The South Korean government intends to impose a form of curfew over MMO games in an effort to combat perceived growing MMO addiction, reports MCV.Reportedly, the government plans to implement this curfew by blocking or incrementally slowing down the internet connections of those who spend prolonged periods playing popular MMO titles such as Maple Story, Dungeon & Fighter and Dragon Nest.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on Far Eastern MMOs or games ‘addiction’ (if that’s the right word to use), but there does seem to be a trend in that part of the world towards government imposing restrictions on the playing of online games – for example, recently Vietnamese authorities have proposed restrictions on online games as well.
As for the actual means being proposed, this sounds similar to the ‘graduated response’ system proposed in the EU (and now enacted in the Digital Economy Act in the UK), albeit focused on combating online games addiction rather than copyright infringement. Will we see gamers in South Korea and elsewhere voicing the same kind of opposition to these methods as gamers in Europe have?
[Image credit: govdocs.evergreen.edu]
Follow us at http://www.twitter.com/gamerlaw or subscribe to our weekly email newsletter here