By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
A court fined online Lineage gamers on charges of selling in-game cyber money for hard cash. It is the first fine slapped on non-gambling online gamers for cashing items.
In a fast-track trial, Busan District Court ruled Thursday that the two in-game items traders identified as Kim, 32, and Lee, 32, should pay 5 million won ($5,000) and 3 million won in fines, respectively, for trading game items for hard cash.
In the ruling, judge Kim Jong-soo said, ``The two purchased numerous cyber game items used in Lineage between May and July last year at 10 percent below street prices through game item trading Web sites. They made more than 20 million won in profit by reselling them.''
But game experts said the ruling did not reflect the criteria on illegal money-for-item deal set by the culture ministry in February last year.
The ministry last year said money-for-game item deals made only in online gambling games such as Poker are illegal.
In response, the two traders asked the provincial court to handle the case in a regular trial. One trader said, ``We are victims of contradictory policies on gambling.''
However, the judge said, ``Their trades were illegal because the amount of money they handled was huge enough (to warrant the fine).''
Lee Young-yeol, an official at the ministry's game industry unit, said, ``We should abide by the court ruling. But the decision will surely impact current game trading practices.''
The Korea Game Development & Promotion Institute said the volume of money-for in-game item deals in Korea topped 830 billion won in 2006 and will exceed 1 trillion won this year.