It’s safe to say Minecraft is one of the most successful games on the planet. The game is known for being family friendly and enjoyed by people of all ages – since it provides fun and challenge to grown ups, and at the same time teaches kids about creativity, and lets them make friends in a huge community which extends over the entire world.
Well, there is now once place that considers Minecraft R-rated because of a seemingly small change in accessing the game itself.
South Korea has technically marked Minecraft as 19+ content, following a change in Minecraft’s access points. According to The Korea Herald, Mojang’s Java version of the phenomenally popular title is now only accessible with an Xbox Live account in Korea – a service that requires you to be 19 years old and above to use.
Xbox Live in Korea is built just because it was Microsoft’s way of bypassing the “Cinderella law” which is basically a law where children and teens who are up to 16 years old are not legally allowed to play games between 12am and 6am, so rather than introducing a screening process into Xbox Live Microsoft decided to change the age rating of the service so children shouldn’t technically be using it at all.
Understandably, this has caused some upset within gaming communities in Korea. According to The Korea Herald, a petition has gained the support of over 15,000 Koreans, who want to remove the Cinderella law.
The Korean Government, however, is saying that Microsoft is to blame for this mess. One government official says : “any responsible game company should make adjustments to different systems of different countries when it makes a policy change and make investments to protect its users.”
However, when implementing ways to make sure children aren’t using Xbox Live between 12am and 6pm, Microsoft would have other issues it would face. Currently in China, gaming giant Tencent is using facial recognition to prevent children from playing games and spending excessive amounts of money due to a similar law.
