South Korea to regulate Facebook games

South Korea’s effective regulator, the Game Rating and Administration Committee, has blocked residents’ access to games on social networking giant Facebook until such time as every game has been examined and approved.

In doing so, the Committee invoked the Game Industry Promotion Act, passed in December last year, which which requires all online games to be vetted by a nine-person panel to determine the appropriate age ranking.

The Act has previously been used to regulate popular sports games, but this is the first occasion on which it has been deployed in the social gaming field.

The South Korean government remains implacably opposed to online gambling, and the new focus on social games may be influenced by fears of a ‘stealth’ encroachment by online gambling.

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