Dispatch is lying to you about RNG for your own good, just like XCOM: "Those guys are pretty smart, so we thought we'd do the same"

Just like when kids show off their questionable hand-drawn family portraits where everyone's missing a torso, but their parents tell them it's great and put it on the fridge anyway, Dispatch developer Adhoc has been lying to you about the game's random number generation (RNG) and, essentially, cheating in your favor.

For some context, developers have been using weighted die to benefit players for years, with XCOM developer Firaxis being the most well-known example.

During a panel at GDC 2026 attended by GamesRadar+, Dispatch co-directors and Adhoc co-founders Nick Herman and Dennis Lenart explained how the game's dispatching minigame essentially rigs RNG checks in your favor so that it feels as fair as possible. Apparently, when the result is truly random, people tend to think the game is fixed against them, so Adhoc took a page from Firaxis's book

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"We knew that there were some tools to mitigate these frustrating experiences, like missing a 99-percenter," says Herman. "As any hardcore XCOM fan knows, one of the tricks Firaxis implemented was to secretly boost the numbers behind the scenes so that it felt fair, even if it was unearned. Those guys are pretty smart, so we thought we'd do the same."

Specifically, Adhoc "landed on anything that had over a 76% success chance would automatically succeed" after testing out a few different options. "Sorry!" Herman adds.

There are some important caveats. For instance, if you benefit from that 76% auto-win three times in a row, the RNG resets to actual randomization, and then as soon as you lose when the odds are above 76%, the cheats are enabled again. Meanwhile, as Lenart points out, anything between 1% and 14% is always bumped up to a flat 15% chance of success. "With these systems in place, people told us that the game felt fair, if a bit easy at times," says Lenart.

As someone who, very occasionally and for some reason only while playing Mario Party, falls prey to conspiratorial thinking that everything is rigged in Donkey Kong's favor, it's somewhat humbling – albeit fascinating – to hear how game developers actually do quite the opposite to make sure sore losers like me don't cry foul.

Dispatch broke me out of my gaming slump when nothing else could.