Korean rating system leads to indie game bans

[wraggster]

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/article...ndie-game-bans

[Qmark]

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.

This doesn't make any sense whatsoever.