
South Korea bans virtual item trading & bots - spdy
http://www.incgamers.com/2012/06/south-korea-bans-virtual-item-trading-diablo-3-auction-house-dead/
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danneu
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
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."

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fragsworth
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.

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nchuhoai
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

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guard-of-terra
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
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.

~~~
guard-of-terra
I do not. Would make an interesting read if somebody does.

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ajitk
Recently read [http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-
with-a...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-
strange-email/) 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.

~~~
batista
> _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
>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.

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EliRivers
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
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
> _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...

~~~
mistercow
I would say that what makes it a novelty is that people are making significant
money off of the act itself. Take your example of hula hoops. People make
money off of _selling_ hula hoops, and there are a very few people who make
money off of the _exhibition_ of their hula-hooping prowess. But nobody is
really making a business model out of hula-hooping itself. You could swap
rubik's cubes and yo-yos in to the previous sentence, and it would still hold
true. Hula hoops are a novelty, but selling hula hoops is not.

But there are people out there making gobs of money off of the trade of
virtual items and then manipulation of virtual economies, and not by enabling
it (although that is also profitable) or by doing it as a parlor trick for
others' amusement, but by the same means as any other economy is exploited.

In particular, what makes this not a novelty is that the attraction that these
people have to it is not that it is a video game, or that the idea is new and
interesting, but that it is simply an unexploited opportunity.

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baby
#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
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.

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

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_seininn
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.

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Tyrant505
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.]

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Shenglong
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.

~~~
Zolomon
I believe <http://www.entropiauniverse.com/> was one of the first games to
support real money in-game.

~~~
Tyrant505
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.

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

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grok2
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!)

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

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Kelliot
Will this just push more Koreans away from WOW/D3 and back towards Starcraft
2?

I cant win as it is =/

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hcarvalhoalves
Games: the new drugs?

