South Korea's recently passed Shutdown Law went into
effect on November 20, and now requires online games to block children
aged under 16 from playing during a late-night six-hour block.
The so-called Cinderella Law was passed earlier this year, advocated by
the government's Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (MCST) and
Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MGEF) as a way to prevent online
gaming addiction.
Console services like Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox
Live are affected, with the former no longer allowing 15-year-olds and
younger to register for PSN accounts or to log in between midnight and
6AM.
Xbox Live has been given a two-month grace period to create a system for
tracking users' age and blocking children from logging in during the
late-night hours. It's possible the service could block all users no
matter their age during that period.
Critics of the Shutdown Law argue that the law violates children's civil
rights, and that the government hasn't proven that playing games is
more harmful than watching TV or movies, listening to music, or engaging
in other indoor activities.
The Korea Association of Game Industry (KAOGI), which is made up of 14
game publishers like Nexon and NCsoft, claimed the law enforces
"excessive prohibition" on a small number of players, and has been
preparing a lawsuit regarding the curfew.
Cultural solidarity organization MoonHwaYunDae (MHYD) also filed an
appeal to the Korea's Constitutional Court against the law last month.
Despite the opposition, the new policy went into effect this week
without any significant issues.
Some people are working around the Law, though, by using their parents'
accounts created with their social security numbers, or by logging into
Western servers for games like
League of Legends instead of local servers,
according to This Is Game.
The Korean news site also reports that MCST and MGEF are seeking to have
local online game companies create account certification systems that
collect personal data such as social security numbers and credit card
info to prevent workarounds.