Loot boxes may have become a staple of nearly all gaming, but that doesn’t mean that they have gained acceptance. Earlier this month, Middle Earth ditched the contentious system entirely, as it was always looked at with varying levels of disdain for being included in a single-player game. But Korea has marked the first time that a major gaming company has been fined by a government. Based off what Korea has called ‘misleading practices’, Nexon will be fined just shy of a million dollars – $888,000 – which is vastly higher than the $56,000 another Korean company, Netmarble, was fined.

This news isn’t especially shocking given many Asian countries stance on loot boxes. While no country has said they are outright against loot boxes, many countries force companies to publish the odds of gaining loot in the name of transparency. Laws like this are what forced Apple last year to change their app guidelines, forcing all new developers to publish odds of winning or unlocking items. This is especially true for countries like Korea and China where mobile gaming not only vastly outweighs traditional gaming, but where it dominates the market.

For Nexon, the verdict is very clear. Nexon used the phrase “random provision” to describe a puzzle event in their Sudden Attack game. Users were able to purchase loot boxes in hopes of finding up to 16 puzzle pieces to complete the event. While that might seem like enough transparency for North American audiences, or many audiences across the globe, it did not fly with Korea. Some of the puzzle pieces had droprates as low as .5%, but each box in the event guaranteed two puzzle pieces with a total of 16 to be collected. Very quickly, it can become obvious that the system was designed to encourage gamers to spend massive amounts of money to hunt down a few select pieces, but because the odds could trick gamers into spending thousands of dollars, Korea found the company to be misleading the public.

Nexon is the creator of some of the most popular online games on the planet, having created both MapleStory and Mabinogi, and while many of their other titles have not been quite as successful, they still own a significant portion of the market. By taking them on, Korea has shown that the loot box issue is still unresolved, and while many developers would like for it to quietly go away as gamers become accustomed to them, law-makers seem to have something else in mind.