Sony forced to suspend PlayStation Store in Korea following new laws

Newsbrief: Sony Computer Entertainment announced this week that the PlayStation Store and related services for the PlayStation 3 will be suspended in South Korea from June 29, to comply with the country's new "Game Industry Promotion Act." The new law, due to take affect on July 1, states that persons under the age of 18 cannot be asked for their real name or age as part of account authentication, as the PSN Store requires. SCEK does not have enough time to alter the service before July 1, and so is taking the entire store down until it has complied with the law. During the outage, Sony says the purchase of new content, download, and online game registration will be impossible. While it aims to resume service sometime this year, it does not know when that will be. Note that the PS Vita, PSP and other portable devices that use the PSN Store will not be affected.