wraggster
September 7th, 2010, 22:20
A number of freeware games have reportedly been banned in South Korea, following their creators' failure to pay for rating.
All games in the country must be age-rated by the government's Game Rating Board (GRB) in order to obtain a legal release. However, this entails a cost to the creator or publisher of between $20 and $700, dependent on file-size.
This has proven difficult for amateur developers creating not-for-profit titles distributed purely online. As detailed by a frustrated post on Reddit, increased GRB monitoring has apparently led to a number of free games being taken down.
The system is affecting for-profit firms too, with Valve's digital distribution service Steam reportedly facing a "complete block" because none of the games it hosts have paid to be GRB-certified.
Earlier this year, the GRB threatened to block Google's Android Market in its entirety unless the over 4000 unrated games on the service paid to be certified.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-09-07-korean-rating-system-leads-to-indie-game-bans
All games in the country must be age-rated by the government's Game Rating Board (GRB) in order to obtain a legal release. However, this entails a cost to the creator or publisher of between $20 and $700, dependent on file-size.
This has proven difficult for amateur developers creating not-for-profit titles distributed purely online. As detailed by a frustrated post on Reddit, increased GRB monitoring has apparently led to a number of free games being taken down.
The system is affecting for-profit firms too, with Valve's digital distribution service Steam reportedly facing a "complete block" because none of the games it hosts have paid to be GRB-certified.
Earlier this year, the GRB threatened to block Google's Android Market in its entirety unless the over 4000 unrated games on the service paid to be certified.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-09-07-korean-rating-system-leads-to-indie-game-bans