Korean game dev testifies before National Assembly about gacha odds manipulation and leaking player information to Chinese government 

As reported by 4Gamer, Webzen CEO Tae-Young Kim appeared as a witness before The National Assembly of the Republic of Korea on October 21. Webzen is a South Korean game developer that publishes free-to-play MMORPGs like MU Online, Archlord and C9. 

Kim was summoned to testify at a state audit by prosecutor-turned-politician Seong-Dong Kweon about several controversial issues, including manipulation of gacha probabilities, leaking users’ personal information, and one-sidedly discontinuing services. 

For context, in March this year, Korea passed a law stipulating that game companies must inform players of the acquisition odds of all probability-based items in their games. This was followed by investigations of companies like Ragnarok developer Gravity, Lineage M developer NCsoft and Webzen by Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (source: Korea JoongAng Daily). 

At the recently held state audit, Kwon pointed out a discrepancy in Webzen’s reported gacha odds versus the actual odds in their mobile game MU Archangel. “Contrary to what was announced, the probability of winning an item increased by 0% up to the 149^th draw, and only increased by 0.1% from the 150^th draw onward. If we were to put this in terms of agricultural produce, it would equate to falsifying the origin of the produce. It’s a typical act of fraud,” Kwon commented. 

In addition, Kim was questioned about Webzen signing a contract that enables users’ personal information to be leaked to China. In response, the CEO said that the scope of the data that Webzen provides is compliant with Korean laws and similar to what other game developers are doing, but the matter is still under investigation by the Fair Trade Commission. 

Kwon also criticized Webzen for one-sidedly terminating services and continuing to sell in-game items to players until the last moment, asking the CEO, “How would game companies exist without players?”