[countrpt]

There are many gacha games on the market today that do post their odds and where player-validated data seems to support it. (Some jurisdictions like China and Japan require these kinds of disclosures.) But there are also a lot of markets that don’t require these kinds of disclosures and where there isn’t enough player data to draw a conclusion. So, in that case, how could you have confidence that they are not doing what you suggest? Even if they were, would it even be illegal? (If you never post what the odds are in the first place, is it fraud to keep changing the rules?)

This is why I’ve always been a bit surprised developers haven’t done more to get ahead of these kinds of issues with responsible disclosures and transparency, because it seems to be just inviting regulation. I honestly don’t think most F2P games pull the kinds of slimy tricks you’re accusing them of (most just use simple loot tables and RNG), but there’s nothing holding them accountable to say they can’t because everything is opaque.

[effingwewt]

Even regulated state lotteries do shady shit and are sued due to lying about odds and remaining prizes, and having seen first hand the way those and arcade games work.

I played some when they first dropped and the android playstore options were limited. You could see the bullshit weights first-hand if you had enough free pulls. Again, this, along with streamers doing massive pulls, and community-gathered spreadhseets are where I get my information, not from the game page that says '1 in 100 chance of legendary pull!' because, again, it's always been bullshit.

[mattnewton]

Even the disclosure of odds isn’t enough imo, because often it’s odds of a “pull” that costs various amounts of abstracted in game currencies with complicated conversion rates between each other and to the money you put in. It becomes a very complicated math problem most people just ignore.