South Korea's burgeoning online gaming market has brought the country a
great deal of business success, but it's also brought the dread specter
of video game addiction to the forefront of public awareness. Hoping to
curb addiction before it starts, the country has brought into effect a new law
requiring all online games to block players under age 16 from playing
between midnight and 6 a.m. Dubbed the "Cinderella Law," it also affects
online services such as PlayStation Network and XBox Live.

As expected, the law has several vocal critics, who assert that the law
infringes upon the civil rights of children. The Korea Association of
Game Industry, a group including companies such as Nexon and NCsoft,
is in the midst of preparing a lawsuit based on its claim that the law
is excessively prohibitive. Of course, many gamers have been trying to
circumvent the ban already by connecting to Western servers, which have
no such restriction... although it could be argued that connecting to
another country's servers just to play for a six-hour period sort of
reinforces the whole argument about addiction.

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.

wow interesting means no more noobs in competetive games

There'r plenty of adult noobs too