South Korea to ban in-game item trades next month

so what does south korea propose people to do with this all this new time on their hands?

Considering the amount of gamer related deaths in SKorea due to them turning into mindless zombies this may help a little bit but I doubt it'll be strictly enforced.

Because if they can't trade via the dedicated servers they'll probably just use a 3rd party server or make their own to initiate trades instead.

Nice idea, good luck policing/enforcing it!

Honestly I'm clapping for SK this is a step in the right direction this putting value on useless crap is terrible (I play D3 too) yet still its about farming and bot farmers they did it in WoW made a tidy profit screwing people over (gold its worth... stuff?)

We need to step away from this idea of worthless ingame data having worth because it really doesnt you pay for the game you should not start buying tiny chunks of data for little charges.

Good for them. The United States is a joke anyway, obviously they'd come up with this retarded idea.

come one! this is insane. this is no criminal. what's the concept behind this. it's a fuckn game. imagine jail full of koreans getting butt raped because of trading items. i swear whoever made this law should be banished from earth.

When your northern border is the longest DMZ in the world you need something to distract you. 

What is wrong with it? If collecting items to trade has gotten to the point of addiction and is affecting their school grades, isn't it much different from doing drugs? You're still addicted, you're getting a "high" from your addiction, and you're too far deep into it to realize it is affecting and ruining your life.

"Users who violate this law will face up to a 50 million won fine ($43,000) and five years in jail."

That's insane.

soo pretty much this is just as bad as raping or killing someone... what has this world come to with laws like this.

They should halt trading a pokemon & trading card game too.

It just a game. LOL

You guys are confusing me, I think I read a completely different article or maybe you guys only read the title.

This is only a ban on ILLEGAL traded items; such as selling a character. You can still trade in game items and you can still buy items form a cash shop you just can't use a bot to farm in game gold and then sell the in game gold for real money.

This is very stupid.  The government treats all the Korean gamers like they are little kids.  I don't live there tough, so it doesn't affect me.

I like the idea they're going with this. However, I actually doubt it'll accomplish anything.

"...saying the hobby of collecting virtual items for commercial use was a deterrent in creating a healthy game culture."  No, that's called taking advantage of people.  The deterrent are the low lives that pay for that crap to begin with.  If these pieces of garbage ceased, we wouldn't have gold sellers, bots and all this other crap plaguing online communities.

Of course, I can think of a workaround for this to go vain.

Seems like it has a point... but I don't think it'll get anywhere, nor should they have a choice on how people waste their time, better hope alchohol taxes stay up enough to stop them banning that then.

The idea of this is stupid anyways and just brings to light Greedy corporations.

http://truthofgaming.blogspot.com/

...and here I thought the purpose of bots WAS to save time.

How in the world will they police such a thing...?

So it's not a ban on literal trading, it's really a ban on actual money being involved in the deals?

I love how the punishment is completely equivalent to the severity of the crime.

I like this law. I think "virtual in-game items' shouln't be sold to people at all.

This will add a whole new niche to the black market. Digital smuggling is on its way!

Hey if it fucks up Diablo III or Blizzards profits in general  in anyway I'm all for it. THey threw their players under the bus a long time ago when they dumbed down WoW extremely to get as many people as possible to make as much money as possible while completely destroying Diablo by making a Single Player version of WoW  and calling it Diablo III. 

If I am understanding this correctly, it is a game-changer for western MMOs as well. Much less item/gold/trade spam, yes?

If people are too stupid to know the difference between healthy behavior and unethical behavior, then human governments must step in.

If it kills online passes for Korea, I'll give them credit for getting one thing right.

That's not gonna stop 48 hour sessions of Starcraft!

This kinda of puts a wrench in Blizzards' plans

DAMN KOREA......YOU SCARY....

Wouldn't this ban apply to cash shops as well? Well, I guess it would get rid of pay to win, but then again a free to play would have no way of funding itself.

Oh no! Now this is just sad. The gov interfering with the freedoms of its people... *sigh.

when will governments learn you can't stop anything by banning?

Also, maybe this will stop all the gold farm spam global chat in the free MMO's.

Wait, they really need to  clarify what they mean by 'trading in-game items'. Do they mean all items?  That would mean you could never give anybody anything.

Also, how does the use of bots relate to people playing too much?  Bots are...bots, they don't require you to be at the screen.  If anything bots help reduce the amount of time people spend playing a game.

harsh