Law criminalizes boosting in South Korea

Representatives of the gaming community who will violate the rule will get fined up to $17,000 or will get punished alternatively getting imprisoned up to two years. Last year modifications of the law about the game industry and protection of the information and communication technologies were considered. After that the changes were accepted in South Korea in 2018, and only today they have gone into effect.

The law was accepted to chiefly solve boosting problem in such games as League of Legends, Overwatch, StarCraft I and StarCraft II. As a supplementary effect, a decision to impose sanctions on proxy sites and companies was made as the game with proxy can obstruct work of some programs and can affect the score of the match.

The active fight with unfair players in South Korea started two year ago. In 2017, 13 people who broke into Overwatch accounts and developed a prohibited soft got arrested. One of them got two years of suspended jail sentence as another one paid $10,000 fine. Some time later another developer of restricted programs got a year of suspended jail sentence and also got two years of probation. This severe punishment wasn’t groundless. The mentioned developer of cheats earned more than $180,000 with his work.