First, I want to be clear that I don’t believe Kabam is intentionally altering or misrepresenting drop rates. Mistakes happen. If they get noticed they fix them like the 7* situation that just played out.
I do think it was a fair question about someone monitoring these though.
Many have said something along the lines of “it’s illegal to misrepresent the rates” or “Apple/Google requires accurate rates” or “Netmarble wouldn’t risk it”.
None of those mean or prove Kabam isn’t doing it and I’m not sure why they are being used as a valid argument. There plenty of illegal things that people do every day. There are plenty of contract terms that get breached every day. There are plenty of rules and codes that people and companies fail to follow all the time.
I think it’s a valid question to ask if anyone is responsible for ensuring the laws are followed or the contract is adhered to. In this case, the player base would need to collect a large amount of data to prove anything. Is anyone reviewing the whole data set from Kabam periodically to ensure accurate drops?
Again, I’m not suspecting or concerned about any intentional manipulation, I’m just curious. Saying “they wouldn’t because it’s illegal” is fairly meaningless if there is no actual oversight to ensure compliance.
That’s like saying this player didn’t mod because it’s against TOS.
It is not the same. Players break the rules all the time, because the consequences of breaking the rules is either non-existent or so small as to be judged worth the risk. However, companies do not generally commit widespread fraud for no reason. There's all kinds of examples of companies committing fraud to be sure, but there's usually some strong incentive to do so. There's essentially no incentive for Kabam or any other game operator to deliberately defraud its customers by manipulating lootbox odds, because they are completely within their rights to define those odds as anything they want and simply not lie about it. We have multirarity crystals where Kabam simply decided that 6* champs would have a 3% chance to drop, or 1% chance, or whatever. We have featured crystals where one specific champ has explicit rare chances to drop that once again, Kabam just made up. There are crystals with no posted odds at all, because Kabam is under no obligation to even tell you what they are.
When you literally make the game and make all the rules, cheating is completely nonsensical. If Kabam wanted to make a different tier of champion and make them rarer, they could just do so. And in fact, they did so: that's literally what the star ratings are: different rarity champs with different strengths and different rarities in crystals that contain multiple rarities.
This implies there are no laws or governance over this then which contradicts all the posts saying “it would be illegal”.
And the incentive would be to encourage spending on the chase without delivering to encourage more spending. If Kabam says a crystal had a 10% drop rate for the top prize, more people would buy it than if they said it had a .01% chance.
If it was advertised as 10% but actually had a .01% I’d bet people would buy more thinking the odds are in their favor to get the top prize.
Saying there is no incentive doesn’t make sense to me. Saying the risk/reward isn’t there for a company is interesting. I don’t know what the risk is. Would it be a fine? A court ordered refund? Or could they just send out more crystals with the right drop rates with no financial consequence?
And that is assuming they were caught. If nobody external is watching, how would they get caught and who would impose financial consequences?
(Disclaimer for all my posts in this thread: I don’t think Kabam is doing this at all. I just think it’s an interesting conversation.)
The law is that Kabam has to show drop rates for crystals are able to be bought with money. Kabam can get in trouble if they lie about those drop rates.
First, I want to be clear that I don’t believe Kabam is intentionally altering or misrepresenting drop rates. Mistakes happen. If they get noticed they fix them like the 7* situation that just played out.
I do think it was a fair question about someone monitoring these though.
Many have said something along the lines of “it’s illegal to misrepresent the rates” or “Apple/Google requires accurate rates” or “Netmarble wouldn’t risk it”.
None of those mean or prove Kabam isn’t doing it and I’m not sure why they are being used as a valid argument. There plenty of illegal things that people do every day. There are plenty of contract terms that get breached every day. There are plenty of rules and codes that people and companies fail to follow all the time.
I think it’s a valid question to ask if anyone is responsible for ensuring the laws are followed or the contract is adhered to. In this case, the player base would need to collect a large amount of data to prove anything. Is anyone reviewing the whole data set from Kabam periodically to ensure accurate drops?
Again, I’m not suspecting or concerned about any intentional manipulation, I’m just curious. Saying “they wouldn’t because it’s illegal” is fairly meaningless if there is no actual oversight to ensure compliance.
That’s like saying this player didn’t mod because it’s against TOS.
It is not the same. Players break the rules all the time, because the consequences of breaking the rules is either non-existent or so small as to be judged worth the risk. However, companies do not generally commit widespread fraud for no reason. There's all kinds of examples of companies committing fraud to be sure, but there's usually some strong incentive to do so. There's essentially no incentive for Kabam or any other game operator to deliberately defraud its customers by manipulating lootbox odds, because they are completely within their rights to define those odds as anything they want and simply not lie about it. We have multirarity crystals where Kabam simply decided that 6* champs would have a 3% chance to drop, or 1% chance, or whatever. We have featured crystals where one specific champ has explicit rare chances to drop that once again, Kabam just made up. There are crystals with no posted odds at all, because Kabam is under no obligation to even tell you what they are.
When you literally make the game and make all the rules, cheating is completely nonsensical. If Kabam wanted to make a different tier of champion and make them rarer, they could just do so. And in fact, they did so: that's literally what the star ratings are: different rarity champs with different strengths and different rarities in crystals that contain multiple rarities.
This implies there are no laws or governance over this then which contradicts all the posts saying “it would be illegal”.
And the incentive would be to encourage spending on the chase without delivering to encourage more spending. If Kabam says a crystal had a 10% drop rate for the top prize, more people would buy it than if they said it had a .01% chance.
If it was advertised as 10% but actually had a .01% I’d bet people would buy more thinking the odds are in their favor to get the top prize.
Saying there is no incentive doesn’t make sense to me. Saying the risk/reward isn’t there for a company is interesting. I don’t know what the risk is. Would it be a fine? A court ordered refund? Or could they just send out more crystals with the right drop rates with no financial consequence?
And that is assuming they were caught. If nobody external is watching, how would they get caught and who would impose financial consequences?
(Disclaimer for all my posts in this thread: I don’t think Kabam is doing this at all. I just think it’s an interesting conversation.)
There are no current laws that mandate they show Drop Rates. There ARE laws preventing them from falsely disclosing information. Not to mention contractual obligations and relationships they've maintained for a decade.
There is a law or there isn’t a law? One of you must be wrong.
And the incentive would be to encourage spending on the chase without delivering to encourage more spending. If Kabam says a crystal had a 10% drop rate for the top prize, more people would buy it than if they said it had a .01% chance.
So what you're saying is that when people demanded odds disclosures, and the app stores required odds disclosures for certain lootboxes, this was bad because it created an incentive to defraud.
Originally, Kabam did not disclose odds at all. They only started doing so when app stores changed their rules to require such odds disclosures. So for the entire history of the game until that happened, Kabam could not manipulate players in this way. Left to their own devices, they probably would have never published odds, and thus would have never had the ability to encourage more spending by lying about drop odds.
The people demanding odds disclosures are, by your argument creating opportunities for fraud that did not originally exist, and left to their own devices Kabam appeared to have no desire to pursue.
Yes, it may have been an unintended consequence but I feel like I provided a pretty clear example of a way to misrepresent the odds for financial gain.
I think people demanding to know the odds so they know what they are buying makes sense but it’s based on the published odds being accurate. If nobody but the company is monitoring these odds then it’s the chicken guarding the hen house and the opportunity for fraud still exists by falsely advertising inflated rates.
So let’s say a game company does this, who determines it, who investigates, and who enforces a consequence?
First, I want to be clear that I don’t believe Kabam is intentionally altering or misrepresenting drop rates. Mistakes happen. If they get noticed they fix them like the 7* situation that just played out.
I do think it was a fair question about someone monitoring these though.
Many have said something along the lines of “it’s illegal to misrepresent the rates” or “Apple/Google requires accurate rates” or “Netmarble wouldn’t risk it”.
None of those mean or prove Kabam isn’t doing it and I’m not sure why they are being used as a valid argument. There plenty of illegal things that people do every day. There are plenty of contract terms that get breached every day. There are plenty of rules and codes that people and companies fail to follow all the time.
I think it’s a valid question to ask if anyone is responsible for ensuring the laws are followed or the contract is adhered to. In this case, the player base would need to collect a large amount of data to prove anything. Is anyone reviewing the whole data set from Kabam periodically to ensure accurate drops?
Again, I’m not suspecting or concerned about any intentional manipulation, I’m just curious. Saying “they wouldn’t because it’s illegal” is fairly meaningless if there is no actual oversight to ensure compliance.
That’s like saying this player didn’t mod because it’s against TOS.
It is not the same. Players break the rules all the time, because the consequences of breaking the rules is either non-existent or so small as to be judged worth the risk. However, companies do not generally commit widespread fraud for no reason. There's all kinds of examples of companies committing fraud to be sure, but there's usually some strong incentive to do so. There's essentially no incentive for Kabam or any other game operator to deliberately defraud its customers by manipulating lootbox odds, because they are completely within their rights to define those odds as anything they want and simply not lie about it. We have multirarity crystals where Kabam simply decided that 6* champs would have a 3% chance to drop, or 1% chance, or whatever. We have featured crystals where one specific champ has explicit rare chances to drop that once again, Kabam just made up. There are crystals with no posted odds at all, because Kabam is under no obligation to even tell you what they are.
When you literally make the game and make all the rules, cheating is completely nonsensical. If Kabam wanted to make a different tier of champion and make them rarer, they could just do so. And in fact, they did so: that's literally what the star ratings are: different rarity champs with different strengths and different rarities in crystals that contain multiple rarities.
This implies there are no laws or governance over this then which contradicts all the posts saying “it would be illegal”.
And the incentive would be to encourage spending on the chase without delivering to encourage more spending. If Kabam says a crystal had a 10% drop rate for the top prize, more people would buy it than if they said it had a .01% chance.
If it was advertised as 10% but actually had a .01% I’d bet people would buy more thinking the odds are in their favor to get the top prize.
Saying there is no incentive doesn’t make sense to me. Saying the risk/reward isn’t there for a company is interesting. I don’t know what the risk is. Would it be a fine? A court ordered refund? Or could they just send out more crystals with the right drop rates with no financial consequence?
And that is assuming they were caught. If nobody external is watching, how would they get caught and who would impose financial consequences?
(Disclaimer for all my posts in this thread: I don’t think Kabam is doing this at all. I just think it’s an interesting conversation.)
The law is that Kabam has to show drop rates for crystals are able to be bought with money. Kabam can get in trouble if they lie about those drop rates.
First, I want to be clear that I don’t believe Kabam is intentionally altering or misrepresenting drop rates. Mistakes happen. If they get noticed they fix them like the 7* situation that just played out.
I do think it was a fair question about someone monitoring these though.
Many have said something along the lines of “it’s illegal to misrepresent the rates” or “Apple/Google requires accurate rates” or “Netmarble wouldn’t risk it”.
None of those mean or prove Kabam isn’t doing it and I’m not sure why they are being used as a valid argument. There plenty of illegal things that people do every day. There are plenty of contract terms that get breached every day. There are plenty of rules and codes that people and companies fail to follow all the time.
I think it’s a valid question to ask if anyone is responsible for ensuring the laws are followed or the contract is adhered to. In this case, the player base would need to collect a large amount of data to prove anything. Is anyone reviewing the whole data set from Kabam periodically to ensure accurate drops?
Again, I’m not suspecting or concerned about any intentional manipulation, I’m just curious. Saying “they wouldn’t because it’s illegal” is fairly meaningless if there is no actual oversight to ensure compliance.
That’s like saying this player didn’t mod because it’s against TOS.
It is not the same. Players break the rules all the time, because the consequences of breaking the rules is either non-existent or so small as to be judged worth the risk. However, companies do not generally commit widespread fraud for no reason. There's all kinds of examples of companies committing fraud to be sure, but there's usually some strong incentive to do so. There's essentially no incentive for Kabam or any other game operator to deliberately defraud its customers by manipulating lootbox odds, because they are completely within their rights to define those odds as anything they want and simply not lie about it. We have multirarity crystals where Kabam simply decided that 6* champs would have a 3% chance to drop, or 1% chance, or whatever. We have featured crystals where one specific champ has explicit rare chances to drop that once again, Kabam just made up. There are crystals with no posted odds at all, because Kabam is under no obligation to even tell you what they are.
When you literally make the game and make all the rules, cheating is completely nonsensical. If Kabam wanted to make a different tier of champion and make them rarer, they could just do so. And in fact, they did so: that's literally what the star ratings are: different rarity champs with different strengths and different rarities in crystals that contain multiple rarities.
This implies there are no laws or governance over this then which contradicts all the posts saying “it would be illegal”.
And the incentive would be to encourage spending on the chase without delivering to encourage more spending. If Kabam says a crystal had a 10% drop rate for the top prize, more people would buy it than if they said it had a .01% chance.
If it was advertised as 10% but actually had a .01% I’d bet people would buy more thinking the odds are in their favor to get the top prize.
Saying there is no incentive doesn’t make sense to me. Saying the risk/reward isn’t there for a company is interesting. I don’t know what the risk is. Would it be a fine? A court ordered refund? Or could they just send out more crystals with the right drop rates with no financial consequence?
And that is assuming they were caught. If nobody external is watching, how would they get caught and who would impose financial consequences?
(Disclaimer for all my posts in this thread: I don’t think Kabam is doing this at all. I just think it’s an interesting conversation.)
There are no current laws that mandate they show Drop Rates. There ARE laws preventing them from falsely disclosing information. Not to mention contractual obligations and relationships they've maintained for a decade.
There is a law or there isn’t a law? One of you must be wrong.
And the incentive would be to encourage spending on the chase without delivering to encourage more spending. If Kabam says a crystal had a 10% drop rate for the top prize, more people would buy it than if they said it had a .01% chance.
So what you're saying is that when people demanded odds disclosures, and the app stores required odds disclosures for certain lootboxes, this was bad because it created an incentive to defraud.
Originally, Kabam did not disclose odds at all. They only started doing so when app stores changed their rules to require such odds disclosures. So for the entire history of the game until that happened, Kabam could not manipulate players in this way. Left to their own devices, they probably would have never published odds, and thus would have never had the ability to encourage more spending by lying about drop odds.
The people demanding odds disclosures are, by your argument creating opportunities for fraud that did not originally exist, and left to their own devices Kabam appeared to have no desire to pursue.
Yes, it may have been an unintended consequence but I feel like I provided a pretty clear example of a way to misrepresent the odds for financial gain.
I think people demanding to know the odds so they know what they are buying makes sense but it’s based on the published odds being accurate. If nobody but the company is monitoring these odds then it’s the chicken guarding the hen house and the opportunity for fraud still exists by falsely advertising inflated rates.
So let’s say a game company does this, who determines it, who investigates, and who enforces a consequence?
What was unclear about what I said?
@Demonzfyre posted right above you saying there is a law about posting drop rates.
Tried to edit a typo and my post went to approval limbo so reposting this part.
Yes, it may have been an unintended consequence but I feel like I provided a pretty clear example of a way to misrepresent the odds for financial gain.
I think people demanding to know the odds so they know what they are buying makes sense but it’s based on the published odds being accurate. If nobody but the company is monitoring these odds then it’s the fox guarding the hen house and the opportunity for fraud still exists by falsely advertising inflated rates.
So let’s say a game company does this, who determines it, who investigates, and who enforces a consequence?
First, I want to be clear that I don’t believe Kabam is intentionally altering or misrepresenting drop rates. Mistakes happen. If they get noticed they fix them like the 7* situation that just played out.
I do think it was a fair question about someone monitoring these though.
Many have said something along the lines of “it’s illegal to misrepresent the rates” or “Apple/Google requires accurate rates” or “Netmarble wouldn’t risk it”.
None of those mean or prove Kabam isn’t doing it and I’m not sure why they are being used as a valid argument. There plenty of illegal things that people do every day. There are plenty of contract terms that get breached every day. There are plenty of rules and codes that people and companies fail to follow all the time.
I think it’s a valid question to ask if anyone is responsible for ensuring the laws are followed or the contract is adhered to. In this case, the player base would need to collect a large amount of data to prove anything. Is anyone reviewing the whole data set from Kabam periodically to ensure accurate drops?
Again, I’m not suspecting or concerned about any intentional manipulation, I’m just curious. Saying “they wouldn’t because it’s illegal” is fairly meaningless if there is no actual oversight to ensure compliance.
That’s like saying this player didn’t mod because it’s against TOS.
It is not the same. Players break the rules all the time, because the consequences of breaking the rules is either non-existent or so small as to be judged worth the risk. However, companies do not generally commit widespread fraud for no reason. There's all kinds of examples of companies committing fraud to be sure, but there's usually some strong incentive to do so. There's essentially no incentive for Kabam or any other game operator to deliberately defraud its customers by manipulating lootbox odds, because they are completely within their rights to define those odds as anything they want and simply not lie about it. We have multirarity crystals where Kabam simply decided that 6* champs would have a 3% chance to drop, or 1% chance, or whatever. We have featured crystals where one specific champ has explicit rare chances to drop that once again, Kabam just made up. There are crystals with no posted odds at all, because Kabam is under no obligation to even tell you what they are.
When you literally make the game and make all the rules, cheating is completely nonsensical. If Kabam wanted to make a different tier of champion and make them rarer, they could just do so. And in fact, they did so: that's literally what the star ratings are: different rarity champs with different strengths and different rarities in crystals that contain multiple rarities.
This implies there are no laws or governance over this then which contradicts all the posts saying “it would be illegal”.
And the incentive would be to encourage spending on the chase without delivering to encourage more spending. If Kabam says a crystal had a 10% drop rate for the top prize, more people would buy it than if they said it had a .01% chance.
If it was advertised as 10% but actually had a .01% I’d bet people would buy more thinking the odds are in their favor to get the top prize.
Saying there is no incentive doesn’t make sense to me. Saying the risk/reward isn’t there for a company is interesting. I don’t know what the risk is. Would it be a fine? A court ordered refund? Or could they just send out more crystals with the right drop rates with no financial consequence?
And that is assuming they were caught. If nobody external is watching, how would they get caught and who would impose financial consequences?
(Disclaimer for all my posts in this thread: I don’t think Kabam is doing this at all. I just think it’s an interesting conversation.)
The law is that Kabam has to show drop rates for crystals are able to be bought with money. Kabam can get in trouble if they lie about those drop rates.
First, I want to be clear that I don’t believe Kabam is intentionally altering or misrepresenting drop rates. Mistakes happen. If they get noticed they fix them like the 7* situation that just played out.
I do think it was a fair question about someone monitoring these though.
Many have said something along the lines of “it’s illegal to misrepresent the rates” or “Apple/Google requires accurate rates” or “Netmarble wouldn’t risk it”.
None of those mean or prove Kabam isn’t doing it and I’m not sure why they are being used as a valid argument. There plenty of illegal things that people do every day. There are plenty of contract terms that get breached every day. There are plenty of rules and codes that people and companies fail to follow all the time.
I think it’s a valid question to ask if anyone is responsible for ensuring the laws are followed or the contract is adhered to. In this case, the player base would need to collect a large amount of data to prove anything. Is anyone reviewing the whole data set from Kabam periodically to ensure accurate drops?
Again, I’m not suspecting or concerned about any intentional manipulation, I’m just curious. Saying “they wouldn’t because it’s illegal” is fairly meaningless if there is no actual oversight to ensure compliance.
That’s like saying this player didn’t mod because it’s against TOS.
It is not the same. Players break the rules all the time, because the consequences of breaking the rules is either non-existent or so small as to be judged worth the risk. However, companies do not generally commit widespread fraud for no reason. There's all kinds of examples of companies committing fraud to be sure, but there's usually some strong incentive to do so. There's essentially no incentive for Kabam or any other game operator to deliberately defraud its customers by manipulating lootbox odds, because they are completely within their rights to define those odds as anything they want and simply not lie about it. We have multirarity crystals where Kabam simply decided that 6* champs would have a 3% chance to drop, or 1% chance, or whatever. We have featured crystals where one specific champ has explicit rare chances to drop that once again, Kabam just made up. There are crystals with no posted odds at all, because Kabam is under no obligation to even tell you what they are.
When you literally make the game and make all the rules, cheating is completely nonsensical. If Kabam wanted to make a different tier of champion and make them rarer, they could just do so. And in fact, they did so: that's literally what the star ratings are: different rarity champs with different strengths and different rarities in crystals that contain multiple rarities.
This implies there are no laws or governance over this then which contradicts all the posts saying “it would be illegal”.
And the incentive would be to encourage spending on the chase without delivering to encourage more spending. If Kabam says a crystal had a 10% drop rate for the top prize, more people would buy it than if they said it had a .01% chance.
If it was advertised as 10% but actually had a .01% I’d bet people would buy more thinking the odds are in their favor to get the top prize.
Saying there is no incentive doesn’t make sense to me. Saying the risk/reward isn’t there for a company is interesting. I don’t know what the risk is. Would it be a fine? A court ordered refund? Or could they just send out more crystals with the right drop rates with no financial consequence?
And that is assuming they were caught. If nobody external is watching, how would they get caught and who would impose financial consequences?
(Disclaimer for all my posts in this thread: I don’t think Kabam is doing this at all. I just think it’s an interesting conversation.)
There are no current laws that mandate they show Drop Rates. There ARE laws preventing them from falsely disclosing information. Not to mention contractual obligations and relationships they've maintained for a decade.
There is a law or there isn’t a law? One of you must be wrong.
And the incentive would be to encourage spending on the chase without delivering to encourage more spending. If Kabam says a crystal had a 10% drop rate for the top prize, more people would buy it than if they said it had a .01% chance.
So what you're saying is that when people demanded odds disclosures, and the app stores required odds disclosures for certain lootboxes, this was bad because it created an incentive to defraud.
Originally, Kabam did not disclose odds at all. They only started doing so when app stores changed their rules to require such odds disclosures. So for the entire history of the game until that happened, Kabam could not manipulate players in this way. Left to their own devices, they probably would have never published odds, and thus would have never had the ability to encourage more spending by lying about drop odds.
The people demanding odds disclosures are, by your argument creating opportunities for fraud that did not originally exist, and left to their own devices Kabam appeared to have no desire to pursue.
Yes, it may have been an unintended consequence but I feel like I provided a pretty clear example of a way to misrepresent the odds for financial gain.
I think people demanding to know the odds so they know what they are buying makes sense but it’s based on the published odds being accurate. If nobody but the company is monitoring these odds then it’s the chicken guarding the hen house and the opportunity for fraud still exists by falsely advertising inflated rates.
So let’s say a game company does this, who determines it, who investigates, and who enforces a consequence?
What was unclear about what I said?
@Demonzfyre posted right above you saying there is a law about posting drop rates.
There is not a statute that says “You must publish drop rates in Marvel Contest of Champions.” There are laws that govern how a company may conduct itself more generally, such as laws against false advertising or other deceptive trade practices (knowingly publishing false drop rates, for example). Failure to comply with such laws could result not only in expensive litigation, but substantial damages.
Furthermore, because the game is available through the Google Play Store and the App Store, it must comply with the terms of service of those platforms or risk being removed. Removal from these stores would be the death knell of the game. Further, the platforms would likely choose not to do business with Kabam in the future because they would have proven themselves to be untrustworthy business partners, and it would essentially torpedo the company completely.
This is why it’s inane to think that Kabam is trying to sneak something past the consumer with drop rates. The risks are potentially catastrophic not only to the game, but the whole company (and quite possibly their parent company as well). Meanwhile, the potential benefit is marginal at best. Slightly more crystals sold, maybe? And realistically, they would actually see a decline in crystals sold if the drop rates were less than stated because many people are convinced to purchase crystals after seeing another player win. Fewer people winning means less incentive for others to go in on it. Casinos learned this lesson decades ago.
Tried to edit a typo and my post went to approval limbo so reposting this part.
Yes, it may have been an unintended consequence but I feel like I provided a pretty clear example of a way to misrepresent the odds for financial gain.
Yes, but the point is that if Kabam had the motivation to do this in the first place, they would have voluntarily published odds themselves, and would not specifically have resisted calls to publish odds. If they are doing this now, why didn't they do this in the past? Why didn't they take the trivial step of publishing odds, so they could then manipulate their customers by misstating those odds. What changed between then and now to turn Kabam from a company that deliberately tried to avoid using published odds to manipulate customers into a company perfectly happy to do so?
People say we don't know Kabam so we don't know what they are capable of. Except we do. We have incontrovertible evidence that prior to when Apple mandated odds publishing, Kabam was a company that had no desire to publish fictitious odds to manipulate customer purchasing behavior, because they took no steps however trivial to do so, and actively took steps to avoid doing so. The burden is now on the people who claim that Kabam is now a completely different company that has no problem doing this.
I think people demanding to know the odds so they know what they are buying makes sense but it’s based on the published odds being accurate. If nobody but the company is monitoring these odds then it’s the fox guarding the hen house and the opportunity for fraud still exists by falsely advertising inflated rates.
So let’s say a game company does this, who determines it, who investigates, and who enforces a consequence?
Generally, when you commit a crime it is the responsibility of the municipality that has jurisdiction to investigate, and if necessary prosecute you for that crime. If Kabam violated a specific criminal statute, they would be investigated by the appropriate law enforcement agency.
If you commit a tort, which is essentially harming someone else in ways that are not specifically crimes, then this is generally settled by a civil trial. It is the generally the responsibility of the harmed party to take action to seek remedy, and it is the responsibility of the harmed party to demonstrate by preponderance of the evidence, collected by their own efforts and legally allowable discovery, that their harm deserves remedy.
Ultimately, it is the players that are monitoring the company, and collectively they have the responsibility to take action against the company if they feel they are being defrauded. And if Kabam was manipulating odds in a way that was observable, this would not be difficult to prove. The only manipulations they could be doing would be inobservable ones, the kind that careful testing cannot detect. But those manipulations are so small, they wouldn't have any significant impact on the company itself either.
It is extremely difficult to engineer manipulation that benefits Kabam in a material way, but players cannot detect. And while no player can prove the odds are perfectly accurate, it is possible to prove *specific* crystal odds conspiracy theories false. I've proven enough of them to be false, that I'm a bit worried I would be called to testify at any trial that wasn't summarily dismissed.
If I was King of the Earth, I would make reading Coffee v Google mandatory reading before anyone was allowed to comment on lootboxes on the internet. Line for line, word for word, including references. The court could have simply dismissed the case but chose to specifically render legal opinions on all of the various claims set forth by Coffee, including the claim that lootboxes are illegal gambling under the law. In my opinion the court was very deliberate and made determinations that were extremely grounded in the law.
In fact the impression I get is the court felt that Coffee was inventing claims out of thin air, and decided to rule on every single one in order to justify denying any further leave to amend (in other words, deny the plaintiffs the opportunity to go back and try to change the complaint to rectify the problems noted by the court).
Comments
@Demonzfyre posted right above you saying there is a law about posting drop rates.
Yes, it may have been an unintended consequence but I feel like I provided a pretty clear example of a way to misrepresent the odds for financial gain.
I think people demanding to know the odds so they know what they are buying makes sense but it’s based on the published odds being accurate. If nobody but the company is monitoring these odds then it’s the fox guarding the hen house and the opportunity for fraud still exists by falsely advertising inflated rates.
So let’s say a game company does this, who determines it, who investigates, and who enforces a consequence?
Furthermore, because the game is available through the Google Play Store and the App Store, it must comply with the terms of service of those platforms or risk being removed. Removal from these stores would be the death knell of the game. Further, the platforms would likely choose not to do business with Kabam in the future because they would have proven themselves to be untrustworthy business partners, and it would essentially torpedo the company completely.
This is why it’s inane to think that Kabam is trying to sneak something past the consumer with drop rates. The risks are potentially catastrophic not only to the game, but the whole company (and quite possibly their parent company as well). Meanwhile, the potential benefit is marginal at best. Slightly more crystals sold, maybe? And realistically, they would actually see a decline in crystals sold if the drop rates were less than stated because many people are convinced to purchase crystals after seeing another player win. Fewer people winning means less incentive for others to go in on it. Casinos learned this lesson decades ago.
People say we don't know Kabam so we don't know what they are capable of. Except we do. We have incontrovertible evidence that prior to when Apple mandated odds publishing, Kabam was a company that had no desire to publish fictitious odds to manipulate customer purchasing behavior, because they took no steps however trivial to do so, and actively took steps to avoid doing so. The burden is now on the people who claim that Kabam is now a completely different company that has no problem doing this.
Generally, when you commit a crime it is the responsibility of the municipality that has jurisdiction to investigate, and if necessary prosecute you for that crime. If Kabam violated a specific criminal statute, they would be investigated by the appropriate law enforcement agency.
If you commit a tort, which is essentially harming someone else in ways that are not specifically crimes, then this is generally settled by a civil trial. It is the generally the responsibility of the harmed party to take action to seek remedy, and it is the responsibility of the harmed party to demonstrate by preponderance of the evidence, collected by their own efforts and legally allowable discovery, that their harm deserves remedy.
Ultimately, it is the players that are monitoring the company, and collectively they have the responsibility to take action against the company if they feel they are being defrauded. And if Kabam was manipulating odds in a way that was observable, this would not be difficult to prove. The only manipulations they could be doing would be inobservable ones, the kind that careful testing cannot detect. But those manipulations are so small, they wouldn't have any significant impact on the company itself either.
It is extremely difficult to engineer manipulation that benefits Kabam in a material way, but players cannot detect. And while no player can prove the odds are perfectly accurate, it is possible to prove *specific* crystal odds conspiracy theories false. I've proven enough of them to be false, that I'm a bit worried I would be called to testify at any trial that wasn't summarily dismissed.
In fact the impression I get is the court felt that Coffee was inventing claims out of thin air, and decided to rule on every single one in order to justify denying any further leave to amend (in other words, deny the plaintiffs the opportunity to go back and try to change the complaint to rectify the problems noted by the court).