7 ms·

South Korea bans virtual item trading & bots

39 points by spdy 14y ago

ajitk 14y ago
Recently read http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-strange-email/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a... where Yanis Varoufakis, an economist, is studying in-game economies. And now this where South Korea bans trading virtual goods since "The main purpose of the games is for entertainment... item farming for commercial gain is a “serious hindrance” to a “healthy gaming culture”". Isn't it same as banning sale of alcohols/drugs since they can be harmful? It will push the activity to go underground.
- justinhj 14y ago
  It would be very difficult to run a game like this which requires large numbers of users to make money in a clandestine fashion. I worked on the tech for an MMO that launched in S.Korea a few years ago and even then we had to be careful to make sure that purchased game money could not be exchanged back for real money. I seem to remember also adding features for enforcing a law that under 18's could not play after certain hours.
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    I find it very funny (in lulz sense) that some countries have extensive organisations devised for deciding who gets to play video games, when and how. (All kinds of age/violence ratings) You can see their icons on games' websites, it's annoying how people get paid for making monkey faces and pretending to be important. Don't you have any hard problems left in your society?
    - AJ007 14y ago
      The United States would have the same issues if it was not for the First Amendment. Businesses that fall into other categories have mind blowing layers of complex regulations. The idea that a company, or individual, would have to spend millions or tens of millions of dollars a year just to ensure that they are operating the business within the law is pretty wild. We are very fortunate indeed for the Bill of Rights. When you have armies of people whose sole life purpose is to create and enforce rules you end up with something, if it was computer code, would just crash immediately.
      - guard-of-terra 14y ago
        Well, USA has ESRB - the mother of all monkey face builders.
        luchs 14y ago
        Why 'mother'? Most of these game rating organizations seem to originate in 1994.
        guard-of-terra 14y ago
        Looking at wikipedia, PEGI and CERO were launched in 00-s.
- batista 14y ago
  >Isn't it same as banning sale of alcohols/drugs since they can be harmful? No. Alcohol and drugs are with us from the beginning of history, are very much ingrained in human society and culture, and support trillion dollar worldwide industries. In-game trading virtual goods is a niche novelty activity, and trading them for real money even more so. You can get the same satisfaction out of the game trading them with token money. >It will push the activity to go underground. Games cannot really go "underground" though. They are sold in stores or accessed online and depend on massive communities of millions of players. It's not like Sims of Farville can go underground suddenly. Nor are they as essential and addicting as alcohol/drugs.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    >In-game trading virtual goods is a niche novelty activity, and trading them for real money even more so. There are some very successful entrepreneurs who made their fortunes off of in-game trading that would disagree.
    - EliRivers 14y ago
      Do they have multi-billion dollar globe-spanning industries and vast amounts of lobbying power? A handful of people making lots of money does not make it any less a niche or novelty.
      - mistercow 14y ago
        A handful of people making money does make it not a novelty activity. It's still a niche, but it's not a novelty. You aren't going to see an organized crime ecosystem on the level of the consequences of alcohol and drug prohibition, but I think it's reasonable to think that making it illegal will drive it underground rather than getting rid of it, especially when the market will continue to thrive outside of South Korea.
        batista 14y ago
        >A handful of people making money does make it not a novelty activity. It's still a niche, but it's not a novelty. How so? A handful of people make money out of ANY novelty. A handful of people making money of it, is actually, the very characteristic of a novelty. A handful of people made money off of hula-hups, the rubik cube, and yo-yos...
danneu 14y ago
Ouch. Now every student has to worry about criminal activity as virtual item trading otherwise continues its course unfazed. "the government took the decision in a bid to prevent students from wasting their time." "The punishment for breaking the law will be a 50 million won fine (£27,612) and a maximum jail sentence of five years." Wow. Classic mistake, South Korea.
- dmoy 14y ago
  That's the punishment for a separate law. From TFA: "A separate, but related, law has also been passed that bans the use of gold/item farming bots in online-enabled games. Players found using programs that “allow in-game characters to hunt and collect items without the need of a player controlling them” will be made illegal and blocked from internet access. The punishment for breaking the law will be a 50 million won fine (£27,612) and a maximum jail sentence of five years."
protomyth 14y ago
How is the law actually worded? Is "The Settlers of Catan" going to get someone thrown in jail?
Tyrant505 14y ago
I know Diablo is not as popular in SK as the RTS's Blizzard releases, but is not Diablo III heavily based on virtual item market? [Disclosure:I have not played it yet.]
- Shenglong 14y ago
  The "Real Money Auction House" is entirely new, and I'm not aware of any other game enabling such transactions at a player-player level. You can sell/buy stuff for gold, but with RMAH, you can do it with real money. In all reality, the market settles at a gold/money conversion rate. In North America three days ago, that was at about $1/100,000 gold. It's not heavily based on RMAH, but if you want to progress quickly, you spend money. I don't think it's a pivotal part of the economy at all. I think it's more to make sure Blizzard gets a cut of gold sellers/buyers.
  - Tyrant505 14y ago
    Thank you for the informed response. I'm coming from Ultima Online and always wondered when a game would directly integrate the real dollar black market trading of "time/luck."
  - Zolomon 14y ago
    I believe http://www.entropiauniverse.com/ http://www.entropiauniverse.com/ was one of the first games to support real money in-game.
    - Tyrant505 14y ago
      Interesting! I checked out the website and the recent interview in their news. Seems a lot of people are actually put off by the dollar investment required for maximum fun.
- jgmmo 14y ago
  Yes, Diablo 3 is heavily based on item trading. There is a real-money auction and an ingame gold auction. Due to the loot system and drop rates, users can get much much better items from trading then otherwise. Diablo 3 is going to collide very much so with this new law.
nchuhoai 14y ago
Look at it from this angle: Offer your body to make money (prostitution): ~ 1 year (US, couldn't find South Korea numbers) Offer virtual items to make money: max 5 years Offer your body to make money BUT TAPE IT: Legal (to my knowledge) Note, i'm not commenting on the morality or rightfulness of either policies, just pointing out this (to me) interesting fact
- joering2 14y ago
  > Offer your body to make money: 1 year what do you mean? I thought without your body/mind, you can't do any work. So: Offer your body to make money: lifetime
  - TruthElixirX 14y ago
    He was talking about prostitution.
    - joering2 14y ago
      Oh I didnt get it. Thanks. Someone had fun downvoting...
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  Laws are often inconsistent. For example, there exist laws which, if read literally, would state that having consentual sex with 13-year old would be punished more severely than raping said 13-year old. There is another angle: old laws are more balanced - for worse crime there's more punishment. People could compare crimes back then. Newer laws are hysterical: the crime severity does not readily correlates with punishment severity. This is because of lobbying by various forces and because people DEMAND BLOOD on some issues which were brought [by same or other groups] in order to distract them from other issues.
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    Do we have any good sources on the claim that newer laws are less balanced? This subject should be taken very seriously. If a well founded study were to indicate this true, it would be a call to arms for heavy reforms on our democratic systems.
_seininn 14y ago
reminds me of a similar "ban" that happened in my country several years ago with the aim of discouraging students from wasting their time. the object of the banning, however, was trading cards rather than trading virtual items. it did work; the vast seas of children playing cards in shopping malls and sidewalks seized to exist, but it didn't happen because children were studying. it happened because these kids switched to something else, which isn't necessarily better than the cards they banned.
fragsworth 14y ago
I know the politicians in South Korea say they made this decision to prevent people from causing harm to themselves from all the consequences of dealing with virtual goods. South Koreans, though, are really serious gamers. I wonder how much their purist gaming ideals influenced this ban. Perhaps South Koreans are so fucking hardcore about their games that they don't want anyone to be able to "cheat" with real money. Almost everyone in South Korea - the anti-gamers AND the gamers - could be perfectly happy with this ban. Except the game developers.
grok2 14y ago
I find it amazing that the government was able to think and legislate a specific feature of online gameplay (though one may not agree with it, I find it surprising that they even understood gaming sufficiently to try and control just one aspect of it -- most countries would have simply made online gameplay illegal!)
jay_kyburz 14y ago
Does anybody know if this prevents companies selling virtual items to players, or just players selling virtual items to each other?
baby 14y ago
#1 > South Korea I like to point out we have no idea of what it is to mix government law with video games. Because we're ages behind in term of video game culture. If you go to korea you'll see show about videogames on TV, you'll see huge events everywhere, even cellphones advertise with videogames in the street. They've reach a point where law has to deal with it. #2 > a “serious hindrance” to a “healthy gaming culture”. Keeping in mind that S-K do have a problem with videogames and its youth. We can ask ourselves "is the trading of items a good healthy gaming culture?" What does it mean? A healthy gaming culture should not just get gamers addicted. If you think about it, there is no fun behind the item trading system of diablo3, it's just to get people addicted to it. A bit like the "hat" system of TeamFortress 2. It adds a dimension that we don't need and that is harming the players more than anything. #3 I'm not saying we should ban them, like S-K did, but I think we're far from them with our addicted people.
- petitmiam 14y ago
  I don't play D3 or TF2 , but I do enjoy the trading systems in other games. Maybe it's not for everyone, but it adds fun for me.
Kelliot 14y ago
Will this just push more Koreans away from WOW/D3 and back towards Starcraft 2? I cant win as it is =/
hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
Games: the new drugs?
lotu 14y ago
This sounds like some butt-hurt gamers, passing a law because they don't like Diablo III.
lotu 14y ago
This sounds like some butt-hurt gamers, passing a law because they don't like Diablo III.

39 points by spdy 14y ago

ajitk 14y ago

Recently read http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-strange-email/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a... where Yanis Varoufakis, an economist, is studying in-game economies. And now this where South Korea bans trading virtual goods since "The main purpose of the games is for entertainment... item farming for commercial gain is a “serious hindrance” to a “healthy gaming culture”". Isn't it same as banning sale of alcohols/drugs since they can be harmful? It will push the activity to go underground.

justinhj 14y ago
It would be very difficult to run a game like this which requires large numbers of users to make money in a clandestine fashion. I worked on the tech for an MMO that launched in S.Korea a few years ago and even then we had to be careful to make sure that purchased game money could not be exchanged back for real money. I seem to remember also adding features for enforcing a law that under 18's could not play after certain hours.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  I find it very funny (in lulz sense) that some countries have extensive organisations devised for deciding who gets to play video games, when and how. (All kinds of age/violence ratings) You can see their icons on games' websites, it's annoying how people get paid for making monkey faces and pretending to be important. Don't you have any hard problems left in your society?
  - AJ007 14y ago
    The United States would have the same issues if it was not for the First Amendment. Businesses that fall into other categories have mind blowing layers of complex regulations. The idea that a company, or individual, would have to spend millions or tens of millions of dollars a year just to ensure that they are operating the business within the law is pretty wild. We are very fortunate indeed for the Bill of Rights. When you have armies of people whose sole life purpose is to create and enforce rules you end up with something, if it was computer code, would just crash immediately.
    - guard-of-terra 14y ago
      Well, USA has ESRB - the mother of all monkey face builders.
      - luchs 14y ago
        Why 'mother'? Most of these game rating organizations seem to originate in 1994.
        guard-of-terra 14y ago
        Looking at wikipedia, PEGI and CERO were launched in 00-s.
batista 14y ago
>Isn't it same as banning sale of alcohols/drugs since they can be harmful? No. Alcohol and drugs are with us from the beginning of history, are very much ingrained in human society and culture, and support trillion dollar worldwide industries. In-game trading virtual goods is a niche novelty activity, and trading them for real money even more so. You can get the same satisfaction out of the game trading them with token money. >It will push the activity to go underground. Games cannot really go "underground" though. They are sold in stores or accessed online and depend on massive communities of millions of players. It's not like Sims of Farville can go underground suddenly. Nor are they as essential and addicting as alcohol/drugs.
- mistercow 14y ago
  >In-game trading virtual goods is a niche novelty activity, and trading them for real money even more so. There are some very successful entrepreneurs who made their fortunes off of in-game trading that would disagree.
  - EliRivers 14y ago
    Do they have multi-billion dollar globe-spanning industries and vast amounts of lobbying power? A handful of people making lots of money does not make it any less a niche or novelty.
    - mistercow 14y ago
      A handful of people making money does make it not a novelty activity. It's still a niche, but it's not a novelty. You aren't going to see an organized crime ecosystem on the level of the consequences of alcohol and drug prohibition, but I think it's reasonable to think that making it illegal will drive it underground rather than getting rid of it, especially when the market will continue to thrive outside of South Korea.
      - batista 14y ago
        >A handful of people making money does make it not a novelty activity. It's still a niche, but it's not a novelty. How so? A handful of people make money out of ANY novelty. A handful of people making money of it, is actually, the very characteristic of a novelty. A handful of people made money off of hula-hups, the rubik cube, and yo-yos...

danneu 14y ago

Ouch. Now every student has to worry about criminal activity as virtual item trading otherwise continues its course unfazed. "the government took the decision in a bid to prevent students from wasting their time." "The punishment for breaking the law will be a 50 million won fine (£27,612) and a maximum jail sentence of five years." Wow. Classic mistake, South Korea.

dmoy 14y ago
That's the punishment for a separate law. From TFA: "A separate, but related, law has also been passed that bans the use of gold/item farming bots in online-enabled games. Players found using programs that “allow in-game characters to hunt and collect items without the need of a player controlling them” will be made illegal and blocked from internet access. The punishment for breaking the law will be a 50 million won fine (£27,612) and a maximum jail sentence of five years."

protomyth 14y ago

How is the law actually worded? Is "The Settlers of Catan" going to get someone thrown in jail?

Tyrant505 14y ago

I know Diablo is not as popular in SK as the RTS's Blizzard releases, but is not Diablo III heavily based on virtual item market? [Disclosure:I have not played it yet.]

Shenglong 14y ago
The "Real Money Auction House" is entirely new, and I'm not aware of any other game enabling such transactions at a player-player level. You can sell/buy stuff for gold, but with RMAH, you can do it with real money. In all reality, the market settles at a gold/money conversion rate. In North America three days ago, that was at about $1/100,000 gold. It's not heavily based on RMAH, but if you want to progress quickly, you spend money. I don't think it's a pivotal part of the economy at all. I think it's more to make sure Blizzard gets a cut of gold sellers/buyers.
- Tyrant505 14y ago
  Thank you for the informed response. I'm coming from Ultima Online and always wondered when a game would directly integrate the real dollar black market trading of "time/luck."
- Zolomon 14y ago
  I believe http://www.entropiauniverse.com/ http://www.entropiauniverse.com/ was one of the first games to support real money in-game.
  - Tyrant505 14y ago
    Interesting! I checked out the website and the recent interview in their news. Seems a lot of people are actually put off by the dollar investment required for maximum fun.
jgmmo 14y ago
Yes, Diablo 3 is heavily based on item trading. There is a real-money auction and an ingame gold auction. Due to the loot system and drop rates, users can get much much better items from trading then otherwise. Diablo 3 is going to collide very much so with this new law.

nchuhoai 14y ago

Look at it from this angle: Offer your body to make money (prostitution): ~ 1 year (US, couldn't find South Korea numbers) Offer virtual items to make money: max 5 years Offer your body to make money BUT TAPE IT: Legal (to my knowledge) Note, i'm not commenting on the morality or rightfulness of either policies, just pointing out this (to me) interesting fact

joering2 14y ago
> Offer your body to make money: 1 year what do you mean? I thought without your body/mind, you can't do any work. So: Offer your body to make money: lifetime
- TruthElixirX 14y ago
  He was talking about prostitution.
  - joering2 14y ago
    Oh I didnt get it. Thanks. Someone had fun downvoting...
guard-of-terra 14y ago
Laws are often inconsistent. For example, there exist laws which, if read literally, would state that having consentual sex with 13-year old would be punished more severely than raping said 13-year old. There is another angle: old laws are more balanced - for worse crime there's more punishment. People could compare crimes back then. Newer laws are hysterical: the crime severity does not readily correlates with punishment severity. This is because of lobbying by various forces and because people DEMAND BLOOD on some issues which were brought [by same or other groups] in order to distract them from other issues.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  Do we have any good sources on the claim that newer laws are less balanced? This subject should be taken very seriously. If a well founded study were to indicate this true, it would be a call to arms for heavy reforms on our democratic systems.

_seininn 14y ago

reminds me of a similar "ban" that happened in my country several years ago with the aim of discouraging students from wasting their time. the object of the banning, however, was trading cards rather than trading virtual items. it did work; the vast seas of children playing cards in shopping malls and sidewalks seized to exist, but it didn't happen because children were studying. it happened because these kids switched to something else, which isn't necessarily better than the cards they banned.

fragsworth 14y ago

I know the politicians in South Korea say they made this decision to prevent people from causing harm to themselves from all the consequences of dealing with virtual goods. South Koreans, though, are really serious gamers. I wonder how much their purist gaming ideals influenced this ban. Perhaps South Koreans are so fucking hardcore about their games that they don't want anyone to be able to "cheat" with real money. Almost everyone in South Korea - the anti-gamers AND the gamers - could be perfectly happy with this ban. Except the game developers.

grok2 14y ago

I find it amazing that the government was able to think and legislate a specific feature of online gameplay (though one may not agree with it, I find it surprising that they even understood gaming sufficiently to try and control just one aspect of it -- most countries would have simply made online gameplay illegal!)

jay_kyburz 14y ago

Does anybody know if this prevents companies selling virtual items to players, or just players selling virtual items to each other?

baby 14y ago

#1 > South Korea I like to point out we have no idea of what it is to mix government law with video games. Because we're ages behind in term of video game culture. If you go to korea you'll see show about videogames on TV, you'll see huge events everywhere, even cellphones advertise with videogames in the street. They've reach a point where law has to deal with it. #2 > a “serious hindrance” to a “healthy gaming culture”. Keeping in mind that S-K do have a problem with videogames and its youth. We can ask ourselves "is the trading of items a good healthy gaming culture?" What does it mean? A healthy gaming culture should not just get gamers addicted. If you think about it, there is no fun behind the item trading system of diablo3, it's just to get people addicted to it. A bit like the "hat" system of TeamFortress 2. It adds a dimension that we don't need and that is harming the players more than anything. #3 I'm not saying we should ban them, like S-K did, but I think we're far from them with our addicted people.

petitmiam 14y ago
I don't play D3 or TF2 , but I do enjoy the trading systems in other games. Maybe it's not for everyone, but it adds fun for me.

Kelliot 14y ago

Will this just push more Koreans away from WOW/D3 and back towards Starcraft 2? I cant win as it is =/

hcarvalhoalves 14y ago

Games: the new drugs?

lotu 14y ago

This sounds like some butt-hurt gamers, passing a law because they don't like Diablo III.

lotu 14y ago

This sounds like some butt-hurt gamers, passing a law because they don't like Diablo III.