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China Pushes Real Name System For Online Games
oxide7 writes "Starting from August 1, Chinese Internet users will have to register using their real names for playing online games, China Daily reported on Saturday. The regulation, issued by the Ministry of Culture on June 22, is said to be part of a nationwide campaign to improve management of the virtual gaming industry and protect minors from unwholesome content. It applies to all multiplayer role-playing and social networking games."
You can buy anonymous game time cards, or anonymous prepaid credit cards (although the government really doesn't like when you do the latter, so they have been killing those programs).
Erm, are we talking about the same South Korea here? The one I'm thinking of is the only country in the world where video game tournaments attract mainstream media attention -- and I'm pretty sure they're farming minerals and vespene gas, not gold.
And you know, it's been met with public outcry and made certain politicians quite unpopular. The internet filtering thing was only ever a token appeasement move to get certain conservative elements onboard - now that they've run their course, it's being quietly set aside. Realpolitik rules the day.
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About the pedos in online games, Toontown (a MMO for kids) has a nice system: you can't write anything you want, you can just use a very large set of predefined phrases. Unless you know someone IRL, then you can get a code and tell them over phone or IM, and after introducing the code, chat is free between the two.
In theory, it fixes the problem, although it's probably less fun not to be able to talk freely.
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