Well, no one in South Korea’s building brown bricks right now.
Almost everywhere else, Minecraft is a game for kids. But in South Korea it is now pretty much for adults only.
This comes down to South Korea’s “Cinderella Law”; implemented in 2011, it prohibits anyone under the age of 16 from playing online games between midnight and 6am. The law was signed in due to a number of incidents involving people literally doing nothing but playing online games round the clock, to the point where some of them died. This left Minecraft untouched, however, until just recently
Rather than add screening to their games just for South Korea, Microsoft decided to comply with the law by requiring players to sign in to their Xbox Lie account, and to make an account in South Korea, you need to be 19 or older. Initially, this wasn’t a problem, as players could sign into the game with their Mojang account. But as of December 2020, they started notifying player that they would need to sign in with an Xbox Live account to access the game. And March 2021 saw an additional popup for South Korea notifying them that to purchase the game, they would need to be 19 years old. Despite the fact that South Korea’s ratings board rated Minecraft at 12+, the sign in essentially bumps it to an 18+.
South Korean players aren’t terribly happy about this, though. And they’ve set up a petition that’s currently sitting at over 90,000 signatures. Notably, the petition highlights the educational value of the game, and calls for the abolishment of the system used in verifying age. Not to mention how easily the law is circumvented.
Source: PC Gamer
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