Yeah it's a real thing, I remember playing MapleStory and they had a similar mechanic of the weapon going "boom" if the enhancement fails. Heard that it's a way to limit too many weapon duplicates from boss drops and "preserving" their value in the economy, but honestly it's just a scummy way for the company to make more money.
Nowadays, I would say that this feature is less common, partly due to the backlash from players about fairness and such. Instead, games could choose to implement a "downgrade" feature, enhancing with a chance of the weapon going back to +0, the original state. Some games also implement a "failsafe", where if you apply it to your weapon, it will guarantee a successful enhancement.
Just started this but i keep seeing this trope in other stories. Is it actually a feature in mmorpg games that failing a probability check to enhance a weapon just destroys it??? I've not really played an mmorpg so like is this just a thing manhwa creators decided or do games actually do this. It sounds so cruel?? i would probably cry if i put in effort or money to get a weapon and then it breaks when i upgrade it