Starting next year, Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft and others have agreed to start sharing loot box odds (opens in new tab). The ESA made the announcement this week, which included a lot of major publishers and platform owners. Since then, other ESA members have committed to transparency, including Epic Games.
The publisher has already been making changes. At the start of the year, Fortnite Save The World's Upgrade Llamas became X-Ray Llamas (opens in new tab), so you could see exactly what goodies were contained inside them before slapping down some cash. This week, Epic and Psyonix announced that Rocket League will follow suit (opens in new tab).
This will continue, Epic told GamesIndustry.biz (opens in new tab), and the transparency will extend to all of its future games.
"Earlier this year, the Fortnite Save the World team made a change that showed players every item that they would get in a paid llama before opening it," said Epic. "Earlier this week, the team at Psyonix announced a similar change coming later this year to paid crates in Rocket League. Going forward, we're committed to the same transparency for player purchases in all Epic Games titles."
THQ Nordic was also absent from the ESA announcement, but the reason is because it simply has no plans to use loot boxes at all, making a commitment to disclosing the odds a bit meaningless. The publisher clarified its stance on Twitter (opens in new tab).
Last year, ESA president Michael Gallagher defended loot boxes and warned that government regulation would only stifle the industry (opens in new tab), adding that the industry needed to continue to self-regulate instead. While a trade association like the ESA is obviously going to come out on the side of the businesses and not government regulation, at least the promise of self-regulation hasn't been entirely empty.
