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posted by martyb on Monday December 10 2018, @05:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the play-your-own-game dept.

South Korea criminalizes 'boosting' with new law

Boosting — basically one person playing on another's account to rank them up — is going to be a criminal offense in South Korea with some stiff punishments awaiting the booster.

The new measure comes courtesy of an amendment to the country's Game Industry Promotion Act, reports The Daily Dot. That law was passed in June 2017. This new measure was developed in collaboration with the video games industry in the country and will punish boosters with a fine of up to 20 million won, which is roughly $18,000. They also get a two-year suspended prison sentence.

[...] The act goes into effect in six months, and defines a "proxy game" as "an act that interferes with the normal operation of the game by arranging or providing the service to acquire the score or performance of the game in a way that is not approved by the game-related business operated."

If you pay me in Bitcoin, I will post comments for you using your SN login.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:52PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:52PM (#772836)

    I heard Korean guy talking about it while he should have been working, and the main problem seems to be people trying to get police and lawyers involved when boosters are, perhaps, 50% scammers. Or 90%. Or 1%. But whatever the percentage, its too high.

    Typical scams include your account password is changed and we'll change it back for a mere 5x what you paid for boosting, you paid for X units of boosting to take you from 95% completion to 98% completion and unless you pay 5X additional it would be a shame if your character dropped to 90% completion, we have your in-game chat logs what a shame if your wife read your conversation with your girlfriend (which will be made up if you don't have a GF because they obviously have multiple accounts to simulate it).

    Its the usual IRL crimes, just done in a game. No small amount of simple BS. Gimmie money I'll level up; whoopsie I didn't but I'll keep your money is just something cops don't like dealing with.

    Similar to a shitty dive bar full of criminals, its not that cops don't like beer or bars are inherently evil, its just this business model results in crazy levels of criminal/legal issues and the cops are sick and tired of it. As such, unlike America where login-sharing would result in SWAT teams storming in and shooting your kids in their backs because thats the goal not law enforcement, the outcome is likely you go to police station to report getting ripped off and the cops merely LOL and remind you thats illegal so unless the booster did something with a prison term longer than you'd get for illegally boosting...

    Of course this is one dude overhearing exactly one other dude commenting, but at least the dude is ethnic Korean and claims to be plugged into their pop culture or whatever.

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