Festival Special

The Festival Special is a gameplay element in Asphalt 8: Airborne added in the 2020 Lunar New Year Update and first activated after the Infiniti Project Black S Special Edition Festival.

It simulates a wheel of fortune that grants rewards for each spin, thus introducing further gambling elements into the game. The duration is restricted to 6 days. Furthermore, there are milestones similar to the milestone version of daily ads that grant additional rewards after reaching certain numbers of spins. The Festival Special can be seen as a randomized replacement of the discontinued Exclusive Deals which granted similar prizes. Functionally, spinning the wheel is the same as revealing a card from a Pro Kit Box.

In terms of probability theory, the Festival Special is a random process. Contrary to common intuition, the possible outcomes of a spin are not equally likely, but the respective drop rates can be displayed by tapping the info icon. The Festival Special is the first random process in Asphalt 8 (if not in all Asphalt games) to provide a complete sample space (all possible rewards) together with the drop rate of each reward (which is an expected value in the long run and denotes the probability of getting it).

Costs
The Festival Special has three options:
 * Players have one free "Daily Spin" the timer of which is reset at 0:00 UTC.
 * Every further spin costs.
 * Buying 5 spins at once costs which reduces the costs to  per spin.

Milestones granting various amounts of Kit cards are reached after certain amounts of spins. Reaching a milestone is impossible without paying Tokens as the first milestone is granted after 10 spins while the the whole duration is only 6 days.

Legal aspects
The publication of all parameters of the Festival Special is a further step in an ongoing development towards more transparency of random processes in the Asphalt games. This development started with the 2018 Fall Out Boy Update of Asphalt 8 which introduced box infos displaying drop rates, and even led to the publication of rudimentary drop rates in 2019 Winter Update of Asphalt Nitro, a game which is generally considered discontinued.

Although this increased transparency means an advantage for Asphalt players, it is only a reaction to changed legislation on simluated gambling in many countries of the world. Since May 2017, for example, China requires online game publishers by law to


 * "publicly announce information about the name, property, content, quantity, and draw/forge probability of all virtual items and services that can be drawn/forged on the official website or a dedicated draw probability webpage of the game".

In 2018, Belgium has forbidden loot boxes that can be purchased with real money. Failure to comply may lead to a fine of €800,000 and up to five years in prison for the publishers.

Even in 2019, many offers in the Asphalt games do not fulfil these legal requirements and would not withstand an investigation by state authorities.