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Vietnam Places Ban On Late Night Online Gaming
Are you addicted to online gaming? If you live in Vietnam, your life just got a little harder. According to Info.VN, the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communication has asked Internet providers in the country block access to online gaming between 10 PM and 8 AM daily. These measures will go into effect on March 3.
"Provincial departments of information and communication will inspect on-line games activities nationwide and deal with organisations that violate regulations by cancelling their services," said the ministry's Deputy Minister Le Nam Thang.
Some Vietnamese service providers have complained that this policy punishes adult entertainment consumers. This new policy expands the hours of a previous ban (which banned online gaming access between 11 PM and 6 AM). The previous ban had also banned online game advertising and the operation of Internet cafes within 200 meters of primary and secondary schools. Internet cafes, where children pay to play online PC games for 15 cents an hour, are wildly popular in Vietnam (as they are in South Korea).
There are an estimated 4,000 Internet cafes in Vietnam's capital city of Hanoi alone. It's not clear how this new ban will affect the business of already established gaming cafes.
[Source: Kotaku]
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