South Korea to Impose an Online Gaming Ban After Midnight!

An online game ban will be instituted in South Korea according to the Korea Herald. The new policies “will attempt to block underage access to online computer games after midnight in light of the rising problem of video game addiction among youth,” according to the report.

One of the policies will affect popular online games such as Barameui Nara, Maple Story, Mabinogi and 16 others by cutting off access to underage users at 12am sharp. Another policy is “the slowdown policy” where gamers will find their Internet speed dropping to 56k levels if they play for too long.

There was no mention of regular Internet connections cutting off, just online access to those games. So, the underaged gamers in question will stop playing any one of these 19 games at 12am, then either a) load up a new game, b) find a way around the block, or c) surf for porn.

Then what happens when Star Craft II releases? The original Star Craft still draws millions of South Korean gamers online, in LAN parties, and at professional Star Craft competitions and tournaments across the nation. Good luck stopping people from playing that. Its practically a national sport.

As reports of this new online game ban circulate, the example of gamer depravity and addiction that keeps getting mentioned is the story of the death of a South Korean newborn through starvation. It has been claimed that the parents’ addiction to online gaming led to their neglect of the child.

A horrible story indeed, but will this new online game ban save millions of babies of underaged parents from a similar fate? Considering the parents in the story mentioned above are 41 and 25 years old, this new ban stands to only truly aggravate and generally hack off millions of (tech savvy) South Korean teenagers, force new games into the limelight, and drive porn profits instead of curbing online game addiction or saving babies.