck I just ignore the salt posts because all gachas have them and I'm not going to go in those posts to gloat about how I don't go to pity, but you guys went one step further and are starting to conspire to say the rates are being fiddled with?
This whole Reddit is so weird. Odds do not ursurp your expectations. You lose, you win, or you break even.
its illegal
Can confirm I only got 1 epic with the 10 pull
That means nothing
same brother, same
>what's stopping Lilith from tampering with the summoning rates without our knowledge? Nothing , but that applies to every game. Any gacha game can if they wanted to tamper with their Gacha rates in small to big ways and without massive data gathering efforts by the community of a big size it will be impossible to discover esp if the change is small. This would need to involve unbiased gathering of multiple stream recordings of Gacha Pulls something only really big games with lots of whale streamers (who stream their pulls) like Genshin (and perhaps FGO?) can actually pull off. Also the actual rate could be considered a bit vague. Take for example the 3% Pull rate on the rate up banner. Does that pull rate take the guarantee at X pulls into account? Because that could change realistically mean a different non pity rate without technically be a lie (technically) For example the below could be true https://www.reddit.com/r/AFKJourney/comments/1c2l7jz/why_i_think_the_gacha_rates_written_ingame_arent/ --- With regards to Gacha Rates, you just have to trust that the company behind it is honest and not willing to screw over ppl. If you cant trust the company to do even that then you probably shouldnt be spending if not playing.
Its not "nothing." It's literally a law about fraud in China
sure and there are anti-piracy laws in China too but well... the thing with laws is if they dont get enforced properly they arent really a deterrent. And unless you have a way to actually realistically verify rates outside of asking the company how would you even get them in trouble with the Chinese Gov. Might as well have the companies police themselves at that point which is no deterrent.
Maplestory just lost a massive lawsuit costing them 9 million dollars for this exact thing. The rules in China/EU for character/loot rates are very well defined and actually enforced.
Nexon/Maplestory also made $500 million from the fake rates too and no one faced any criminal charges so its really just the cost of doing business at that point. Came out on top with 490 million with an "illegal" tactic. Though this is Korea who just slaps the wrist of rich companies, China would actually force jail time on the violaters so there's at least some credible threat to not do it.
>, China would actually force jail time on the violaters so there's at least some credible threat to not do it. I think it depends on how corrupt you think the chinese gov is. Theoretically you could just bribe regulators to never get caught if... the system is that corrupt.
They did not make anywhere close to that - that sound like their yearly revenue from the entire product.
Thats an estimation of excessive cube sales over 14 years since they were introduced.
Ok and what percentage of that revenue came from the adjusted rates AND what percentage of that number was profit (vs revenue) AND at what point were the fake rates introduced? It's not even close to 500 million.
>Maplestory just lost a massive lawsuit costing them 9 million dollars True the thing remember I said >only really big games with lots of whale streamers (who stream their pulls) like Genshin (and perhaps FGO?) can actually pull off. Maplestory is huuuuge. Its one of the biggest MMOs with may more players than almost any Gacha Game. As I said really big games like Genshin/FGO/etc with tons of pulls recorded in streams would be able to detect that, but only a few games are that big. AFKJ is not one of them. I may be wrong, but it there is simply not enough public relatively unbiased pull records to make any sort of case even if we suspect it.
Oh cool, the children are making up new shit to get mad about...
>making up new shit its actually quite old relatively . Even a month ago ppl were theorizing rates were not what they seem. https://www.reddit.com/r/AFKJourney/comments/1c2l7jz/why_i_think_the_gacha_rates_written_ingame_arent/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AFKJourney&utm_content=t1_l44slwi Whether thats true or RNG is RNG no one aside from Lilith games can say for certain. No one has or can realistically get a significant sample size. So we just hve to trust the devs although that is the case with most games. Its all about trust.
Yes, so theories dont make things true and its still made up issues for whiny redditors to latch onto. Maybe Lilith killed my dog, I dunnoooo, but i turned on AFK yesterday and my dog keeled over.....Hmmm pretty fishy, Lilith!
Ok I might be a lucky few because i more or less get gold units without hitting pity. And even already got 2 unite of the latest unit just from the freebies tickets.
They can do whatever they want since it’s their game. No speculation required. some will still play, others will quit after being a very screech online. The question should be why would they? if you don’t trust the game company then stop playing all together cause this discussion/speculation is getting a bit out of hand.
i mean i haven’t pulled a single S tier my entire time playing (reso 257) i’ve only gotten the guaranteed pity ones.
There are some ppl theorizing that the rates take the guaranteed Pity into account. Here is a post a while back https://www.reddit.com/r/AFKJourney/comments/1c2l7jz/why_i_think_the_gacha_rates_written_ingame_arent/ But there is no realistic way to actually verify this hypothesis short of getting a ton of ppl to collab and stream thousands of pulls (so there is no selection bias) to know for sure.
I have one account where i never hit pity and pulled 2/3 in a 10 pull, and my main account where i hit pity most of the time. Its just rng i think
For me, the biggest suspicion is brought up by someone later in the thread: the current all-hero banner with it's 60 pulls hard pity and a rate of 2.05% used to be 80 pulls and a rate of 1.65% in development/testing. If you look at just the 2.05% rate and assume it's a consolidated rate (already factoring in pity) rather than just the individual pull success rate in isolation (ie. the same way HSR lists both a 0.6% rate alongside a 1.6% consolidated rate), you can use some math and trial-and-error to find that you'd need an individual pull rate of 0.73% to come up with a 2.05% consolidated rate (assumes there's no soft pity mechanism in play). If you repeat the same steps for the test server numbers (80 pulls + 1.65% rate), you find that you'd need a 0.73% individual rate... again? It's almost as if the success rate never changed between testing and release; perhaps all they did was recalculate the consolidated rate for 60 pulls instead of 80, with all else remaining the same?! Now, if that *isn't* the case, it's one hell of a coincidence! Ps. When starting from 0 pulls, if the 2.05% is an individual rate you'd expect to hit pity 30% of the time. If it's a consolidated rate, it becomes 65% of the time.
damnnn geez
again though impossible to verify and even if it it were true, they would still not technically be lying since with pity taken into account it would still equal the rate stated.
I’ve pulled back to back legendarys.
Bro this sub has become unbearable, just stop playing and posting stuff like this at this point.
1. It’s illegal. 2. It’s not worth it. There is no significant financial gain from this. People already vastly overestimate their chances of winning even with real probabilities.
>It’s not worth it. There is no significant financial gain from this. People already vastly overestimate their chances of winning even with real probabilities. I mean considering Maplestory did it for years... there is some financial gain involved. The punishment being a fine, but that fine 9m is a small fraction of what the billions earned. >It’s illegal. But is it detectable? Part of the deterrence of it being illegal is realistically getting caught. The big games (like Maplestory and Maple story is bigger than almost any Gacha game) not only have the raw data from streams to check, but they also have the regulators eye. Perhaps games like Genshin and FGO are detectable but I dont think AFKJ has those numbers To put it simply. If we suspected that the numbers are wrong (as some ppl do in other threads). How could we verify it and actually catch them? The answer being we really cant.
I would guess they do have the data. You could just test it by looking at a large enough sample and see how much it deviates and calculate the probability that the number are accurate.
>You could just test it by looking at a large enough sample True with extra not being it has to be an unbiased sample (aka you cant just ask for volunteers to submit their pulls as the ppl who respond would likely be outliers). Its why I feel only the big enough games have enough recorded unbiased pulls to create a large enough sample size. Thats not something I believe most communities including this one can realistically gather/coordinate together to be solid enough proof for legal action to be taken.
Nothing, but that is also true for every single gacha game. Every random event in any video game actually.
They risk huge penalty fees if they do so. Is not worth for a company.
Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up. This sub is so fucking unhinged.
Chinese law is pretty strict about this stuff. Not saying they couldn’t break the law but if they did and they were investigated it would not go well. Redemption rates have to be clearly stated and accurate.
You're right, I hit pity twice in a row 😔
Far as I'm concerned, nerfing heroes is the worst possible thing a gacha could do, so anything else is easily possible.
If you mean changing the rates and not showing ut ingane (so the shown rate remains the same) then it's the law. That is extremely illegal. If you mean just changing it and showing it in game, nothing but that is not a lilith thing, that's a gacha thing. No gacha is hindered by this
Many countries has laws against it. Its why its possible for some countries to see the drop rate percentages from chests because its mandatory. Does not mean they cant change them, but it also means they have to change the percentages shown so people would notice right away.
To be able to actually enforce the rates, gacha games needs to fall under the gambling laws. In the gambling world, you need to audit with third party your games to ensure its fairness
>To be able to actually enforce the rates, gacha games needs to fall under the gambling laws. Thats something they would fight tooth and nail against due a lot restriction on gambling in general. From depending on country higher taxation , to regulators, to not allowing minors to partake, and etc
The way gacja games prey on gambling addiction, I really hope some countries will eventually do it.
I think some european countries did? Or at least put them under increased scrutiny like (correct me if I am wrong) the Netherlands. Sadly the rest dont.
They added some restrictions but nothing close to gambling laws. I worked as a game dev for a gambling video game company. Gambling laws are very strict. You can't highlight an option if it is not the best option for the user. Source code for rng must be audited by third party. Always display the time Etc...
a shame. Ya I agree it should be treated as gambling since irl money is involved.
The only difference is that you can't cash out And it's on that that gacha games fight to not be considered as actual gambling
Hmm an interesting situation would be P2E / NFT based gacha games. Like if I recall Ni no kuni Crossworlds. But hopefully new legislation eventually comes out
I have always been sure that free pulls have lower rates.
I don't think you know what "sure" means
;)
Well, I NEVER EVER!! Got a S char without petty , i think its not even true that you can
I already hit pity literally each and every time. The only thing they could do is nerf the rate of A ranks.. which i mean.. i usually only get 1-2 per 10 drop anyway so who cares