[아이뉴스24 윤선훈 기자] Alongside Democratic Party lawmaker Dong-soo Dong-soo, they proposed a bill that bans the sale of’Complete Gacha’ products.
On the 5th, according to the office of Rep. Yoo, Rep. Yoo representatively proposed the’Partial Amendment of the Game Industry Promotion Act (hereinafter referred to as the Game Act’s amendment)’.
The amendment included not only accurate disclosure of the composition information of probability-type items, but also the prohibition of the sale of the’Complete Gacha’ product. This includes penalties for deceptive consumers by intentionally disclosing inaccurate information, as well as giving the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism the authority to investigate.
Complete Gacha refers to a probability-type item in the form of completing another item by collecting several items from the draw. In Japan, since 2012, it has been banned by industry self-regulation.
“Many game companies use’probability-type items’ as their main business model (BM), which acquire some of the products designated in the form of’drawings’,” said Rep. As there is no provision to disclose the information, consumers cannot accurately know the expected utility of the probabilistic items they purchase.”
He added, “Consumers have no choice but to lean on a low probability to get the product they want and buy it repeatedly until they pick it up, or judge the amount they have spent so far as sunk costs and give up.”
Yu said, “Even if game companies unilaterally disclose probability information as much as they want, they can receive a self-regulatory compliance mark, so users can exclude information that users truly want, such as’Cube’ in’Maple Story’, or He criticized that he has made self-regulation unfamiliar by creating a’complete gacha’ with extreme speculation by putting another probability-type item.”
Regarding the self-regulation, he evaluated that “there is no verification of whether the information disclosed by the game company is accurate, and even if the information is confirmed that the information is incorrect, there are no sanctions, so there is no deterrent.”
Rep. Yoo said, “There are suspicions about whether the probability of item appearance has been manipulated in the direction’unfavorable to consumers’ in famous games, and consumer confidence in game companies has collapsed.” Soon, even the game industry association’s position sent by the Game Industry Association contained an answer that it was difficult to disclose because even game companies could not know the exact composition probability, and they also admitted that the current self-regulation cannot be accurately implemented.” He declared, “It is no longer possible to effectively protect consumers with self-regulation alone.”
Accordingly, in this amendment, Rep. Yoo stated in the law that the exact composition probability or expected value of the probability-type item was disclosed in the law ▲ Prohibited the sale of’Complete Gacha’-type products criticized for excessive speculation ▲ Game companies manipulated the probability for their own benefit or incorrectly When the probability is presented, it contains the details of granting a penalty within three times of the resulting profit.
A device was also put in place to prevent overregulation. Considering the characteristics of the game industry, even if the probability announced by the game company differs from the actual applied probability, it is not intended to deceive users and obtain unfair profits, but also includes exceptions for cases where a simple technical error occurs.
Rep. Ryu Dong-soo said, “As regulations on the speculative nature of probability-type items are beginning around the world, if the BM of game companies that are buried in probability-type items and focus only on short-term profit cannot be fundamentally modified, the Korean game industry will become a galapagos and the world It has no choice but to be cut off from the market,” he pointed out.
He added, “As many game companies are pursuing the acquisition of plates for entry into China, which enforces stronger legal regulations than ours, I believe that they will not show a betrayal behavior that neglects consumer protection only in Korea.”
/ Reporter Yoon Sun-hoon ([email protected])