Players Caught Boosting In South Korea May Now Serve Time

Things have gotten serious in South Korea when it comes to people offering boosting services in video games. No longer will low-skilled players be able to pay others to help with improving their ranking -- unless they want to risk going to prison for two years and having to pay an $18,000 fine.

Boosting is a big problem in competitive games where low-skilled players with artificial ranks playing in higher ranking matches mess up the system. This can be a major issue for esports-centric games, so it's no surprise that the games industry would want to do something about it.

And something has definitely been done. The National Assembly of South Korea recently passed an amendment on the Game Industry Promotion Act that allows law enforcement to apply criminal charges to players engaged in boosting. According to Korean site Inven, the charges could earn boosters a 20 million won fine (somewhere around $18,000) and a two-year suspended prison sentence. Technically this means the booster probably won't actually see any jail time. However, they will be on probation during which time they can't do anything that will land them in trouble or they will have to go to jail.