The Korea Truthful Commerce Fee (FTC) is investigating sport developer Nexon following issues with how paid objects labored within the cellular sport MapleStory Idle. Officers from the FTC’s Seoul workplace not too long ago visited Nexon’s headquarters to gather details about the sport’s paid merchandise gross sales and the way possibilities have been proven to gamers.
The investigation focuses on a characteristic in MapleStory Idle the place gamers may spend actual cash on objects to reset their character stats. The sport instructed gamers they’d a sure likelihood of getting the very best consequence, however complaints emerged that these most values didn’t really seem for a while interval, though the sport mentioned they may.
Nexon admitted to the error late final month and promised to provide full refunds to all gamers who spent cash on MapleStory Idle because the sport launched. Nonetheless, the FTC is conducting its personal assessment to see if any legal guidelines have been damaged, separate from Nexon’s refund plan.
The FTC is whether or not the sport violated e-commerce legal guidelines, which ban corporations from giving customers false data or utilizing deceptive practices in transactions. Investigators are checking if there was a distinction between the chances Nexon disclosed and the way the sport really labored, and whether or not Nexon gave gamers correct data after discovering the error.
This isn’t Nexon’s first time dealing with FTC motion over probability-related points. In 2024, the corporate was ordered to pay 11.6 billion gained (round $8 million) in penalties for false and misleading practices associated to probability-based objects in the principle MapleStory MMO sport. That penalty was the most important ever given for an e-commerce legislation violation on the time.
