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Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

You'd get jail time in the US for selling steroids, making devices for cheating at casino games or fixing the outcome of sporting events.

E-sports are serious business in South Korea. The Korea e-Sports Association is operated by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and affiliated to the Korean Olympic Committee. E-sports have had serious problems with cheating, match fixing and illegal gambling. We're not talking about some niche hobby, but a significant part of the Korean economy.

I don't necessarily agree with this decision, but I think that it's unfair to characterise it as petty or draconian. The integrity of sport is a precious thing that needs protection. You might see an aimbot as the moral equivalent of a patch, but a professional e-sports player might see it as equivalent to a vial of steroids or a credit card skimmer.

There's a very fine line between cheating at a game and outright fraud.

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You don't get jail time for running a bat-corking company, or for making hockey sticks with "illegal" curves, or for deflating footballs, or for building a stock car that intentionally doesn't meet NASCAR standards.

I don't see how this is any different. People are going to cheat. They should get punished for cheating. If that cheating involves fraud, they should face charges for fraud. But it should not be illegal to drill a hole in a baseball bat and fill the void with ground-up bouncy balls.

This raises a question, if anyone in Korea knows it would be good to find out; is this law a strict liability law or does it require mens rea?

I doubt we'll see stories of people making botting tools getting jail time in Korea but the fact that there is a mechanism where they could get jail time, it makes the rule enforceable.

The situation is you have people who break the rules and profit from that, you have enforcers who know who the people are who are breaking the rules but don't have a practical method for controlling them. So this gives them a bigger stick to threaten the bot makers with and presumably they will back down and try some other way to subvert the system that doesn't have the risk of jail time.

The big challenge is that they don't want to turn of players who are paying a subscription revenue but they don't want players that cheat either. If they can make it harder to cheat they hope to keep the revenue and reduce the cheating. Otherwise they ban players which reduces the cheating and reduces the revenue.

My own opinion is that finding the equivalent of shadow banning for these game players would be much more interesting. Back when I was playing World of Warcraft it was suggested that Blizzard might implement a way of adjusting the odds of reward for cheating players against them and in favor of people who were not cheating. That being a more subtle way of making cheating less beneficial and moving people away from it.

> You'd get jail time in the US for selling steroids,

which cause bodily harm..

> making devices for cheating at casino games

which cause financial fraud

> or fixing the outcome of sporting events.

same as above.

Cheating in an every day game does not benefit you financially or cause harm to other human beings. If this law was limited to eSport tournaments then I can see it being effective.

You also have to accept that not every gamer in Korea is a professional.

How is cheating an a professional game ('esport') not equivalent to financial fraud when cheating in an other professional game (physical sport) is?

The parent is saying that it is in professional games, but that that doesn't mean it requires legislation making cheating in all games explicitly illegal. Penalties in sports are commonly enforced primarily through the organisations running the sport, and only some offenses even involve actual law. If you cause someone financial harm, it's very likely already illegal.

Match-fixing in professional games is clearly fraud, that doesn't mean that letting your friend win because it is his birthday should be prosecutable.

I'd personally be okay with making cheating in multiplayer games illegal (it's purely antisocial behavior that causes real financial harm and has no legitimate reason to exist), but prosecuting people who write code is beyond the pale.

"Foul on the shot"

"Oh, that wasn't a foul"

"Yes it was"

"Are you going to make a federal case about this?"

"Yes. Yes I am."

Cheating in physical sport is not fraud unless done with the intent to fix an outcome. Similarly, cheating is not always necessary to fix an outcome, but the penalty is the same.

In small amounts steroids have not been shown to cause harm. They are even prescribed by doctors to people like cancer patients who are in remission to help regrow muscle after they get off chemo.

Of course there are people who abuse them, but then that could be said of pretty much anything. Should we also ban fizzy drinks, doughnuts and grandma's apple pie because of type 2 diabetes?

Also, selling and taking steroids isn't illegal. I don't know where that's coming from. Purchasing or selling scheduled steroids without a Rx is what's illegal.

I guess you could get really technical. Cholesterol is a steroid.

Or you could just infer they are talking about controlled anabolic steroids without a prescription.

Yeah, this isn't really comparably to pro sports such as NFL players taking steroids or cheating at a casino. It's more analogous to cheating in your friendly Sunday company softball game and getting 5 years in prison. I also agree that it makes sense for professional sports, but is absurd for casual players.

I hate cheaters in video games, just not enough that I think they should be jailed. Cheating at an event with a monetary reward though...

> You'd get jail time in the US

This is Korea, but regarding the US:

> for selling steroids

Not if you're a doctor or if the steroids you sell aren't scheduled. There are plenty of legal methods for obtaining steroids. Even for performance enhancement reasons. The laws at play here are only concerned with illegal distribution and possession.

> making devices for cheating at casino games

This appears false: http://www.blackjackcomputers.com/ My guess would be that you only get into legal trouble if you actively tamper with gambling machines.

> or fixing the outcome of sporting events

What about the WWF? I would imagine any laws have to do with the application of gambling regulations and not the sport itself.

Using a card-counting computer at a blackjack table in a licensed casino would be illegal in Nevada under NRS 465.075 ("Use or possession of device, software or hardware to obtain advantage at playing game prohibited"). I've never seen a restriction on manufacturing the device itself.

Right.

"The integrity of sport is a precious thing that needs protection. You might see an aimbot as the moral equivalent of a patch, but a professional e-sports player might see it as equivalent to a vial of steroids or a credit card skimmer."

I guess it depends on the details. As another commenter stated, it might make sense for professional e-sports. If you are cheating say on a ranked pub, then may be it matters but I wouldn't go as far as indict people on criminal charges. But the way it is stated in the article seems like you can go much further than that and even harm one's private usage of a program. It's like going to jail for playing cards with your buddies in your home but taking a suit out for whatever reason. I hope there are sensible exceptions but this sounds pretty draconian.

I didn't see anything in the article about punishing players - it's the people coding cheat software they're going after. I don't know how that's going to work, given the Internet is international, but anyway, that seems to be the idea.

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