Lootboxes are using predictive algorithms to tailor drop odds?

Audioboxer said:

Brian can you share any anecdotal feelings if there has been a bit of "fear" for fellow journalists to poke and pry into this beehive prior till now? Some are saying a bit more now that it's exploded into the political realm, but it sometimes seems like due to the size and power of a company like Activision Blizzard/EA they can be a bit daunting to go up against. There wasn't too much said in US/EU journalism about Overwatch and Blizzard not being happy with their drop rates being public info in China. It's not an international issue in some senses, but it also kind of is as Overwatch is an international IP.

If you ask me that move also set quite a clear precedent Activision Blizzard were not going to be actively giving up their drop rates by choice any time soon. Disclosed drop rates are one of the biggest desires of self-regulation. No one is budging on it though. I have one example of it (in a F2P game no less)



https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1844310

I know you've been covering a lot with Rollingstone, so keep that up!

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I don't think there's really any fear, it's just a hard thing to crack without any publishers or developers willing to talk about it. The story will eventually break once developers start leaking information, but until then, we have to rely on self-regulation or, unfortunately, laws.

Brian Crecente said:

I don't think there's really any fear, it's just a hard thing to crack without any publishers or developers willing to talk about it. The story will eventually break once developers start leaking information, but until then, we have to rely on self-regulation or, unfortunately, laws.

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So without burning any bridges would you say the devs and pubs can be a bit unwilling to open up or answer questions? In order for self-regulation to work it would have to be something that was spoken about more often to be transparent and obviously raise consumer confidence. Right now it's pretty apparent a decent chunk of gamers are at rock bottom confidence levels. It might only be a small portion of the tens of millions of gamers out there, but the internet can be a noisy bunch.

Obviously noisy enough to contribute to the Government popping in and starting to ask what is going on here/who is doing what?

The stuff described in the op should be illegal.

The lootbox thing hit the zeitgeist to the extent that it is being legislated against in various places. It's not just gamers who don't like that. It's parents, it's gambling awareness . But if it does turn out that the odds were fixed all along it's going to be a bigger story.

But it's hard to know what the truth is. The pubs won't disclose and you'd have to buy a lot of lootboxes to put evidence together yourself (I would like to see this done though).

Even if you get a leaker, they can just change the algo I guess.

It's interesting that, if they are manipulating odds for the better, it would be better communicated to the player to encourage spending more. The fact that we are not told about this probably means that the odds are actually getting worse.

RexNovis said:

Thank you for clarifying. I can see how that is indeed very different from what is mentioned in the OP and I get that it is common practice in retail and hotter industries but I can't say I'm personally very comfortable with that level of individual consumer focused selling either. But that's just me. It's certainly a far cry from altering purchasable package odds to the most profitable avenue for individual users.

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Hopefully you aren't the paranoid type because companies have been doing this for years:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Basically anytime you use a credit card or apply for loyalty programs you become a statistic. Also this is how online ads work, in case you don't know.

Calabi said:

So EA and Activision lack the technology and ability to do this? People have already outlined that it needn't be complicated to do.

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Where did I say that EA or Activision lack the technology and ability?

The claim is "What I'm saying is that many/most games don't use RNG to determine the contents of your crate, what they do is look at your account, work out what you are looking for and tease you." an that "Algorithms that could examine your play history and figure out what you actually wanted and then give you things that were not that to ensure maximum spend to get what you want."

I said, in the text you quoted, "I'll go as far to say that even if the average developer/wanted to do this, they would lack the technology and/or the expertise to implement it effectively." and also "Again, that isn't to say some company isn't doing it. But it isn't happening at any scale, and is certainly not common and nor is it in any way an "open secret"."

What I am saying seem pretty clear to me.

MarioW said:

Where did I say that EA or Activision lack the technology and ability?

The claim is "What I'm saying is that many/most games don't use RNG to determine the contents of your crate, what they do is look at your account, work out what you are looking for and tease you." an that "Algorithms that could examine your play history and figure out what you actually wanted and then give you things that were not that to ensure maximum spend to get what you want."

I said, in the text you quoted, "I'll go as far to say that even if the average developer/wanted to do this, they would lack the technology and/or the expertise to implement it effectively." and also "Again, that isn't to say some company isn't doing it. But it isn't happening at any scale, and is certainly not common and nor is it in any way an "open secret"."

What I am saying seem pretty clear to me.

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I'm not trying to pick apart what you are saying, but I don't know, I'm just confused, aren't most implementations of loot boxes in games mandated by the publishers. Like I haven't seen or heard of many developers saying what this game really needs are loot boxes. Of course there's always exceptions I'm sure there's some, but I think they are the minority. There aren't even that many games with loot boxes as far as I can tell.

Looking at this link which isnt definitive at all, but is a good starting guide.
https://www.giantbomb.com/loot-boxes/3015-9059/games/

Near enough over half of the games listed are from Activision and EA and a few more are from Warner Bros even Ubisoft. I'm not saying its an open secret or anything it clearly isn't, but I'm just confused with your average developer quote. The majority of average developers aren't implementing loot boxes. The majority of loot box systems seem like they are coming from the large publishers, which surely do have the expertise and also expertise in other areas which can add to it.

I dont know whether they are using some non random manipulative system, but unless you know people at all these publishers I don't see how you can say they aren't using something like it or dont have the expertise. They all seem to be into why wouldn't they manipulate the odds sometimes, its simple, if player rolls a 6, 5 times next roll equals 1.

Calabi said:

I'm not trying to pick apart what you are saying, but I don't know, I'm just confused, aren't most implementations of loot boxes in games mandated by the publishers.
...
Looking at this link which isnt definitive at all, but is a good starting guide.
https://www.giantbomb.com/loot-boxes/3015-9059/games/

Near enough over half of the games listed are from Activision and EA and a few more are from Warner Bros even Ubisoft.

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That list is only a small fraction of the games which employ lootboxes.

I'm not saying its an open secret or anything it clearly isn't, but I'm just confused with your average developer quote. The majority of average developers aren't implementing loot boxes.

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My comment was in the context of developers employing lootboxes, not all developers.

The majority of loot box systems seem like they are coming from the large publishers, ...

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That isn't really the case.

I dont know whether they are using some non random manipulative system, but unless you know people at all these publishers I don't see how you can say they aren't using something like it or dont have the expertise.

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Again, I didn't say all companies don't have the technology and/or expertise. I said most don't.

As to "who I know", I know plenty of people at larger companies including EA and Activision (I employ some ex staff from them in fact too). That's kind of irrelevant to a degree. What I think holds more weight is what is alleged in the OP isn't discussed in any formal or informal setting I have ever seen. If "many/most" lootbox games did this, as claimed, there would be a meaningful amount of material and conversations related to it floating around the industry, and that just isn't the case.

They all seem to be into why wouldn't they manipulate the odds sometimes, its simple, if player rolls a 6, 5 times next roll equals 1.

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This is a good example. How do you know that is the right way to get more money out of that particular player? How do you know having it entirely random won't be more beneficial? How do you know doing that won't make the player leave the game in frustration, or otherwise stop spending on lootboxes entirely? How do you know being overly generous and fudging the results in a positive direction won't produce? How do you segment and target the players that would be susceptible to such a technique? How do avoid players that would be turned off by it? How many times rolling a 1 is the optimal number? What happens if the player rolls a 5 instead of a 6, how do we fudge things then?

Human behaviour is a complicated thing to predict, and more complicated to manipulate through this sort of obfuscated mechanism where you are relying on the player to be forming their own (predictable but incorrect) model of how things are working. The tech/tools, reporting, and analysis/design expertise needed to allow such individualized dynamic setups, run experiments, report on the results, and draw the right conclusions (i.e. those that make you more money) is non trivial.

And again, that is in the case where the developer even chooses to go down that path. My contention is most companies are not sitting around discussing how to "cheat the players" in the context of what is alleged in the OP in the first place.

MarioW said:

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This is a good example. How do you know that is the right way to get more money out of that particular player? How do you know having it entirely random won't be more beneficial? How do you know doing that won't make the player leave the game in frustration, or otherwise stop spending on lootboxes entirely? How do you know being overly generous and fudging the results in a positive direction won't produce? How do you segment and target the players that would be susceptible to such a technique? How do avoid players that would be turned off by it? How many times rolling a 1 is the optimal number? What happens if the player rolls a 5 instead of a 6, how do we fudge things then?

Human behaviour is a complicated thing to predict, and more complicated to manipulate through this sort of obfuscated mechanism where you are relying on the player to be forming their own (predictable but incorrect) model of how things are working. The tech/tools, reporting, and analysis/design expertise needed to allow such individualized dynamic setups, run experiments, report on the results, and draw the right conclusions (i.e. those that make you more money) is non trivial.

And again, that is in the case where the developer even chooses to go down that path. My contention is most companies are not sitting around discussing how to "cheat the players" in the context of what is alleged in the OP in the first place.

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I doubt they view it as cheating the player though and I highly doubt they would talk about it so openly that competition or regulators might here. Like you say it wouldn't work exactly like I outline but, most developers already know that players do not like random dice. Firaxis has a whole analysis of how they keep the players happy within their supposed random Xcom games.

How do they know just having completely random loot boxes isnt turning players off of their game. People have been framing the manipulations as adjusting the odds away from what the players want but wouldn't it be better to throw the player a bone every so often, you dont need to tailor it that much or do much data farming. Just give them that legendary or rare item slightly more often than chance would. The Hook model. People arent hard to manipulate at all, we have whole industries predicated on it and it clearly does work.

In my opinion if they are using loot boxes they will have to manipulate them in some way, a completely random loot box system is not likely to retain players or encourage them to buy things any more than a fixed reward loot system.

They have to see some benefit from loot boxes over other systems, in players retention and sales otherwise why are they using them. And they wont be able to help themselves, once there in, and embedded they wont be able to help themselves in manipulating things. What happens if we do this to this player what happens if we change these variables. They have to be doing the analysis, like why has loot boxes suddenly become so popular? Players dont seem to like them that much, but the publishers seem to be enamoured with them. Its somehow better than whatever systems they've used before that they are moving on mass to it. And how did they all find out gamers were just like gamblers mostly interested in completely random rewards in the first place.

MarioW said:

But with respect to transparency, I'm all for a level of transparency and disclosure but I think that has its limits as well. Some in the thread have called for making source code available to be released, and I definitely think that is an unreasonable request given there is the risk of losing IP or competitive advantage in making such things publicly available.

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As I was the one to say that, to be fair I only meant open source the algorithm responsible for loot drops (and not through an open source license obviously because of IP, just print the algorithm). It should be rather straightforward in its dependencies and randomization. If it isn't. well...

Also I'm not saying it was a reasonable request, I'm sure companies don't want that kind of exposure, or the hassle of having an accountancy firm check their code. I'm just saying that as long as they don't, customers simply have to assume the worst. It's too lucrative for devs not to do it, and the onus is on the dev to create trust.

When Apple added in their guidelines that Loot box/RNG rates would be disclosed many of these games completely overhauled their RNG prior to disclosing the rate.

I don't think data collection is really as big an issue as some people in here are making it sound. People will open thousands of lootboxes in popular games on streams. It's how we knew the percentages behind Hearthstone packs. You could probably program an image recognition algorithm to create Excel spreadsheets for you with the contents of each lootbox if it's a hassle to do it manually for a game for whatever reason.

Even if devs disclose the drops rates, how can one be sure they aren't gaming the system like the OP describes?

Geoff said:

Famous at last :)

That's my post in the OP. I'm not going to say anything about where I got it from apart from that it was from someone who works on stuff you would have heard of, who would knows what goes on in big studios and who made his opinion very clear, which hopefully I represented accurately. He mentioned no names.

I know that isn't worth shit to a forum full of people who don't know who the fuck I am (I am no-one interesting btw and not an insider) so maybe just ignore the source. Just ask yourself what do you actually know about the drop rates in COD or FIFA or Overwatch or Battlefront? Does the game or the developer explicitly state that drop rates are random? Has anyone even asked them if they are random? Has anyone ever done any analysis? Would it be illegal if they weren't random? Would it be more profitable? Depending on the answers to those questions, why wouldn't they do it?

I've tried to draw attention to this before on here and the old forum but there really doesn't seem to be much interest from anyone. At least not until now maybe.

Anyway, I have no intention of getting anyone in trouble so I don't really have any further part in this story but I see some journalists posting (Hi Brian :) ). It would be great if you guys looked at this. It would blow that battlefront story out of the water!

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I missed this post, but maybe see if he will speak anonymously to samred or Brian Crecente? Even through yourself?

Both Arstechnica and Rollingstone have done a good job covering news around loot boxes/monetization in the industry. It's not like dubious ethical practices around winnings odds needs to be a widescale issue in the industry, even one or two instances of questionable decisions can highlight why zero transparency is not good for consumers handing over portions of their monthly wages.

I've always assumed they all do this, who would find out and who would stop them anyway?

RexNovis said:

I didn't want to attribute to you unless I got permission to do so but just realized for whatever reason the message I thought I sent you asking if it was ok never actually sent. I updated the op to link to your original post. Sorrry about that. Not entirely sure what happened with the message.

I'm still hoping this story gets picked up by journalists and we get some comprehensive looks at the way these things really operate. At the very least it seems like Ars is looking into it. Whoever publishes this first will, id imagine, spur a lot of follow up stories and coverage from other outlets as well. It's got potential to be a massive story.

I do find it odd it has seemed to garner so little attention heretgough. Maybe my op was too verbose or something? I don't quite get it.

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I think there isnt much attention because there isn't much evidence. Unless there's some leak from some insider which provides good evidence then their's not much to report except speculation, which isn't likely to draw many viewers.

RexNovis said:

I didn't want to attribute to you unless I got permission to do so but just realized for whatever reason the message I thought I sent you asking if it was ok never actually sent. I updated the op to link to your original post. Sorrry about that. Not entirely sure what happened with the message.

I'm still hoping this story gets picked up by journalists and we get some comprehensive looks at the way these things really operate. At the very least it seems like Ars is looking into it. Whoever publishes this first will, id imagine, spur a lot of follow up stories and coverage from other outlets as well. It's got potential to be a massive story.

I do find it odd it has seemed to garner so little attention heretgough. Maybe my op was too verbose or something? I don't quite get it.

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No bother from me, I am but a conduit. It is weird that there is so little interest but I suppose there isn't much evidence so...

Audioboxer said:

I missed this post, but maybe see if he will speak anonymously to samred or Brian Crecente? Even through yourself?

Both Arstechnica and Rollingstone have done a good job covering news around loot boxes/monetization in the industry. It's not like dubious ethical practices around winnings odds needs to be a widescale issue in the industry, even one or two instances of questionable decisions can highlight why zero transparency is not good for consumers handing over portions of their monthly wages.

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If Ars or RS want me to ask him if he's happy to talk them anonymously or otherwise I would be more than happy to pass that along. Can't promise he will be interested for obvious reasons.

Geoff said:

No bother from me, I am but a conduit. It is weird that there is so little interest but I suppose there isn't much evidence so...



If Ars or RS want me to ask him if he's happy to talk them anonymously or otherwise I would be more than happy to pass that along. Can't promise he will be interested for obvious reasons.

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samred said this on the first page

samred said:

so long as no legislation requires audits of RNG odds, nobody breaks American law by doing this. unsure about other territories.

if you have worked with or know of game devs/studios who engage in this specific practice, by the way, I'm working on something and will be discrete if you send any anonymous information my way. (my contact info's in my profile.)

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There might be some others talking, but sure, I understand that disclosing or talking about business practices from within isn't something the majority will feel comfortable doing. Which is a shame, as these are the kinds of things that should be transparent. At the point of consumer spending requests. It's not like we're asking for the whole game code to be open source. Gamers just want to know the odds and how the systems work they are paying money into.

I don't just want odds, I want audits on the generation code ala gambling industry so nobody can pull off funny business