Nexon was fined 11.6 billion yen ($8.85 million) by the Korea Fair Trade Commission for changing the drop rates of Maple Story and Bubble Fighter items "multiple times" between 2010 and 2021 and not telling anyone about the changes, according to a Korea Economic Daily report ...

Cubes, as they are known in Maple Story, are random items that cost approximately ₩ ($1.50) each and are used to change or upgrade the power of equipment in the game. According to the report, the cubes were added to the game in May 2010, but shortly after that, Nexon began tinkering with the drop rates, making more powerful cubes appear less frequently.

Nexon continued to change the probabilities until March 2021, sometimes making particularly high-demand cubes not drop at all, but did not notify players of the changes.

Loot box drop rates were a major topic of discussion a few years ago: in 2017, China enacted a law requiring all game makers to reveal loot box drop rates, and a few years later, facing increasing pressure from the US government, major North American publishers followed suit. Knowing the drop rate allows players to know the likelihood that they will get something good for their money (i.e., how aggressively they should, at least in theory, put their money down).

This is not the first time Nexon has been fined by the KFTC for fiddling with drop rates: in 2018, the company was fined ㌆939 million ($875,000 at the time) for deceiving Sudden Attack 2 players about loot box drop rates. With that, the new fine is also the largest ever imposed by the Commission for violations of Korea's e-commerce consumer protection laws.

"We imposed the largest fine because the cube is the core product of [MapleStory], the violation period is long, and this is the second violation by Nexon following Sudden Attack," said Kim Jeong-gi, director of the Market Surveillance Department of the Korea Fair Trade Commission.

Nexon accepted the KFTC's decision, but said it may file an objection. We have contacted Nexon for more information and will update if we hear back.