Playerunknown's Battlegrounds has become the game that offers loot crates that most feels like gambling, with the ability for some players to make real-world money by lucking their way into rare items. The developer itself, not to mention Steam, is also going to profit handsomely from the system.
The methods by which it's doing this aren't novel, but the whole thing is being designed with what seems like an eye toward the games that have come before while also trying to get ahead of criticisms by being transparent about how it all works.
The end result, however, is going to be a system that lets players spend real money in the hopes of striking it rich selling rare items.
It's very easy to ignore the loot box aspect of PUBG, because it doesn't impact the game itself. You don't have to worry about cosmetics if you don't want to, and rare items don't do much to change the balance of the game itself. It's a side system, and that's part of the reason it's so insidious. It looks almost like a game with a themed casino attached, even if both sides of the business have only a glancing relationship with each other.
The odds of getting the new items, at least on the test server at the time of publication, have been posted on the official site. You have a 40 percent chance of getting a desperado crate, and you will get the rarest item in 0.16 percent of those crates. The rarest item overall is the checkered cloth mask in the biker crates, which you'll find in 0.01 percent of the crates you'll open. The amount of disclosure on these odds is welcome, but the rest of the situation is a bit hazier.
PUBG doesn't just sell crates, nor can you earn as many as you'd like. There's a limit of six crates per week on your account, and the developer itself has, in the past, indicated this is done to keep rarity of certain items low, which increases their value.
"The reason crates get more expensive the more you buy is to enforce a soft limit on the number of crates you can buy a week," an older version of the game's FAQ stated."This creates an economy based on our skins. Limiting the number of crates you can obtain a week is important to make sure there is rarity within items so there's value in the marketplace."
The difference is that PUBG seems to be creating this entire system, complete with posted percentages, as a way to create a transparent system that also creates value on the secondary market. You don't have to guess at how rare these items are, you know you have very little chance at getting them through the game itself. That's going to send people to the marketplace, and there's an argument to be made that it's all being done within the rules of Steam.
Which is accurate, but it looks suspiciously like a system meant to facilitate a risk-based system designed to make the house money. If only we had a name for that.
More @ https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/9/16870828/pubg-loot-crates-probability-odds-gambling
Don't say it's just EA getting attention!
0.01% bruh, in a full price game.
