Another point to look at is how the law makers in discussion referred to mmorpg's as arcade games The way it was phrased their mindset sounds like they think mmorpg players such as ourselves have a slot in our PC's where we stick in the quarter every time we do a STF ROFL

That is one of the most ignorant, dumbest posts of the real world that I have ever read in many years. You've probably never done any traveling outside your own country to make such a dumb statement like that. Or even get information on other countries outside your own.

Having been with the US Marine Corps for a long time, I have seen a lot of countries and have made enough trips to South Korea.

South Korea is one of the most prosperous countries in the Pacific Rim, and has been so for a good long while. Not sure how they rank economically compared to China and Japan, but the South Koreans have done very well of themselves. Not to mention there's some companies, at least in electronics, that are significant players out there and have been creeping up on the big names like Sony.

There's also ALOT of people that live in South Korea, with a population of almost 49 million, ranking 25th in the world out of 237 countries.

Militarily, it is the South Korean military that holds the line of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone, since you probably have no clue about that and weren't taught about the Korean War, an actual U.N. action, not just U.S.). US military forces are always standing by, but we're now kept further back as a backup / reserve. The South Koreans, with worry about their northern counterparts crossing south across the 38th parallel again, have long implemented compulsory service for their youth. As a US serviceman on deployment to S.Korea, I have ran into Korean-Americans who have gone back to their family's homeland to perform their compulsory service. It's kinda funny coming across a Korean serviceman speaking english and sounding American, but hey, they're doing their duty. Since the Korean War, the US has long backed the South in case the North tries anything dumb again. But make no mistake, South Korea doesn't exist only as an "airstrip for the US."

For a people that have been unfortunately been sandwiched between other Asiatic powers (i.e. China & Japan, a lot of bad history here if you care to look it up), and being invaded by their northern brothers kicking off the Korean War of the 1950s, they have done alright.

Illuminate yourself sometime.

As for the ban by the Korean gov't on this specific mess on gaming, nice to hear. Some of the dumb sh*t that game companies have been pulling in recent years has been irking me for a while, and hopefully the Koreans have helped kick off a movement around the world about this kind of stuff.

As far as gaming and MMORPGs in particular, this is a huge impact. The Koreans have a large, hardcore gaming populace there. MMORPGs in particular are huge. What's funny with the raid is that it hit Blizzard, a company that has some strong standing with their gaming.

Nice to see the government and law somewhere finally slapping the spit out of companies doing these practices.

Few things about this thread I want to address and the above is the first one. Officially STO isn't offered in South Korea by Perfect World or by PWs partner Nexon (at least didn't find it from the Nexons site), who operates Perfect Worlds games in South Korea and rest of the Asia out side of China. Second, STO is PWEs game at the moment and I would like to point to here: blocked countries by PWE. As you can see, South Korea is blocked from playing ALL PWE's games, meaning every PW game that has been translated to english and western online games that are under PWE, I could be wrong on that but that is what I understand from the support site.

Then there is this. Not going to happen, this upcoming proposal for a law isn't going to affect companies operating in South Korea in any way because it isn't aimed against companies. What they are after are players who trades virtual items for cash because they can't tax the transactions between players thus they don't gain any money from it, unlike every transaction companies make.

By doing quick search I found out that NCSoft made US$370 million in 2010 in South Korea, Nexon (the biggest MMO publisher in the region) reported revenues of US$1.12 billion in 2011, but that is global figure for them but gives you the idea. Just looking at those numbers do you really think that the South Korean goverment is going to push the companies out of the country by banning virtual item sales made by the companies? Not going to happen. Might be cynical point of view of the world from my part, but don't see them going after the companies with this.

It was banning the trade of any ingame item, that does not require a player to obtain it. I.E Bots. As of right now I do not think that is a real problem in STO, and most of the larger items that people want cannot be obtained by a bot. Thats just the basic jist of what I got.