The Truth about Numbers

March 3rd, 2006 Jun Sok Huhh Posted in news |

NC Soft, the largest game developer/publisher, is under heavy fire for illegal leaking of registration numbers. For it was national wide news, the upshot of the incident is not to be repeated.(see following article, click here)

Firstly, if you are not Korean, you might wonder what the registration number(RN) is. RN is the unique identification code for nationality of Korea. Usually, it is used for identification and screening for age limitation. It’s somewhat similar to social security number of U.S., but RN is more frequently used as requirement for many instances of certification.

Frauds on RN are not new to Korean. Especially, the spread of broadband connection made this type of activities so frequent.¹ Unexpected and irritating phone calls or spam messages to promote all kinds of merchandises may be a part of the life of Korean people. As for reaction on illegal abusing, there are kinds of spectrum of opinions. Many newspapers and game experts are attacking NC Soft for their negligence on online security. Among plain gamers, there is the symptom of another wave of massacres against all of foreign players including gold farmers. To my eyes, this happening is somewhat weird. Illegal abuses are not confined to online game cases, let alone NC Soft. Actually, abusing by native Korean might be more serious and dangerous. Among game servicing companies, casual game portal like Hangame or NetMarble has suffered more seriously for this kind of abusing.² Anyway, NC Soft is at the center of gaming scene in Korea. So their case stands out.

There have been a lot of guesses and words on stealing of identification, because the huge size of gold farming around popular games like Lineage series is well known. Not only gold farmers but players of Lineage usually have multiple accounts for item looting.³ I think two points deserve to be said.

Firstly, to the company, accounts by stolen numbers are not appropriate for many reasons. Actually, however, there is no solid way to discern the normal from the abnormal. Cutting connection from outside Korean territory? Another procedure for exact identification (for example, certification via cell-phone or phone call)? Definitely, it was the fault of NC Soft to stand still for this kind of rogue activities. In reality, there are few appropriate options to preventing frauds.

Secondly, ordinary monthly fee based model might encourage the company to set back. All of accounts are to pay their fees to the company. In the view of company financial record, no nationality is concerned. Though it is a bit of bizarre view, fee revenues generated by foreign gold farmers can be understood as extra payments by domestic gamers who are to buy items from gold farmers. The monthly fees paid by doing RMT business are company’s share to total expenditure of item buying.⁴ In purely economic sense, company has no incentive to cope with ID stealing actively.

Also, we can approach critically to some vitual massacres against foreign (mostly, presumed as Chinese gold farmers by Korean players) players. As you already get, it is deeply related with item looting. Some cases of camping on juicy in-game spots by foreign gold farmers had made really big issues among domestic Lineage players. I think the playing element of Lineage might do a crucial role in this wave of virtual killing. Player-Killings(PK) have been core part of the game. At the early stage of the game, PK was not fair or strictly rule-based PvP, but sorts of virtual killing or another more efficient way of getting good items.(See this paper, http://gamestudy.org/eblog/?p=17) As far as I know, many foreign players have connected to Korean MMO games. Only in Lineage, the hatred against foreign players has been so often and drastically erupted.

1. To my opinion, old registration number system is not well fit with life in information age. But, institution tends to linger on [back]
2. I've stolen my number at Hangame twice! [back]
3. One interesting episode is here. In Nov. 2004, there was a sudden and rapid decrease of time usage of Lineage 1 and Lineage 2. The main cause of this was client program patch by NC Soft to ban using multiple clients on one PC. As so many users decried this change of policy, NC Soft could not but to give in. This disturbance showed that how many players have multiple accounts [back]
4. All of reveunes on farming except monthly fees are the share of gold farming business. [back]