Apple And Google Ordered To Remove Play To Earn Games In South Korea

Over the years, we’ve seen developers come up with new ways to generate revenue from their games. The model of buying a game once and not having to pay again for it is fine, but because developers don’t earn money after the fact means they need to keep pumping out new titles, which can be tedious.

This is why many have since adopted the free-to-play model where the cost of the game is free, but developers earn either through subscriptions or in-app purchases, which might be lucrative in the long-run. Recently, we’ve also started to see an uptick in a new model – play to earn – where gamers have to purchase what are essentially NFTs, but in return, they get extra rewards and have a chance of selling off those NFTs for real-life money.

However, it seems that over in South Korea, regulators aren’t a fan of this play to earn model and have since ordered Apple and Google to remove these games from their app stores. Apparently this is a breach of local laws that govern how much money can be won in games. Under the current law, apparently the max amount a player can win at a time is capped at around $8.42.

We’re not sure if other regulators will start scrutinizing these types of games in the future, but it’s not hard to see why it might be problematic as it could encourage kids and teens from spending more on games than they should.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones, Gaming
Tags: Android, Apps, cryptocurrency, Google, iOS, Legal