[MUD-Dev] PKing minors

[Richard A. Bartle]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned here already, but GamePro
have a report on the banning of PKing for under-18s in Korean
virtual worlds:

  http://www.gamepro.com/index.html?/gamepro/international/games/news/26774.shtml

Full text follows

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Player-Killing MMORPGs = Adults Only?
24-OCT-02

NCsoft, the creators of immensely popular online RPG Lineage, now
has more to worry about than insane players and broken servers: the
Korean government's just given their flagship title an "18 and over"
rating, effectively shutting half of its membership out of the game.
In a ruling published last week, the Korean Ministry of Culture and
Tourism's media board gave a blanket adults-only rating to Lineage
and any other online game that allows player killing (PK), defined
in the document as "killing player characters in order to steal the
other player's items."  The rating is seen by most Korean gamers as
a symbolic blow to Lineage, which has attracted millions of Korean
players but is being blamed for everything from real-life violence
to item-auction extortion.

"The media board's ruling will take the Korean game industry, which
has grown at an incredibly fast pace up to now, and set it back ten
years," said NCsoft president Kim Taek-jin on his company's
website. He should know: his company's stock has already fallen
nearly 25 percent, and Internet cafes across Korea are worried that
the lack of Lineage in two months (when the ruling takes effect)
will put them out of business.

President Kim said that NCsoft will fight the new ruling in court
beginning next week. If he loses, the ruling could have a chilling
effect on PC online gaming in general, a field dominated by NCsoft
and other large Korean publishers.



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