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Korea sends teen games players to their beds

Curfew imposed on 19 MMORPGs

This is what happens when you have the best broadband in the world: children stay up all night playing computer games online.

Yes, we are talking about Korea, which aims to eradicate computer game addiction among teenagers by imposing a night time shut down on 19 popular "freemium" role-playing games.

These account for 80 per cent of the country's games market, according to local reports. But won't the addicts simply play games offline instead?

Under a new law, underage players must select a six-hour period during which they will lose access to their online games. Also, speeds will slow to a crawl for underage players who play for too long.

Will the curfew work? If Korean kids are anything like their British counterparts on Facebook, they will simply lie about their age.

Alternatively, they will piggyback on the IDs of older brothers and sisters or parents. According to the Korea Herald, the government "intends to establish a countermeasure for youths using their parents' resident registration number to set-up online accounts sometime in the first half of this year". How?

Lastly, what does Korea intend to do about its adult games addicts, two of whom let their real-life daughter starve to death while trying to raise a virtual daughter online. Just asking...

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