Aion 2 is a Korean MMO that was released in Korea and Taiwan last month, and overseas release is also planned soon. The sequel to the beloved 2009 MMO Aion was poorly received by players who were extremely critical of the MMO's monetization. MMOs have been accused of Pay-to-Win, which is the cardinal sin of the genre.
However, what is more problematic than Aion 2's predatory microtransactions is the misuse of the MMO's 'style shop'. The feature is a community marketplace where players can upload custom characters to sell to the community, with developer NCSoft and creators splitting the money 50/50. Unfortunately, creators are selling characters modeled after real celebrities, including minors, through style shops (thanks, Automaton).
identity theft
Aion 2 is a game with a lot of sexual and revealing clothing, so you can see the obvious issues with using likenesses of real people. This is especially problematic in South Korea, a country with strict protections for celebrities to curb obsessive fan culture.
Most of these real-life representations are of Korean pop idols. At a glance at the first page of Style Shop, you can see several characters modeled after members of the girl group Aespa, such as Kim Min-jung (Winter) and Yoo Ji-min (Karina). Some of these producers do not explicitly use the performers' names, perhaps for the sake of plausible deniability. Some use or use obvious pseudonyms that they believe will not withstand legal scrutiny.
The launch of Aion 2 was such a disaster that NCSoft's stock price plummeted.
Pay-to-Win, Pay-to-Play doesn't matter as long as it pays.
According to Jang-Mook Kang, a Korean lawyer who wrote an article about Aion 2 for Game Mecca, the creators of these models and NCSoft, which makes these reproductions possible, could face serious legal problems if someone files a complaint. According to South Korea's digital sex crimes and deepfake laws, it is a crime to edit video and/or audio of someone's face, body, or voice to arouse sexual desire or cause sexual humiliation.
According to Kang, the technical details of the reproduction aren't really that relevant. In other words, if people recognize and associate deepfake creations with celebrities, the actual process of how the deepfake was created is not legally problematic. If you use a celebrity's likeness to dress them in sexually explicit clothing, it is likely to constitute a digital sex crime.
NCSoft's ability to profit from the recreation of popular celebrities' communities means the publisher may face legal problems in the future. This is especially true if prosecutors can prove that the company knew what was going on and decided not to stop it.
- Establishment date
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March 11, 1997
- subsidiary company
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Arena Net
- headquarters
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Seongnam-si, South Korea
