Apple is now forcing it's devs to reveal probabilities for loot box items purchased in apps from now on. Google needs to do the same.

It wouldn't completely kill the genre, but seeing the percentages would definitely turn off some people, leading to less profit.


For example, in my made-up lootbox game, I say that you can buy this golden chest for $5 and you can get the strongest character in the game. Well, sounds pretty good right? But I never said you will get it, just that you can.

What if, then, I have to reveal to you that the chance to get the strongest character in the game is 0.1%. Does that sound enticing anymore? Probably not, considering on average, the strongest character in the game appears in 1000 treasures. That's $5000 on average to get the most OP character in the game. That's an average.


Also, a lot of these types of games only give you a total percentage to make things look nicer. For instance, let's say that the characters in my game are separated into copper, bronze, silver, gold, and rainbow ranks. The chance for a single rainbow character is 5%.

Sounds OK right?

But then what if I told you that that there are 50 characters in that 5%. Well, if there's a specific character you want, you have a 0.1% chance of getting that one character. In a lot of these games, a good number of these rainbow characters aren't even good, meaning you're wasting tons of money to get garbage.

Knowing that your chance of getting a good rainbow character is 0.1%, is an incredible turn off. Those games don't want you to see that. They just want you to see the "5%."


I think the worst of all is that you're not guaranteed to get that character.

/r/Android Thread Parent Link - youtu.be