Sesi Soft has signed an agreement today to sell investors rights of online action game <Lost Saga> to WeMade Entertainment.
According to the agreement, WeMade will be in charge of local service and overseas business. The game is in preparation for Chinese service following its Indonesian service which has attracted 70,000 concurrent users.
<Lost Saga> features 60+ characters and fast-paced, action-oriented game plays.
Nexon recently held a board and decided to amalgamate Nexon Mobile to Nexon in order to spur the mobile business.
On the 26th of January, the two companies signed the merger agreement.
Min Seo the CEO of Nexon said “This merger is to spur the mobile business rapidly with our intellectual property, global business ability, and infrastructure. The mobile industry will be one of the core business of Nexon in the future.”
The merger will be concluded by this April.
A prohibition law of real money trade(RMT) for virtual item led by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism(MCST) was revised significantly yesterday.
The revised law prohibits RMT from only those who own corporation or business license while the previous one had banned all the RMTs from Teen games whereby even adult players who play the Teen games could not cash out their items.
So the adults are now legally allowed making money out of their virtual items via a legal broker site while so called professional gold farmers who grind virtual items as a job to sell them to other gamers with the real money are completely blocked.
The game industry is looking forward to rooting out the gold farmers who have generated abnormal amount of in-game money and items.
However there are still the odds the gold farmers might disguise as personal traders instead of professional traders because they have just needed the business license in order to be legally exempted from paying taxes. So they can still do their job and pay little bit more taxes now.
“The new law will definitely bring a certain outcome since it literally blocks the teens’ RMT. But I still doubt if this could block the gold farmers using all kinds of expedients. To be more effective, more laws are needed to clarify the regulation,” said an industry official.
TERA at E3 2011
NCsoft and its North American corporation NC Interactive have submitted a case to a southern district court in New York province, the U.S. for a prohibition of launching <TERA> in the U.S. as well as return of confidential information and a compensation claim on the 9th of January; the defendants of the case are Bluehole Studio and En Mass Entertainment, respectively the developer and the North American publisher of MMORPG <TERA>.
NCsoft has asserted that Bluehole Studio has violated the copyright on MMORPG <Lineage 3> which used to be ceased for a while as Bluehole Studio leaked core technology of it, also stating violation of business secrets, violation of Non Disclosure Agreement(NDA), unfair competition, and other reasons.
To help you understand this situation, NCsoft and Bluehole’s ill-fated relationship has developed since last 2007.
In 2007, NCsoft requested a police investigation over Bluehole for leakage of the business secrets of <Lineage 3> in Korea. In August 2008, it sued Bluehole for that <TERA> derived from its then next generation MMORPG and claimed US$5.8M for damage. In December of the same year, the prosecution charged five ex-<Lineage 3> developers for the leaked secrets.
In 2010, the Korean court ruled that the defendant’s firm is not guilty but the five are guilty.
But <TERA> in the U.S. has not even launched yet. Then why would NCsoft sue them there, not in Japan where the commercial service already started off? And why now?
Most of the industry officials deem that NCsoft is trying to interrupt the NA server which is scheduled to be open on May 1. Moreover, it’s drawing the industry’s attention as the lawsuit is taking place while a controversy over protecting copyrights, SOPA and PIPA for examples, is going on in the U.S. today.
Both companies are unforthcoming about the situation. “We are looking for a law firm in NA and will announce our official stance as soon as we find one,” said a Bluehole official. “Take this lawsuit as prolongation of the lawsuit in Korea,” said a NCsoft official.
The Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology(MEST) is reportedly reviewing a policy that forcibly bans young students’ online game accounts played either for two hours consecutively or for more than three hours a day.
The MEST believes the game addiction derives from not specific playing period but amount of playing time. Therefore it insists a certain restriction according to each age besides the time restriction-the Shutdown Systems-is needed.
The policy is being developed on the premise that the game addiction caused a suicide accident happened in Daegu last year. So the MEST deeply understands the games are harmful.
Some questioned equity and effectiveness of the policy because its targets are basically the PC online games that can be shut down easily.
“We had not concatenated the game to the education policy because we had considered it as one of leisure activities for the students. But we now believe that the game addiction impacts on the school life significantly,” said an official from the MEST.
But the industry’s view is different. They see this situation as that the government is actually making the games a scapegoat for its failure of the education system. Moreover there are concerns that violation of policy has been made as recent game related laws came not from the charged ministry, the MCST(Minstry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism), but from other ministries, the MEST and the MGEF(Ministry of Gender Equality and Family).
The Game Industry “It’s a Triple Regulation.”
According to the game industry, the MEST’s policy is backed up by a theory that playing a game for a long time affects negatively both body and brain. However the basis is just a hypothesis that has not been even approved medically.
Especially, they are criticizing that the policy is a typical bureaucratic administration following the forcible shutdown system of the MGEF and the selective shutdown system of the MCST.
If the third restriction takes effect, total three powerful laws will help helpless parents stopping their born-to-study children from playing the online games over night or for more than two hours a day.
“If the game industry is really a trouble maker, then the related governments should discuss and provide a guideline to instruct us. Making similar policies from three different ministries does not make any sense at all. The two shutdown systems of the MGEF and the MCST should be repealed if the MEST’s regulation is reasonable,” said an industry official.
Meanwhile, the MEST has announced that it will reduce the amount of curriculum for elementary, middle, and high school students by 20% by 2014, scaling down Morality course which is essential for personality education for students.
