To address an ever-growing concern over online game addiction amongst children, the government of South Korea has put in place a ban on youths playing them past the witching hour. Underaged users who play in the wee hours will have their connection to the server severed for a six-hour period and gamers can choose whether it starts at midnight, 1 am or 2 am.
In addition, extended play online will result in a throttling of the user’s connection speed. This measure is currently being tested on four MMOs and will later be expanded to apply to a total of 19 online RPGs which represent 79% of the domestic market in Korea.
Kids will inevitably find a way around this, no doubt. but I can appreciate the desire to do this. If I had had people — we’ll call them “parents” — who told me to turn off my games at midnight or offered punishment for disobeying the instruction, I might have wound up with a real, grown-up job instead of this totally awesome one.
Of course, I did have people like that and I chose to ignore them. Something tells me that’s likely to happen again.
Midnight ban imposed on online games [The Korea Herald]
