In response to South Korea’s new law, the Game Industry Promotion Act, Sony has had to suspend the store from June 29 whilst the new law is set to come into enforcement from July 1. The new law in question states that persons under the age of eighteen “cannot be asked for their real name or age as part of account authentication,” something that the PlayStation store currently requires that the company couldn’t alter in time.
It is unknown as to how long the store will be closed, although SCEK does plan to have it back online sometime later this year. As a result, South Korean users will not be able to redeem their online passes or purchase and download content from the store.
Sony’s press release on the matter can be found here in Korean.
Gamasutra, however, notes that “the PS Vita, PSP and other portable devices that use the PSN Store will not be affected.”
Analysis: Although this is an unfortunate incident, there’s really no one to blame here or anyone that we could really be angry at. From time to time, things like this do happen and not much can be done about it; it’s simply a thing that has happened and surely Sony will be doing as much as they can to get the PlayStation Store back online for their South Korean users.
If anything, this sheds even more light on the ridiculous idea of having online passes as now South Korean customers will be unable to touch a component of a game they paid for. But again, this is just an unfortunate repercussion of South Korea passing a new law that some find fairly stupid, myself included. This most certainly sucks for any PS3 owners in South Korea. Here’s hoping that the store can be brought back online shortly or that a work around can be found so that games requiring online passes won’t need them while the store is down.
