Korea considers blocking minors from playing online games for over 3 hours

South Korea's Ministry of Education, Science and
Technology is reportedly reviewing a policy that would ban minors'
accounts if they played online games for more than two hours
consecutively, or a total of three hours in a day.

While there is already a shutdown law in place preventing children aged
under 18 years old from playing online games during a late-night
six-hour block, MEST's rationale for the policy is that game addiction
comes from how long kids play games, not when they play them.

Critics are arguing that this new policy, along with the existing shutdown law and the recently implemented selective shutdown law,
constitutes a "triple regulation" of the game industry in Korea -- and
that MEST's theories on game addiction haven't been medically proven.

"If the game industry is really a troublemaker, then the related
government [groups] should discuss it and provide guidelines to instruct
us," said an unnamed game industry representative, according to a report from Korean industry news site This Is Game.

The official added, "Making similar policies from three different
ministries does not make any sense at all. The two shutdown systems of
the [Ministry of Gender Equality and Family] and the [Ministry of
Culture Sports and Tourism] should be repealed if MEST's regulation is
reasonable."

It looks like being a young gamer in South Korea is getting tougher and tougher. Last year the country put into effect a "Cinderella Law"
that prohibited online gamers 18 and younger from logging in to popular
games between the hours of midnight and 6:00 a.m.. Now the government
is taking a close look at an additional law limiting the amount of time played each day for minors.

The proposed policy comes from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology
(MEST) and would yank account privileges for minors if they played
either more than two hours in a row or more than three hours daily. The
MEST is concerned about game addiction in minors, citing that it may
come from the duration of play sessions.

The game industry is concerned about possible over-regulation by the
government spurred by theories on addiction that haven't been proven.
Some are calling for earlier shutdown policies to be overturned if this
one is implemented.