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South Korea Criminalizes "Boosting" (Playing on Another Person's Game Account)

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

takyon writes:

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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @09:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @09:29PM (#772578)

    Unless you can win money in a competition by paying someone to do it for you, what exactly is the point of 1) having someone play for you and 2) for that person to play for you instead of for themselves ?

    As an example, in an MMO, grinding out money and game credits is annoying. That's why there is a grey/black market for buying things. This is a natural extension of that. Imagine somebody came to you and said "I'll get you to level 70 in World of Warcraft for $20" (rather than you needing to spend the multiple hours of work to get to the part of the game you want to play). You can criticize games for having "not fun" parts, but you can surely see why that would be something people would be interested in doing.

    There are other reasons to do that as well, including both moral as well as immoral reasons. This includes things like peer prestige, advertising money, getting out of "ELO Hell," among many others.