Re: The fraud that is NFS:NL

The problem here is if people are paying real money (which many of us are) and the mini-games are represented as random but are pre-set then it is a criminal offense under gambling laws all over the civilised world.  Even video games which have gambling in them (games of chance) are covered by gambling laws, so if EA/Firemonkey are actually doing this they could arguably be committing a crime.

Games of chance are supposed to be games of chance and are not permitted under law to be anything but "random".

So the OP could actually be on to a big issue here and I would recommend he talks to a lawyer or his local regulator responsible for gambling regulations.  Potentially he could write to the FTC and file an official complaint as well - under FTC rules it is illegal to misrepresent something to your customers with fines that can run into 10s of millions of dollars.

Have some XP for the effort but you're only adding to what most of us suspect or even 'knew'

This is a 'Free to Play' game but everyone knows that just means 'Fee to Win',  I've done pretty well so far without paying but I've put a lot of effort into my spreadsheet in help plan what I'm doing, the "random" wins just add to the grind.  I just budget it into my fuel, check back every 90 mins and use up the new tanks full.  Its a PITA but its satisfying knowing I've done it without paying.

You are right it is free to play and anyone who hasn't spent money would be unlikely to have any legal route to pursue - but the second they take money off someone those "games of chance" must be "games of chance" and the player must have a real chance to win each of the parts - if it is fixed then they do not have a real chance and EA are therefore in breach of gambling laws, potentially in breach of Fraud laws (obtaining money by deception) and absolutely in breach of various statutes in different countries with regards to misleading consumers.

I work in this area so I am at something of an advantage when it comes to understanding the law and I am pretty damn sure they wouldn't have a leg to stand on if a person who has made In App Purchases files a legal complaint against them.  I know one of the commissioners at the FTC so I will email her and see if she can give me her opinion of the situation.

OK so this is the email I just sent to my contact at the FTC - she is a Commissioner so is in the perfect position to offer a really solid legal opinion on this.

I have been reading some research regarding “Games of Chance” in mobile games which have In App Purchases tied to them and I was hoping you might be able to provide some perspective from the FTC.

The game in question is a car racing game and it is free to download those who do not spend real money on “In App Purchases” (in this case Gold Bars) are restricted to how many races they can play by a number of tickets which refresh over a period of time.  Gold bars can be used to refresh those tickets much faster and the more “In App Purchases” you make the higher your VIP status becomes which gives you more race tickets than lower level VIP users & non-VIP users (you can only become a VIP by making “In App Purchases”).

Now at the end of each race there is a mini-game which is represented as a game of chance – there are three rewards which are flipped over (like cards) and their position is randomised so when you pick a card you win one of the rewards – rewards vary from in game cash (not Gold Bars), various modules to upgrade your cars and visual style points for changing the cosmetic appearance of your car.

These mini-games are represented as games of chance and users are led to believe that the cards are mixed into a random order and that they have a chance of winning any of the three rewards.  However, research has shown that the rewards are in fact fixed and that no matter which card you select you will always win the same reward for the same race.  The research which proves this saved the game directly before a race and then completed the race before selecting a card in the mini game, made a note of the prize then reloaded the saved game to do the same race again.  Every single time the game was reloaded, the researcher received the same reward every single time irrespective of the card they chose.  This research was repeated for multiple races to ensure that it was not a bug and indeed the same behaviour was found for every single race tested – races were tested in excess of 20 times per race using the same save game file before starting each instance of the race.

It seems to me that there could be several legal issues with this situation.

First and foremost, many consumers purchase gold bars for real money so they can complete more races and improve their cars faster so they can gain higher results in competitions.  The developer of the game is intentionally misleading those paying customers by making them believe the mini games (which are a very important part of the game, they are the main way you upgrade your cars) are games of chance when in fact they have a predetermined outcome and the player does not have a chance of winning any of the three displayed rewards, only the reward which has been pre-determined.  So it is my opinion the developer would be in breach of FTC rules because they are misleading consumers.

Secondly, as far as I am aware (and this is certainly the case in Europe) games of chance must actually be games of chance – that being they must provide the player the opportunity of winning any of the described rewards/prizes.  It is a fundamental and underlying principle of gambling regulations.  So it is my belief that the developer may also be in breach of gambling regulations as well.

Finally, it is my belief that if the developer leads the player to believe that they have a real chance of winning something they actually have no chance of winning and the developer is making revenues from this (In App Purchases) they are potentially guilty of fraud because they are obtaining moneys by deception.

I would really value you thoughts on this issue and if they echo my concerns I will be filing an official complaint with the full details to your office.

There must be someone who can route around the code and see how the "chance" works?

There is no chance, the OP has clearly shown through dozens of tests that the outcome is -always- the same irrespective of which card you pick - that is where the problem lies, there is no chance it is pre-determined and it is my belief that is illegal under multiple different areas of law as highlighted in my email to my contact at the FTC.

I am in Brussels next week for meetings at the EU Parliament, so I will talk to a few contacts there as well in the EU Commission and see what they think about this under EU law.

Just received a read receipt from my contact at the FTC so I expect I will hear from her either later today or over the weekend.

Thanks for following up Paladine. I haven't received any answers to my request for clarification to Firemonkeys Support. I've decided to file a complaint on the California Department of Consumer Affairs and also another on the Federal Trade Commission. It seems that the only way for customers to be heard by these developers is by taking these abuses to court.

Since I plan to go ahead with this I have been doing more tests within the narrow field that the fuel ticks allow me (13 at this moment) and the amount of cash/gold I have in the game. My concern is that this strategy of rigging the draws that are represented as games of chance seems to be implemented on the Loading Docks draws. But since there are many items available on the draw for the classic crate (54 options as far as I counted) there is no way to prove that the developers have manipulated the contest altering the chances of some items to be won in a draw.

In any case, all my other tests in the underground races have been consistently proving my initial conclusions with one important note to add: if you spend 30 gold on a second selection after the first choice in the draw and do a game save, then the results are not consistent on the races I tried up to this point (meaning that the prize won after subsequent races does not seems to be pre-determined).

It would be easy for the developers to implement this cheat against the player; they may show you 3 prizes before the sorting, but after the sort ends, there could be only one choice pre-selected on the 3 slots. Now, once you open any slot, the developer could immediately re-assign the other 2 options to the remaining hidden slots so if you spend 30 or 90 gold, you end up getting the other prizes.

My proposal for FIremonkeys to clean this ugly mess is simple: deactivate the "sort & draw" feature for a simple display of 3 options at the end of the race. The player selects the one he/she was looking to win, and if he/she wants a secondary prize, let him/her use 30 gold to select the next prize. This is trivial to implement as shown on the Tuner Trials.

There is no reason to make players grind so much for these prizes knowing that the draw is rigged; that is instead very infuriating and turn players away from progressing/investing on the game. If the developers believe that chance is an important factor in the enjoyment of the game, there already is a lot of it on the Loading Docks, and those draws entice players to buy gold via the in-apps for the premium crates.

Also I want to add that since the visual points have no influence in the progress of the game, the developer should not fill the slots of the mini-draws with those visual points, but be honest and just put on the slots the Potential Rewards shown on the race title before car selection. I have more than 200,000 visual points that are worth zero on the game.

During last event there were those special crates at Loading Docks, where you could get blueprints for current car (BMW M4).

5 crates went for 24k event credits.

I was 4 blueprints short to level up my M4.

So i gathered about 50, saved data and opened 5 crates, got random stuff.

Opened next 5 got random stuff and one M4 blueprint.

Tried this many times - always one blueprint on 2nd try and none on first.

Tried opening crates one by one - always one blueprint in last crate i had money to purchase (2 crates less than opening 5 at a time).

Tried doing races in between restarting game - same results.

Accepted results. Spent some time racing until gathered 50k more, did same procedure - same results.

This made me think it's really rigged - not an anti cheat measure. It really looked like they feed you those blueprints at certain fixed rate.

on week 2 and week 3 i spent gold to open premuim crates and credits to open classic crates, probably had 30+ classic crates and i only got blueprints out if the premium crates

@richieluv76 I got blueprints off of my Classic crates. You just got unlucky when you opened your Classic crates.

I have recorded several videos showing that the game behavior is reproducible and it happens ALL THE TIME. I'm forwarding the videos to the CDCA to provide evidence for the complaint. The videos are done by recording the screen in original resolution so they are very big. But I compressed one that will show you that there is no "luck". I can only imagine that your experience (TheRealJony) is different because you are playing on IOS; but since you seem to believe that what I'm saying is not true, please review the following video:

https://vimeo.com/153070487

This video shows the problem with the game's honesty. For those that don't want to spend a few minutes seeing it, goes as follow: I started the game, did a save, went to the loading docks to get one classic crate. I got the mazda blueprints. Fine. Then... I downloaded my saved game again, and went to the loading docks... you can see the video! In 5 different times, with different wait times to click the crate, I got the same mazda blueprints. EVERY TIME!

5 times in these conditions (different wait times, different prizes in the rolling marquee, even different actual time if you consider the clock for random seeding) resulting in the same prize is clearly unacceptable as a game of chance.

You can argue that loading a save game could trigger some sort of "prize freezing" that produces this result. But since I don't have access to the code, I can only go by the evidence I gather. I asked others in this forum to go ahead and test. You did your testing and it didn't happened for you. Well, It happens for me, it is consistent, it can be reproduced and IT HAS BEEN CAPTURED ON VIDEO.

If you (TheRealJony) cannot accept that this is not OK, then I don't know what do you want for proof.

@leaderone_gr If you show a video for proof, then I got to believe it as it's the truth. 😉

I didn't try doing it for the five free crates, but I'll do it as well.

At least since we know the rewards are pre-determined, we can now blame the game for trolling us and not ourselves for choosing the wrong reward card. lol

So I just got back from Brussels and my contact at the FTC is also in Brussels this week so won't be able to respond until next week when they get back to DC.

The video is very convincing. There is no chance in this game. Everything is pre-determined. I was trying to watch the shuffle and make a guess. Now, I will just do a random selection.

What's the point if what you get is FIXED!

... just thinking ...

Do i get it right? The developers are getting blamed cause the game is not giving random parts on that draw game after races - WHILE savegame is reloaded over and over again until the part gets dropped which is the wanted one?^^

That would be the very last part in the game i would blame the developers on... Don't get me wrong - some people here seem to test over and over again reloading savegames (lol, sorry,  what does THAT have to do with luck?) Did those people test something else, something like "how many times do you have to select the same "card" until you get the part wanted" - statistically - without using the reload savegame "trick"?

Lets see the facts:

• the game does show 3 possible parts the player might get (usually 1 = Money, 2 = Material, 3 =Blueprint -or- a different Material)

• a forth part (visual points) is added to the three above (4 = Visual Points)

Therefore the player will have a -statistically - 1 out of 4 chance to get one of the four parts (1, 2, 3 or 4)

I did test over weeks now: If you ALWAYS select the rightmost "card" you definately get the wanted (1 out of 3 / 1 out of 4) part on every - statistically - 4th try! Always!

Example:

• Underground 10-4

• I would like to get the "Porsche 911(991) blueprint

• Parts are: 1 = Money, 2 = Valve, 3 = Blueprint (and 4 = Visual Points)

• If you ALWAYS select the rightmost "card", you will get the 3 = Blueprint not later than every 4th try - which is the exactly the random medium.

... just thinking ...

I did read Paladin's post and i understand how it does affect US law as he and you said. Looking from that point of sight, i think i would be angry too... I don't know if i would try to do something against that - even if money is included - cause overall statistics are not affected. But things have to be handled law-concurring in general - i totally agree with that.

Instead i prefere to look at the overall chance to get the parts i need  - and cause i can count on getting it within 1 out of 4 tries - i am happy with it as it is. Cause i can run 2 times 3 races a day, i will get the part at the end in 95% of all cases (if i have the time to race repeatedly), but often i get not only one but 2 of the needed parts on one day.

On the other hand it makes me kind of angry - but no, wait, it makes me feel bored - tha i have to race that much times to get parts which i will need dozens and dozens of...