Korea's Unannounced Game Leaks Are Required by Law

One of gaming's longest-running mysteries just got a boring legal answer: South Korea's ratings board doesn't leak unannounced games — it's required to publish them. A GameMeca investigation, surfaced via Automaton, found that the Game Industry Promotion Act legally obligates GRAC to publicly disclose age ratings the moment they're approved, no embargo provision, no exceptions for marketing calendars. Every "Korean ratings board leaks remaster" headline of the past decade was the system working exactly as designed. That leaves publishers with two bad options: delay Korean submissions and slip the regional release, or accept that Korea announces your game for you. It also explains why so many reveals get rushed out hours after a GRAC listing surfaces — the marketing plan was already dead. A decade of blaming careless bureaucrats, and the actual culprit was the statute book all along.