South Korea Rates Diablo 3

[Andy Chalk]

South Korea Rates Diablo 3

Diablo 3 finally has a rating in South Korea.

For what felt like years [but was apparently just a month or so], the world held its collective breath waiting for South Korea's Game Rating Board to give the thumbs-up to Diablo 3. The GRB reportedly had issues [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115061-Diablo-3-Launch-Held-Up-In-Korea] with the auction house, which it felt was too close to gambling, and while it's hardly unusual for one country or another to ban one videogame or another, the concern in this case was that Blizzard's plan for a simultaneous, world-wide release of the game could be held up if the GRB refused to allow the game into South Korea.

All is well now, however, as the Game Rating Board has given Diablo 3 a Google-translated [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ko&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.grb.or.kr%2FStatistics%2FGameStatistics.aspx%3FsearchGameTitle%3DDiablo%2520III] 18+ rating, clearing the path for the planned, hopefully not-too-long-now, launch. It has to be a bummer for Korean teens waiting anxiously for the game but "mature" gamers around the world - it's rated "M" in North America and will probably get something comparable from PEGI - will no doubt breathe at least a shallow sigh of relief. What convinced the board to give the game the green light after two prior rejections isn't known.

re-confirmed for consoles [Diablo 3] as well as the PC and is currently slated to come out sometime in early 2012 - probably any day now, right?

Source: Dualshockers [http://www.dualshockers.com/2012/01/13/diablo-iii-rated-18-in-south-korea-the-endless-saga-ends/]


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[Ickabod]

"What convinced the board to give the game the green light after two prior rejections isn't known."

I'm guessing a whole lot of money.

 

[Scarim Coral]

This pleased me greatly (no more unforseen delays) since hopefully the next Diablo 3 news would be the release date.

 

[zephyron]

This is a bit misleading. They did rate Diablo 3, but from what I've heard, this does not include the real-money auction house, and from what Blizzard has said previously, this is a non-starter for Korea.

 

[Ickabod]

I still don't see what the problem was in the first place: How is the ability to sell items you FOUND in-game for real money even REMOTELY similar to gambling? Do they just consider auctions in general gambling?

Actually it's very similar to a slot machine. Both would essentially be based on random number generators to determine if you get a prize / valuable drop. The only difference and I think what Blizzard argued, is that there is no cost to from the player with each roll / kill thus the player isn't actually gambling anything.

In a broad sense you could say that buying a pack of Pokemon cards is like gambling too since you could find a rare card worth a lot of money, but doing that has just become accepted, unlike a video game.

I'm excited to try out the AH and see how it works.