The loot box controversy has been a huge gaming industry issue these past few months, leading numerous developers to make changes to specific titles in order to comply with new anti-gambling legislation in certain countries. While they haven’t revealed their reasons yet, Valve is the latest company to make some changes to their loot box mechanics, with their latest Dota 2 patch now revealing a detailed list of drop rate percentages for rare items
Valve’s official blog post on the subject describes how the update includes the introduction of a new loot box called the “Treasure of the Carmine Cascade” which features the following item bundles: Ancient Apparition, Ember Spirit, Oracle, Batrider, Visage, Skywrath Mage, and Razor. Each purchase also nets you an increasing chance to receive a “rare Earthshaker bundle, a very rare Dark Willow bundle, or an extremely rare Nature’s Prophet bundle.”
The rates for these increasing odds are now fully transparent to players hoping to snag some of the rarer items.
This update also brings with it special perks for Dota Plus subscribers – unwanted rewards can be “recycled” into treasure fragments. Acquiring 6 fragments from the same treasure, will result in you obtaining that treasure plus a bonus of 2000 Dota Plus shards.
Greater transparency for loot boxes is definitely a step in the right direction, though if you really start to think about it, you’ve got to wonder why these companies just didn’t include the exact odds from the very beginning. It would be great to see companies stepping up and initiating positive change, instead of waiting for customer frustration levels to reach a boiling point before taking action.
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