S. Korea's firm Webzen slapped 158 million won fine for misleading probability of in-game items

Seoul, Nov 30 The antitrust watchdog said on Sunday it has imposed a fine of 158 million won ($107,000) on game publisher Webzen Inc. for misleading players about the probability of obtaining in-game items in its popular role-playing game MU Archangel.

Webzen failed to properly disclose the actual probabilities of acquiring certain random items from in-game purchase from June 2020 to March 2024, generating an additional 6.7 billion won in revenue during the period, according to the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), reports Yonhap news agency.

The FTC ordered the company to halt the illegal practice and submit measures to prevent recurrence.

At the same time, the FTC also fined four other game publishers -- Gravity Co., Wemade Co., Krafton Inc. and Com2us Corp. -- 2.5 million won each for similar violations.

Meanwhile, net foreign selling in South Korea's main stock market reached a fresh monthly high in November while individual investors remained net buyers, the bourse operator said on Sunday.

Foreign investors sold a net 14.4 trillion won ($9.8 billion) worth of shares on the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) throughout November, according to the Korea Exchange.

The figure marked the largest monthly net selling by offshore investors, surpassing the previous record of 12.5 trillion won set in March 2020 in the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Foreigners purchased a net 7.4 trillion won and 5.3 trillion won worth of local shares in September and October, respectively, but turned to net sellers in November.

For the January-November period, foreign net selling totaled 8.8 trillion won.

Insiders said foreigners' appetite for risky assets was dampened by fading expectations for a U.S. rate cut at the Federal Reserve's December meeting and by escalating uncertainties surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

Foreign investors offloaded a net 8.7 trillion won worth of SK hynix shares and 2.2 trillion won worth of Samsung Electronics stocks in November. The two companies accounted for 76 percent of foreign net selling for the month.

Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor