South Korea Makes Game Hacking Illegal
Professional electronic sports, better known as eSports, have seen huge growth in recent years, but this pro category of gaming really got off the ground in South Korea. Competitions have been held there for almost 17 years, and they have become extremely competitive to the point where some players will take any advantage they can get, including cheating using scripts.
Scripts allow a player to gain an advantage in their competitive game of choice without having to put in the required time and effort to become a great player. For example, scripts can allow a player to aim perfectly every time, carry out repetitive tasks automatically and/or faster, or actually hack a game system to gain an advantage, e.g. more loot drops. It can also be a very profitable business for those producing the scripts and programs to run them. They can earn thousands of dollars selling them.
In October, the Department of Cyber Safety for the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency busted an underground scripting operation located in the city. 11 people were arrested in connection with the very popular League of Legendshelper program called LoL Helper.
Using LoL Helper allows a player to play League of Legends at a higher skill level than would otherwise be possible by automatically avoiding Skillshots (carefully aimed projectiles). The bonus of that being a player can climb up the game’s rankings more quickly, much to the annoyance of the developer, publisher, and honest players.
LoL Helper earned its developers $350,000 before they were shut down, but the problem of scripting has now resulted in the South Korean government taking a much more drastic step. According to PVPLive, a law amendment means that the creation and distribution of programs meant to hack or modify a game are now illegal.
This is no idle threat by the government. Anyone caught distributing such programs will face a fine of up to $43,000 or jail time of up to 5 years. That’s surely going to make people think twice about pursuing game hacking as a career path.
Game publishers will be very keen to put this law into action if they can trace game hacks created for their titles back to South Korea. And who’s to say such a law won’t be considered by other governments in the future?
Source: PCMag