Christmas lootbox ruled illegal by Cyprus advertising agency.
Wargaming is in some hot water this week. The CARO (Cyprus Advertising Regulation Organization) delivered a ruling that a World of Warships promotion misled customers and breached two articles of the Cyprus Advertising Code.
The complaint stems from the Christmas loot box event in World of Warships where Wargaming allegedly advertised that players could receive one of 107 ships. In reality the wheel rolls a shortlist of four ships and if the player already owns said ship, will then roll from a broader list noted in the ad. So for a player who doesn’t own one of the four shortlist ships, the chance of receiving one of the 103 is 0%.
From the complaint;
You only get a drop from the whole list of available ships if you roll a shortlisted ship which you already have in port or in a previously purchased crate. If this happens, you receive a ship from the entire pool in a supercontainer. Lower tier ships are likelier to drop from the supercontainer.
In other words, Wargaming fraudulently represented how the prize wheel works. Evidently Wargaming was encumbered with enough complaints that they apologized opened up refunds for the crates. Additionally Wargaming angered players when customer support started telling people that a full account rollback would be necessary with the refund.
Wargaming refused to accept responsibility for the language of the promotion. Their response details how the loot box works, only confirming how utterly convoluted and misleading it is.
When a player buys or wins a Gift Container, there is an algorithm which randomly determines which content will drop out of the container based on the drop rates attributed to various items. Depending on the result of the roll and taking into account which ships the player already has on his/her account, the player might receive a Gift Container or a Supercontainer, in which any of 107 premium ships can drop. The Supercontainer, being a part of a Gift Container, will appear if a player receives in a Gift Container a premium ship which the player already has on his/her account. This mechanism ensures that players, if they are lucky to get a ship, will keep getting different ships from the Gift Containers (Supercontainers), until they have all of them.
CARO obviously disagreed with Wargaming’s claim that the loot boxes were fair and impartial.
However, the jury believes that the pre-condition of ownership of one of four specific ships before the gamer may potentially benefit from the opportunity to receive one of 107 premium ships, is in a different league to the randomised workings of the algorithm. Even though all players will first receive a container with one of four ships (provided, there is a ship in the container at all), the players who already own 1 of the 4 ships will get a substitute with one of the 103 ships, whereas the players who do not own 1 of the 4 ships are restricted to those 4. In that sense, it is not correct to claim that “The algorithm works impartially and in the same manner for any player.”
The ruling is almost toothless at this point since the event is over. What it won’t change is the loss of trust between Wargaming and their customers as players see the event as fraudulent and underhanded.
Source: CARO judgment
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