So apparently South Korea is prohibiting online game trades. Here are a few articles:
Korea prohibits trade of online game items
South Korea to ban in-game item trades next month
Here are a few quotes from it:
QUOTE: Korea has decided to ban trade for commercial game items from the second half of this year as a measure aimed at encouraging students to not waste time.
QUOTE: The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has announced that it is planning to halt all virtual item trades with a new law, to be announced sometime next month.
My take on it? It really pisses me off that games are considered a waste of time. Games are interactive stories where you have to make decisions as you go through the story. They are no more of a waste of time than baseball or chess. There’s not much more that I can add to that.
CORRECTION: Yes there is! I found one additional funny note of (what I believe is correctly described as) irony: the crazy thing is that, as part of their argument to save time, they are banning bots. So, the bots save time, but you can’t have them. And since you can’t streamline your time-wasting gaming with time saving mechanisms, all trades are banned. Insane.