Regulators in South Korea clashed with blockchain game developers yesterday at an event entitled “The Future of Blockchain Games in Korea,” at which arguments centered on whether incorporating blockchain into gaming could lead to speculation and whether game developers were being discriminated against.
Fast facts
- Blockchain games in South Korea include in-game items represented in the real world by non-fungible tokens, which can be traded and converted into cash or cryptocurrencies on NFT trading platforms.
- Citing the risk of speculative trading in such items, the Game Rating and Administration Committee refuses to grant age ratings to games developed using blockchain technology. Consequently, no locally developed blockchain-based games are available in the country. Song Seok-hyeong, a ratings team leader on the committee said most blockchain games provided items randomly, which could encourage speculative behavior.
- Kim Kyun-tae, a partner at blockchain investment company Hashed, argued it was discriminatory to ban all blockchain-based games without reviews just because they incorporated NFTs. He added that many top-selling games in South Korea already enabled users to liquidate in-game items using out-of-game exchanges, saying the problem was not necessarily confined to blockchain games.
- Oh Ji-young, an adviser to the committee said the committee had to follow legislation on gaming and did not have the capacity to make decisions independently of the law.