Last week we reported on a fine levied by Korea’s FTC against Nexon Korea, which was found to be manipulating the probability of earning gear-improving cubes in MapleStory without notifying players. This revelation from the KFTC understandably had splash damage effects on player trust, so Nexon held an “emergency livestream” to try to explain the matter to players.
According to a synopsis posted by Redditor Salsa_Nachos, Nexon basically was fudging cube numbers in the interests of power balance: By Nexon’s reckoning, the cube system’s initial release caused imbalance after three months, while red and black cube simplification caused an apparent surplus of legendary gear against the low number of players. In both cases, Nexon claimed to be sorry, but most players are reading this less as contrition and more like the company was merely sorry it got caught.
The stream was also used by Nexon Korea to clear the air about assumptions of its monetization as a result of the KFTC fine; the studio claimed that cube rate rigging based on stats doesn’t happen and that the company doesn’t keep NX transaction logs as far out as 2013. It also claims that other gacha systems like Star Force and Wonderberry are applied correctly.
That final point got a bit muddier when players discovered that Nexon Korea holds patents for dynamic per-player RNG rates that take into account things like frequency of drop rates based on gacha activity, player location, friend list stats, and rarity levels.
However, a mod of the MapleStory subreddit points out that there has been no evidence that these patents were applied to the MMO between 2011 and 2016 and suggests that people thinking these systems were being used without being discovered is purely speculation. Another Redditor put together a timeline of manipulation so fans can more readily follow along just in case this is all beginning to make heads spin.
