Xbox Live accounts require you to be 19 or older. Because you need one to play Minecraft, the game has gone from being recommended to those ages 12 and up to being an adult title in South Korea.
Until recently, you could use your Mojang account to log in which circumnavigated this problem but now, that's no longer possible. As spotted by GamesIndustry.biz, this has sparked players to begin petitioning against the "Shutdown Law" to the presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae.
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The shutdown law, for context, is the 2011 "Cinderella Law" which bans kids from playing video games between midnight and 6am. This altered the way that Xbox Live works in South Korea. Rather than implementing a screening feature for underage accounts, it instead opted to make it a requirement to be 19 or older in order to have an Xbox Live account. This is different from other countries.
The petition, which has currently been signed by over 15,000 Koreans, stated, "Korea's game market is at the risk of being the world's only place where Minecraft is labeled as a game."
Microsoft has not commented on this, but it did update the Minecraft website which now states, "For players in South Korea, you must be 19 years or older to purchase and play the Java edition of Minecraft."
However, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which, according to KoreaHerald, "played a central role in the introduction and passage of the Cinderella law," blames Microsoft for this. It stated that it is the company's management policy and not the Cinderella Law that has caused Minecraft to become R-Rated.
It stated, "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."
Now, it's a waiting game between who will budge first – Microsoft, or the Korean government at the behest of the petition. At any rate, Minecraft is now R-Rated in South Korea.
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