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February 13th, 2012, 10:32 GMT · By

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South Korean Government Plans to Ban Minors from Game Betas

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The Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology in South Korea has announced that it plans to introduce a new set of limitations to the gaming time of minors via new bill.

The underlying concept is called the “Cooling Off System” and will mean that those under the age of 18 would be logged out of any sort of online game experience after playing for two hours.

Gamers can log back in after 10 minutes, but their overall gaming time for the day will be limited to four hours.

The bill also proposes that minors get a ban from all online game betas, regardless of their rating.

Companies need to enforce these rules and those who do not do so will have to pay fines of up to 24,000 dollars (18,126 Euro) and could also face up to three years in jail.

The Ministry is also thinking about introducing a new 1 percent tax on online games, which will be used to fund for treatment of addiction and to prevent video game related school violence.
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READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: firebear on 19 Apr 2012, 16:41 UTC reply to this comment

stupid as * .

a government should be there to make sure society works. they shouldn't get involved in anything they dont need to be involved in. what people do with their private time is of no concern to the government.

who is to say it is worse to spend 6h a day infront of a computer instead of spending 6h a day kicking a ball around, or partying.

it is up to every individual what he do with his own time and body, and the government shouldnt enforce anything like this.

its ridiculous, how long will it take until we get schedules handed out by the local government on how we are to live our life?


Comment #2 by: TheV on 19 Apr 2012, 19:40 UTC reply to this comment

Yeah, that will never pass. 80% of Sc2 pros are under 18.


Comment #3 by: renshi on 20 Apr 2012, 01:39 UTC reply to this comment

I think that it's a crippling form of Big government, and would advise that koreans do all that they can to strike down these bills. Companies would suffer.

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