Sony Suspends PSN Store In Korea
The South Korean government just does not seem to like video games! Due to some new laws about to hit the books in Korea, Sony is being forced to close its PlayStation Store and other related services for the PS3. The PSN services will stop on June 29th, and the purchase of new content, downloads, and online game registration will be impossible during the outage.
So what’s the law that’s keeping the PSN Store from operating? It’s called the “Game Industry Promotion Act”, and what it does is prevent gaming companies from using the age or real name for account authentication for anybody under 18 years old. Since the PSN Store requires that age and name, Sony has no choice but to pull the Store until they can alter the authentication process to comply with the law.
At this time, Sony doesn’t know how long the outage will take. While it could be as short as a month or two, having to design a whole new way of signing up users and authenticating them as legit people is an arduous task. For the Korean PS3 fans affected by this suspension, I hope that Sony will have the service back up in no time.
