South Korean government wants to ban NFT games in App Store and Play Store

The South Korean government would like to ban NFT games in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Google and Apple should stop new releases and remove current games that work with that model.

The South Korean Game Rating and Administration Committee, part of the Ministry of Culture in the South Korean government, has asked Google and Apple, among others, to remove various games, Naver reports. The GRAC itself has not yet published a report on the matter on its own site.

In the system, also known as play-to-earn, players buy NFTs that they can later resell to other players through the game maker. The GRAC would equate that to earning prizes in a game, something that has a relatively low maximum in South Korea via the Game Promotion Act. Gamemakers’ payouts to players could potentially exceed that maximum.

The games are on the Play Store and App Store, but not on Steam. That platform banned NFT games in October. It’s not the first time nft games have come under fire in South Korea. The games could not be released earlier this year because the GRAC did not want to give an age rating. Makers of nft games forced a release through a lawsuit.