The Country That Shutdown Xbox Live For Kids


Every night across the globe, kids log into Xbox Live and game online. They should be studying or sleeping, but they’re gaming. Except in South Korea.

Last year, South Korea enacted a “Shutdown Law” designed to block online gaming for a nightly six-hour block. It was apparently created with PC gaming in mind, hoping to ensure Korean youth get six hours of sleep each night by banning online gaming between midnight and 6am.

Youths under 16 years old are banned from gaming online during this nightly block.

While online PC gaming, which is huge in South Korea, might have been the initial target, the Shutdown Law impacted console gaming, too. In late 2011, Sony banned players under the age of 16 from making new PSN accounts as well as prohibited them from logging into the PSN.

At that time Sony said it was difficult to implement age-specific measures in such a short window of time.

Due to the difficulty of monitoring, Microsoft was actually considering shutting down Xbox Live for all South Korean Live members during that block. Today, Microsoft revealed that it was shutting Live down during the nightly block for only those under 16 years of age. Players over 16 years old will not be affected.

And, like that, the South Korean government does something that Korean parents should be doing: telling kids to go to bed.

만 16세 미만에 대한 Xbox LIVE 멀티플레이 정책 공지 [Xbox.com — Thanks Cat Mario!]


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