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Korea prohibits trade of online game items
CalmOceans
Member UncommonPosts: 2,437
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2012/06/129_112964.html
"By Cho Mu-hyun
Korea has decided to ban trade for commercial game items from the second half of this year as a measure aimed at encouraging students to not waste time.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has announced that it is planning to halt all virtual item trades with a new law, to be announced sometime next month.
“The main purpose of the games is for entertainment and should be used for academic and other good purposes,” said Kim Kap-soo, head of the ministry’s content policy division, Wednesday.
The government official also stressed item collecting for commercial use is a serious hindrance to creating a healthy game culture...."
Comments
Nice to see some countries care more about their people than they do about Money!
interesting how korea is much more for its people while the US is much more for its corporation's wealth.
How is that interesting? Everyone knows the USA itself are more of a corporation than a state.
Actually, Korea is simply trying to curb the huge suicide rates that the country has been having problems with in the last few years.
There was an article a few weeks ago, stating that the government is going to try to curb the rates this year using any means possible and gaming has been implicated in people comitting suicides or even murder here, so they're trying to make it more difficult for people to play online.
e.g. there was a couple last year that played so much that their baby starved to death and another family was killed by their son because they wouldn't give him money to play online.
I review lots of indie games and MMORPGs
LOL nice generalization based on one stupid law.
Without going further into politics but it has been that way for a while now in the US
I really hope you guys are kidding.
**edit** On retrospect, my post may've been a bit too flame-y. As such, I will change it to: I respectfully disagree.
its not just this. its also when blizzard sold the koreans a bunch of bircks called diablo 3. the korean government, raided blizzard korean offices.
in the US, if a company sells consumers millions of bricks and calls it something else. the US government goes: "oh ok, well we got our tax off of it, see ya sucka!"
also i doubt people spend more then 15mins watching porn on the net.
The problem is that they are selling vitual items for real money. Not that people are playing games. A company can sell games and some services related to playing the games. There is no need to sell items. If the games are good there will be good profit anyway.
Ideally a government should be more interested in individual rights than companies right to increase profits any way they want. The individual and his rights most always determine what is OK or not. And sometimes highest possible profit for a company is not OK for the rest of the population not working for or owning that companies stock. There must be rules that protect ordinary people.. I think South Korea is a good example of how that can work in practice.
I dont care what their reasons are, I hate the sale of game items for cash. I say bravo to them, although China is the one that would put a huge dent in the problem if they would do the same.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
I am slightly surprised by the responses of "YAY! Government!" My money would be on how the Government steps all over our freedoms if America tried this. What is it with people and corporations that make a buck?
Isn't it the "American Dream" to rise up and be successful? Some seem to be OK with that... to a point. Be too successful and by golly!, you're going down!
Blizzard is simply separating fools from their money. ANY business does that! I have a $500 baby sneaker you can buy, if you want to be "cool"...
And people seem to forget that our Government (USA) is a major flop as a business. We should have shut down decades ago if we were an actual business. In my opinion, our Government is the LAST entity that should be giving out business advice or laws as they clearly have proven that they have no clue how to run a business.
Yea, let's stomp on those freedoms, because *you* know how to live my life better. (you elitist snob.)
/rant off
Sorry for that outburst. Carry on...
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Lol @ all the people that think this is great. WGAF if someone pays someone to give their character an item in a game... So did Korea ban all F2P Cash shops too?
Well, if you want to take that tact... lets see where it goes.
They are outlawing the use of bots to farm for virtual items.... so instead of one person using 100 bots, they now have 100 people grinding for untold hours (great improvement in quality of life).
They are outlawing the SELLING of virtual goods. Arcades can not longer list virtual items for sale. People that are not willing to spend hundreds of hours of grinding for these goods, will now have to buy them on the black market (like they used too). So, they will all be exposed to account hacks, stolen credit cards, and scams.
The Korean government isnt doing anything but lowering the quality of life for its people, and what does it get from this? Money! The govement gets to spend people hard earned taxes in this fight againt virtual goods. It can even go as far as raising taxes, because this is an 'important issue'.
(See how easy it is to paint this in a bad light when all you care about is pushing your own personal agenda)?
P.S. I do think this may be the start of something good, but it need to be judged on its own merits.
Hmm, I wonder if this will lead to an interesting blog in "the freezone" here....
I can understand Korea, the gaming industry is getting closer and closer to pure scam but as consumers we can still vote with our wallets and I am not so sure this should be decided by the law.
Does this mean the end of the free to play cash shop model? Look's like subs will be the only way to play in S Korea. It's like watching karma in motion. My own viewpoint is that it should be up to the consumer rather than a government, but I can see how things are getting out of hand there.
I am sorry but how is banning Trade of Virtual Items making it difficult to play an MMO? I have been playing MMO's for 15 years and never traded any Items for hard Cash...I am still enjoying this medium of entertainment.
It is just removing a Bad Trend and Incentive from the equation in my opinion. I think it is a very good Law.
The reason to play an MMO is entertainment, not to make a living and money on the side.
If you want to make a living with games then join the gaming industry in one of the many and great roles and careers it includes.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
It's been asked and the D3 RMAH falls under this ruling. Good times!
"Good, honorable gamers will continue to fit the bill for the poor and lower classed people. It's just a sign of the times." ~ Anonymous. Lakexeno.com
I commend korea for this..great job. some people get so addicted to these games that they'll spend any amount of money to get 1up on their opponents. The developers know this and they exploit the fuck out of it.
suicide rate from asians country are always high because they see suicide as a way to save honor, in constrat to our side the most religious group say its a sin. but the main reason for suicide is not the gamming or what else, lots of debates around it on asians is the way they do things, work a lot, little free time, too much stress. and since suicide is not a sin for then, its kinda more easy for that idea came to they head, the foxcon news of suicide pretty much says to us how most people there work (course china is the extreme, but it give us a idea),
saying you should regulate how people behave is never a good thing, reason for the high hate of suicides, if gamming should be banned or controled, then knifes, forks, chairs, bats, martial arts should also be regulated because people used this things to kill other people, also belts, hopes and all that, most of our problem is related to money, i'm pretty sure the korean goverment are trying to make people work more to produce more, not for health issues.
and end of f2p? hardly too many people spend over they earnings in a month just to have one item on 10+, and its the same with gold sellers, they exist because we have stupid people buying and we have gamming sites ofering links to that same sites (MMorpg is also one of then).
Put it into perspective please. They ban trading of items, but don't ban buying them....The Korean government runs the economy....Im thinking this is another case of "the government doesn't like competition".
This sounds very bad for their citizens. Talk about oppression.
Is the government going to tell them to stop having sex unless its in the confines of marriage cause fornication eats up too much of the students time? Do you all not see this is a slipperly slope?
More importantly, anyone find more detailed info on how this will impact American game companies that have S.Koreans playing their game?
Do they have to block them from playing or is that the S.Korean's gov job?
-Blitz
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer
This sounds like a move to prevent gold and item farmers, but not the selling of cash shop items.
Yeah...but not Gold right?
If they did that Korea would shut down.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
thats because I rather control my own life, than having a goverment run it for me...
I have a thing called "Parents & Responsibility".
I dont need government to be my parent.
this is just stupid. I am surprised that so many people support this crap.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
It doesn't matter that it's a virutal commodity. The game itself is virtual, downloadable after purchase so a physical copy isn't even necessary. The same goes for any number of commodities, such as Windows, or Office. They are also virtual, nothing more than ghosts-in-the-machine, but still a perfectly legit commodity to be produced and sold.
Protecting individual rights means letting us, the individuals, decide what we value, and how we want to live our lives. If I want to eat like a pig and become morbidly obese, the government has no right stopping me. Otherwise, we'd require concentration camps to imprison fat people in when they pass a government-appointed BMI.
It comes down to ideology. We all agree the government should pass and enforce rule-of-law that stops a company from infusing a lethal dose of cyanide in their food product. But when the rule-of-law includes the subjective, parental preferences of a nanny ("there's too much fat in that food", "you spend too much time on that game", "doing X is bad for you, so you can't do it anymore") than we have problems.
When the government passes laws to stop people from "spending too much time on a game", then that's nothing short of tyrannical.
"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation." -James Madison
(I know adding quotes like this in forum posts is douchey, but this one seems to sum up the feelings of people like me, so ... douche-on! LOL)