South Korea To Suspend Underage MMORPG Players Overnight

In response to a perceived epidemic of addiction, South Korea will enact a "nighttime shutdown" -- a ban on minors' access to online games overnight. Underage users will automatically be logged out of popular online games like Barameui Nara, MapleStory and Mabinogi at the stroke of midnight, and will be blocked from accessing the game again for six hours, says a report in the Korea Herald. Users can also select two other time windows for their "blackout" -- 1 A.M. to 7 A.M. and 2 A.M. to 8 A.M. Another "slowdown" policy will cripple internet speeds for underage users who have been logged in for too many straight hours. This method is currently being tested on four MMORPGs including Dungeon Fighter and Dragon Nest, with the ultimate aim of building it out to the 19 MMORPGs that represent 79 percent of the country's online game market. The policy is not without its critics; some fear that the new systems will be too easy for users to circumvent, and many online game companies criticize what they say is unfair targeting -- for example, NCsoft's Lineage is among the most popular long-standing MMORPGs in the region, and it is not included under the new policy, according to the Korea Herald's report. But the country's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism apparently feels the need to enact some response to much-buzzed headlines of young people in South Korea spending days straight in internet cafes, at the expense of families, health and even lives due to exhaustion, starvation and dehydration.