The MapleStory cube case: how changed odds led to a record fine

In MapleStory, cubes are paid items that re-roll the extra stats, called potential, on a piece of equipment. In January 2024 South Korea's Fair Trade Commission found that Nexon had changed what cubes could roll, more than once, without telling anyone, and fined it 11.6 billion won. It is the largest fine ever issued under Korea's e-commerce consumer protection law, and it changed how Korean games handle odds.

Timeline

May 2010. Cubes arrive in MapleStory. At first every possible stat option has an equal chance of appearing.

September 2010. Nexon changes the structure so that the options players most want appear less often. It doesn't tell players.

August 2011. Nexon goes further: some of the most wanted options stop appearing at all on certain items. The same month it posts a notice wrongly saying nothing has changed.

March 2021. Under pressure from players, Nexon publishes how cube re-rolls work and their detailed rates. The disclosure sets off a wave of player complaints.

May 2021. Nexon's MapleStory director apologises, saying the company "released insufficient information". Nexon compensates players with in-game currency worth a share of what they spent on cubes over the previous two years, and donates 5 billion won to charity.

December 2021. Nexon launches a service in Korea that shows live probability data for its random items.

3 January 2024. The Fair Trade Commission fines Nexon 11.6 billion won (about $8.9 million), covering September 2010 to March 2021. About 550 billion won of cube sales fell in that period. The decision also covers another Nexon game, Bubble Fighter. Nexon apologises and says it may challenge the decision.

9 January 2024. Nexon announces that Korean MapleStory will stop selling cubes. Re-rolling stats moves to Mesos, the currency players earn in the game.

2024. Korea's consumer dispute body settles on 21.9 billion won (about $16 million) in compensation for about 800,000 players, refunding 3.1% of Red Cube spending and 6.6% of Black Cube spending between 1 March 2019 and 5 March 2021.

Why it matters

Most odds rules only require a publisher to state its rates. The MapleStory case shows the other half: a stated rate is only worth something if it stays true, and if players are told when it changes. Korea's regulator treated a hidden change in odds as misleading consumers, and the size of the fine came from how long it lasted and how central cubes were to the game.

The same lesson shows up in the Team Fortress 2 crate bug of 2019, where odds that Valve has never published changed overnight and only became visible because the change was so large.

It is also why GamesChart records the date we read every rate in the drop-rate index. If a publisher's page changes, the old figure and its date are still on record.

What about MapleStory outside Korea?

The fine and the end of cube sales apply to the Korean version of MapleStory. We haven't found an official probability page for the global version that UK players use. See our MapleStory page for its current prices and player numbers.

How we checked

The timeline comes from Korean business press coverage of the Fair Trade Commission's decision (KED Global and Korea JoongAng Daily), TechRadar's report, and English translations of Nexon's own Korean notices by the fan site Orange Mushroom. We couldn't read Nexon's Korean probability pages directly.