It flew under the radar, but earlier this week, Kakao addressed a messy situation in ArcheAge we can charitably call a credit compensation caper. Readers might recall that back in December as Kakao was relaunching the game in the west, the studio removed a huge number of items and cash-shop items from the game and replaced them with compensatory reward credits, which players could then spend in the new cash shop.
However, at the end of February, Kakao announced that it had overcompensated players and then clawed back a significant amount of that credit balance, sending some players who hadn’t spent anything down to 0, which most definitely wasn’t a fair trade. Other players who had purchased credits in the interim also saw their balances wiped out, with no explanation for how those calculations were made, leading to dramatic but not unjust headlines about Kakao stealing credits.
Earlier this week, Kakao admitted it had communicated its changes and the rationale for them inadequately. The studio says that it had originally miscalculated the compensation of multiple items, including Lucky Hiram. “The total value of additional credits provided was of such a high amount that we could not responsibly allow them to remain once the error was detected,” Kakao says. “Initially, we looked at the value of incorrectly distributed credits and removed as much as we could in order to restore to a zero balance. This means that whilst it was possible that credits that were purchased were removed, this only occurred if the number of credits spent exceeded the total amount that was intended to be received.”
Of course, that all went awry, and now Kakao says it’s trying to fix the situation.
“Whilst a full rollback of the credit removal is not an option we will be making adjustments to how the removal occurred in a way that we hope is fairer. Any credit balance that was removed will be returned up to the remaining value of purchased credits. Any credits that were removed on Feb 24th will be converted into Rosen Crystals after correcting for the miscalculation with Lucky Hiram Infusions (100 credits is equal to 1 Rosen Crystal). […] Regardless of any calculation adjustment, any paid credits which were removed will be returned at maximum value.”
“We know that our actions led to great distress amongst the community and we wish to apologise for the harm that was caused,” the studio concludes. Let’s hope the math has gone better this time.
