Posts Tagged ‘grb’

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Getting Ready for Private Rating

January 20th, 2012

Game rating transfer to a private entity began.

Korea Association of Game Industry(KAOGI) held a board with 9 firms and established a Private Rating Organization Bureau(PROB) on the 18th of January.

The PROB is founded to prepare the transfer of the game rating from the Game Rating Board(GRB) to the private organization. The bureau will play a role of an arrangement committee whereby they plan specific systems and prepare the private rating in order to start off the organization after July.

KwangSik Choi the Minister for Culture said on the same day, “We will transfer the rights of rating games and hosting G-star from the GRB to the private. We hope the industry prepare flawlessly as autonomy accompanies responsibility.”

KwanHo Choi the chairman of the KAOGI said “We will set strict standards to keep the purpose of legislation. The autonomous rating requires even stricter deliberation as we have wanted transparency, predictability, and convenience in a procedure.”

The private rating organization designated by the Minister will be in charge of PC online games rated Everyone, Teen, and Mature. Moreover, it is restricted from having more than a third of interested parties complying to the Game Law.

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Diablo 3 Is Coming Soon

January 13th, 2012

It’s been a month.

Blizzard Entertainment finally succeeded getting <Diablo 3> rated Adults Only from the Game Rating Board(GRB) today as it always wanted. The controversial cash auction system has remained but an exchange system that allows players exchange in-game currency into real money is removed.

Blizzard applied for the rating deliberation of <Diablo 3> last December 3 with the cash auction which the GRB did not like. The GRB, therefore, postponed the review and asked Blizzard more materials about the sensitive auction to deliberate. As Blizzard failed to seek an agency partner for the exchange, it tried once again with the version excluding the exchange feature and finally fulfilled what it wanted after a month of endeavor.

So, Korean players may still purchase the in-game items with real money through the cash auction but not allowed making virtual money into real money. Instead, they may use the battle coin, the in-game hard currency, when purchasing a product from Blizzard Store or subscribing <World of Warcraft>.

The GRB said “The cash transaction between the players was not concerned during the deliberation since it was not yet available. Adding the feature, Blizzard needs to apply it for not change in content but new rating.”

“We will spur the local tests and release. Nothing is told about the exchange feature,” said a Blizzard official.

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GRB Survived One More Year

January 2nd, 2012

From 2013, at the earliest, a private and autonomous organization would be in charge of rating a game.

A revised bill about game industry promotion that transfers Game Rating Board(GRB)’s rating work to the private organization and extends its national subsidy for another year has passed the National Assembly Legislation and Judiciary Committee(LJC).

Thus the GRB and its subsidy will persist this year as long as the Assembly plenary session allows.

A member of National Assembly JiHo Shin, however, complained that the transfer is as good as setting the fox to keep the geese, blaming that the side effects of the games pertain to recent suicide of a middle school student in Daegu, Korea.

JoonSun Park the deputy of Shin voiced “Let the transfer goes, but the new agency must not consist more than a third of game industry officials in order to prevent putting the cart before the horse.”

Therefore a rule that restricts the new agency from having more than a third of interested parties is added. It should select the rest committees from a group of students, parents, and so on.

Meanwhile, the adult games and the arcade games involving any possibility of speculation will still be handled by the GRB.

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Diablo 3 Rating Pended in Korea

December 19th, 2011

Korean Game Rating Board(GRB) postponed rating Blizzard’s upcoming title <Diablo 3> due to short of material to review.

<Diablo 3> was to be rated by the 16th of December but pended as the GRB requested more material to look over. Additional materials asked by the GRB are purportedly about the cash auction system of <Diablo 3>.

An official from Blizzard said “We are asked more material from the GRB. So we are now working on it.”

Blizzard seems puzzled since they have applied for 18+ rating but failed. ”We had a consultation that nothing is wrong legally. Therefore we hope all players around world experience the same,” said Blizzard before the application.

As the deliberation usually takes two weeks it seems hard for <Diablo 3> to be rated by this year. An official from the GRB said “I cannot say anything about the game currently under the review.”

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Government Defines Jackpot Probability to Stop Speculation

October 13th, 2011

Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism(MCST) is working on an administrative guideline to regulate speculative game items. The detail of the guideline will be introduced in November at latest.

KiJung Lee the director of Game Content Industry of MCST explained “So far we have let the industry manage the issue autonomously. While some have followed the self-rule some have not. Therefore we need to define a certain official guideline based on feedback from the companies, even if it would be still the same, for them to follow otherwise the autonomous rule will be fizzled out as time passes or new companies would not recognize the rule at all.”

Define the Probability Range of the Jackpot Items

MCST first asked the game industry to suggest the guideline in favor of them by this October. If MCST does not like the offer it will work on it directly.

“The guideline for the probability is needed. The jackpot item is getting popular among the industry and its range of probability is sometimes up to 100 times which encourages speculation badly,” said Lee. “The jackpot item must feature whatever that increases the probability with one’s effort. Simple draw for miracle is defenately speculative.”

GRB Will Use the Guideline

If the administrative guideline comes out, it could affect rating review of Game Rating Board(GRB) because GRB would use it as a criterion for the speculative aspect.

GRB normally review all the modified contents of games, simply patches or updates, in order to see if they are appropriate for the current rating. If not appropriate, it proceeds re-review of the game.

Hand In the Data

In order to clearly judge if the company follows the guideline, GRB needs to see the exact data of the probability of the jackpot item. However the industry has refused to file the data for reason of business confidence. So MCST is trying to make them hand in the data to GRB.

At the game law enforced last July, GRB added a few lines to its goal of foundation to embrace the role of preventing possible speculation induction or encouragement and have right to request any required data.

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