The Biggest MMO Scam In History

Well known MMO developer and publisher Nexon has received a massive fine after an official investigation revealed they have been decieiving customers for over a decade. Selling loot boxes that never contained the ideal outcome players bought them for, and manipulating the odds of getting rewards based on player activity.

MapleStory Footage By:

[RPGOmen]

Nexon: Makes 420 million from a scam and is fined 9 million.
Also Nexon (probably): Let's do it again! :D

[robertlagerqvist]

"If the punishment is a fine, it is legal for the rich" certainly feels like it applies here.

[Cameron-lsqt]

This is the kind of deception that should put a company out of business if not put people in prison.

[BennyVibes]

Imagine robbing a bank for 420m and they catch you and ask you to pay back just 9m. That’s. Fucking. Nuts.

[thPickable]

What's worse is that 1 week after this was announced they introduced a change where you can only buy cubes with Mesos(farmable in game currency). This likely done because they can skirt around the law that requires them to report rates of cubes because cubes are now not purchased with real money anymore.

They also placed a cap on how much Mesos you can farm and reducing the rate you obtain mesos by 6 TIMES. Leaving the player's only real way to get cubes by buying NX(real money) then converting it to Meso, and then buying the cubes again. All of this just so they have can have no obligation to reveal cube rates. This shit is so fricking thinly veiled its insane.

[Xoilen]

I can’t stand Nexon, the companies they own aren’t all bad, but Nexon themselves are sickening

[idkfa]

how is this not insanely illegal ? i find it wild that they only got a 9 mil fine when they likely made 20x that.

[Hickeroar]

This sounds like an inevitable class-action lawsuit. Players deserve their money back.

[slvshy]

dynamic drop rates based on activity and even buddy lists is absolutely insane and probably some of the dirtiest examples of corporate greed I've ever seen!

[JasonSchoeman]

I love how the funds does not go back to the customers, but the $9 million fine goes to the government. It's a thieving world.

[johnyeon]

The most shocking part of this is : this is just one of MANY, MANY possibility-scam the Maple Story made.

[Talinthis]

All companies should have to get their chance system investigated every so often. A situation like this has always been in my mind, just because it says i have a 10% chance doesn't mean it is telling me the truth.

[KageSama]

If a company isn't charged all of their profits for criminal activity, then it's just a business cost.

[judasdubois]

I'm glad you super emphasized how little they got fined for the money they made. Because that's freaking insane

[stonewall]

I would love to see them sued in other courts. Other markets should be looking at this and wondering, did that happen here. Get the evidence, take them to court.

[mckaymusicTV]

I was addicted to Maplestory for a while. Luckily I never purchased cubes, only pets which still amounted to over $500. The pressure of getting the best gear while in a guild was pretty intense. Your worth in game is basically tied to your gear and the rolls on them. I got out, after 5 years of playing almost daily and the guild leader would contact me every day asking where I was and if I was going to do the dailies and guild dailies. It was like a full time job. This game sucks and I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy. I hope Nexon gets sued to the ground. The cube probabilities is just the tip of their manipulation.

[AscendantStoic]

A scandal like this should end this company's career for good, how the hell would anybody continue playing their games after this scandal ... people need to sue those bastards and get their money back.

[Braxophone]

I wouldnt be surprised if Nexon was only the first to get caught for this sort of thing. Its possible that tons of companies do something like this, including the RNG manipulation based on playtime. I cant even begin to count the amount of games where a friend logs in one every 2 months and gets the rarest drop in a gacha or probability roll lol

[SeanIsAFatty]

The craziest thing from this is that in response to this, they're changing the system. If you look into it deeper, they have gone completely scummy... They're stopping the sale of cubes all-together. To roll your potentials (your passives on items), you will have to use in-game currency DIRECTLY. This is a good thing, right? No. So, to top it off, they have limited the amount of currency you can FARM FROM MONSTERS to a daily limit. This limit can be achieved in about 2 hours. Maplestory is a hardcore grind game, and people grind for 8-10 hours on some weekends. Stupid, I know, but it's what people like, that's why we still played.

To top this off, the non-trade server is getting this system as well. The non-trade server never had the ability to purchase these cubes for irl money to begin with. You farmed, and you bought with in-game currency, and you went about your day. It takes a lot of farming to get a good amount to cube with. Cube packs sold for 120mil for 10 Red Cubes, 240mil for 10 Black cubes. With the daily limit implemented, you can only farm 150mil a day. This is an incredibly massive nerf to the non-trade server because not only does it limit that, they're removing the benefits of the server. The difference between the non-trade server is there is no scrolling system (a % based upgrade to item power, like +1 +2 +3 etc), no bonus potentials (a second passive bonus to items), and increased rewards for playing a no-trade server. These will STILL REMAIN, however the new system is essentially turning the server into a low-powered tradeless server. The server is no different from regular servers that have trade now.

Now the thing I want to bring attention to, is that with this in-game currency based system being globally added to the game, Nexon is no longer legally required to disclose the % rates anymore. Since there is no money transaction for these items, they can fully manipulate the system however they feel internally, as it's no long an item sold for real world money. This is a painfully obvious scummy action from the company...

Nexon Korea has an incredibly obvious hate towards the non-trade server, due to their lack of wanting to spend so much money on progressing their characters. They play the game they love, and progress without spending so much money like regular players do. Nexon has made multiple efforts to discourage users from joining the server. In 2021, when the investigation happened, the non-trade server saw a massive influx of users starting new accounts there in response to being treated poorly on regular servers. In response to this, Nexon closed the ability to register on these servers. Their hatred was already shown in the past, but this is quite clearly a hostile action against it. Now, they've pull this sort of thing and have alienated the playerbase.

To make matters EVEN WORSE, the community on Inven (Reddit for Korea, essentially, but 1000x more popular over there) have been laughing at the treatment of these users. Asian culture is fueled by showing off your wealth. It sounds horrible, but even after users are being treated like this, Inven was flooded with threads and comments laughing at non-trade users calling them poor, homeless, jobless, etc. Saying that they all deserved this. They neglect the fact that they have been lied to, manipulated, stolen from by Nexon, to laugh at the users who don't spend money, because of some sunk cost falacy they are feeling.

The whole situation with Nexon Korea over the last 6-12 months is abysmal, and the leadership over there is outright packed full of greed riddled managers who are squeezing everything out of the game so many people fell in love with over the last 20 years. So many of my guild members on the NA version of the game have quit the game in response. Not "I'll stop playing, maybe come back in the future" quit. No. They deleted all of their items, unable to get them back. They're gone for good. The accounts are entirely ruined, to the point they can NOT be salvaged. This is how bad it is.

[julietravelvlog]

This isn't even the first time they've been exposed for rigging game mechanics and lying about it. You'd need extensive research to fully catalogue their scummy practices over the past years. Yet the game is still thriving because players are way too addicted - to the point where quitting doesn't even cross their minds.