Korea institutes nighttime shutdown for underaged MMO players

"You've been playing long enough, it's time to do something else now." It's a statement you'd expect to hear from your parent, but from your government? The Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has introduced a set of policies known as "nighttime shutdown" for underage users -- an enforced six hour blackout time. According to today's report in the Korean Herald, kids can choose the start time for their six hour window -- midnight, 1:00 a.m., or 2:00 a.m., and internet access will automatically shut down at that time for six hours.

The point of this new "curfew" of sorts is to help curtail video game addiction among Korean citizens, a problem that's been making headlines off and on for a while. While it's only in the testing phase at the moment -- it affects four games right now, including Dungeon Fighter Online and Dragon Nest -- it will eventually expand to include 19 of the most popular online games in Korea, such as Mabinogi and MapleStory. The new policies aren't limited to nighttime shutdown, either. If an underage player is online for a significant amount of time online, a "slowdown" will come into effect, throttling back the user's connection speed and presumably making it much more difficult to play.

You can read the full story in the Korean Herald.

[Thanks to Amana for the tip!]