South Korea Delays Diablo III Rating Over Gambling Concerns

The global release of Diablo III, the eagerly awaited role playing dungeon crawler from Blizzard, might be in danger. This is due to the South Korean Game Rating Board, which doesn’t want to pass a ruling due to the game’s Auction House feature because it resembles gambling.

South Korea has always had a very harsh stance on gambling, leading to the elimination of systems that remotely hinted at such activities from a variety of regular and online games.

Now, this issue might prevent the release of a major game, in the form of Diablo III, which is eagerly awaited by legions of fans all around the world and especially in South Korea, where its developer, Blizzard, is very popular thanks to the StarCraft titles.

According to the Korea Times, the government’s Game Rating Board has once again delayed ruling on Diablo III due to its Auction House system. As fans might remember, this is where players can sell or buy in-game items in exchange for money.

Even if Blizzard already eliminated the feature to turn in-game money into real life cash from the South Korean version of Diablo III, the board is still reticent about giving a green light to the role playing game.

"Committee members are conflicted about what to do with Diablo III," said a board spokesperson to the newspaper, "because of (its American developer) Blizzard's information on the game's 'auction house' feature."

Blizzard already mentioned that it wants a simultaneous global release for Diablo III, so this delay might cause a lot of problems for the popular studio.

"In principle, we are always committed to a global release," a Blizzard spokesperson told the newspaper in response to this new delay.

As of yet, however, the studio hasn’t given an accurate release date for Diablo III, so who knows how big of a delay the South Korean government has caused.