Ragnarok Online 3 - Pay-To-Win, No Europeans, No refunds, No legal recourse - A look at the TOS

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Posts have cropped up on Reddit pointing to Ragnarok Online 3's Terms of Service hinting perhaps at a taste of things to come. The Ragnarok 3 game trailer dropped recently, and here at ROPP/Ragnarok Wiki we were actually quite excited about the prospect of a new Ragnarok game. But, like with every other Ragnarok game released by Gravity lately, we were worried it would be an obvious Pay-To-Win because all of the recent games have been pay-to-win and usually last for around a year before collapsing under the weight of their contradictions.

JoyMaker is a mobile app developer currently with 2 games in the Google Play store, one of which appears to be ad-supported and the other which is a free-to-play bottle-filling game. The company, which is creating the Ragnarok Online 3 game, posted the terms and conditions for Ragnarok 3, and well - we're disappointed, but we're not surprised to see that they are full of anti-gamer clauses and more or less confirm the existence of pay-to-win (since in my opinion saleable items in general are pay-to-win and usually offer a paid advantage by definition), in the opinion of this opinionated RO lover.

The Terms and Conditions (referenced below) mentions Europe no less than 10 times, repeatedly stating that European users are not permitted to use the service, and it's obvious why - because Europe has much stronger protections of its citizens than in the countries Ragnarok Online 3 is being launched in. Not only that but the terms and conditions confirm clearly that there likely will be in-game currencies of some form or another (section 1(f)), purchaseable items (sections 1(f), 5(w), 5(x)) which are available to purchase with a card or PayPal (Section 3).

The second-most egregious among these is of course the entirely anti-gamer terms that prevent consumers from receiving refunds for their purchases at all. So anyone who may have younger players purchasing these without the consent of their parents will be left pissing in the wind hoping for any recourse at all, which is almost certainly (in the opinion of this internet loudmouth) the reason why Gravity used a third-party company, and why the game is not available in the European Union, which has specific laws about refunds, reverse engineering and other things mentioned in the terms and conditions.

The most egregious of the terms and conditions is that players effectively give up their rights to be able to seek reasonable legal recourse if they feel they have been wronged by JoyMaker, which is basically in my opinion the legal equivalent of a boxing match where you ensure your opponent has both their hands tied behind their back.

ROPP of course stands with players in all countries and states clearly that players in all countries, not just the European Union, deserve the right to be able to receive refunds, and to be able to reverse engineer software should they choose to do so. The author of this article expresses his opinions strongly and suggests players on the service demand Gravity and JoyMaker remove pay-to-win from the game, and make a player-supported service based on a subscription, not another exploitative cash-grab.

References

• Joymaker.com. (2025). Terms of Service - Ragnarok Online 3. [online] Available at: https://joymaker.com/protocol/ro3/terms-of-service.html [Accessed 2 Aug. 2025].
• Text in full: REGIONAL RESTRICTION: PLEASE NOTICE THAT COMPANY DOES NOT PROVIDE ANY GAME SERVICE TO USER(S) IN EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES AND ICELAND, LIECHTENSTEIN, NORWAY, AND UNITED KINGDOM ("EUROPEAN USER"). THEREFORE, PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PLAY ANY GAME ON OR THROUGH ANY COMPANY'S SERVICES IF YOU ARE A EUROPEAN USER.

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