Apple recently made changes to its App store policies that will affect both developers and players in a significant way. The company now requires games that sell "loot boxes" to list the odds of the results that users may get when they purchase an item with real money.
In their current review guidelines for the App Store, Apple described "loot boxes" as "mechanisms that provide randomized virtual items for purchase." It may be remembered that this mechanic recently gained media popularity because of the microtransactions in Electronic Arts' "Star Wars Battlefront II."
However, loot box mechanics have already existed in most mobile games prior, especially Japanese games that employ the "gacha" feature. These are games like "Fire Emblem Heroes" or "Final Fantasy Brave Exvius" that involve "summoning" characters in exchange for in-game currency. There are no guaranteed "summons" and the results are random.
Of course, in-game currency can always be gained by just playing the game, but players have the option to pay real cash to get the items faster.
Now that Apple has enforced new rules, developers will be forced to provide a list of possible results and the odds for each result. For example, when trying to summon a hero in "Fire Emblem Heroes," players may see a list of characters and the percentages or the probability of their appearance. This is so that players have a concrete idea of what they are getting before they spend real life cash.
Android has not yet enforced rules like these, nor were there announcements for enforcing such rules in the future.
Apple's recent move was similar to the one China enforced to game operators and developers last May. Blizzard's popular shooter "Overwatch" was one of the games that complied with the country's policy. In their case, they simply cited that the game's loot boxes are guaranteed to contain a "rare" item, with 1 in 5.5 chance to get an "epic" item and a 1 in 13.5 chance to get a "legendary."
