A new Chinese law that went into effect on May 1 has made it mandatory for the drop rates of rare items in games such as Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to be displayed prior to purchasing loot boxes.
Following an order by the Chinese government, any game that sells loot boxes containing in-game items of varying value will have to display the odds buyers have of receiving them. The regulations state that, “Online game publishers shall publicly announce the random draw results by customers on notable places of official website or in game, and keep record for government inquiry.” Loot boxes, chests, or crates as they are commonly known, are in-game items that charge a small fee to either open or purchase, and contain cosmetic items—with some being rarer or more valuable than others.
While China is the first country to legislate the sale of chests, it is hardly the first to have an issue with the practice. Australian senator Nick Xenophon has, for instance, sought to prohibit game developers from selling chests that assert random drop chances for in-game items of varying worth. Xenophon argued that loot boxes were comparable to gambling, as users had no way of knowing whether they’d be receiving an item worth more than the purchasing price.
Perfect World, the Chinese distributor of Valve’s incredibly popular titles CS:GO and Dota 2, has made the drop rates public since the regulations went into effect. Additionally, there is now also a live-feed that is updated whenever a user successfully obtains a rare item from the chest associated with the Dota 2 Asia Championship.
Right now, the rare items that are dropped from the Dota 2 Asia Championship chests are the only drop rates that have been made public. Anyone looking to purchase a chest in Dota 2 has between a two-and-six percent chance of receiving the rarest treasures, according to the official Chinese Dota 2 site.
These numbers, however, come solely from the Perfect World server—meaning the percentages don’t represent the global drop rate of the items from this specific chest. Perfect World also doesn’t sell all available chests on the market—as none of the chests from the latest Dota 2 Major in Kiev are available for purchase in China.
So don’t feel bad about not receiving any cool items from all the loot boxes you’ve purchased—chances are you were never going to get that knife anyway.
