Young players practice Arena of Valor: 5v5 Arena Game developed by Tencent Inc in front of a shopping mall on October 1st, 2017 in Tianjin, China. Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images
China has released a draft of new restrictions on online gaming, spooking tech investors.
Shares of Chinese gaming companies Netease and Tencent fell in Asian trading.
In the US, Take-Two, EA and Microsoft fell in early trading on Friday.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by an editor.
Chinese regulators have proposed new restrictions on the online video game industry, spooking investors involved in the sector.
In Hong Kong, shares of internet giant Tencent, which has a stake in game developers, closed 12 percent lower, their biggest daily loss since 2008.
Shares of online gaming rival Netease also fell 25 percent during Asian trading. The Hang Seng Tech Index fell 4.37 percent.
In the US, shares of Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive Software slipped more than one percent early Friday, while Microsoft shares also fell 0.13 percent. Microsoft acquired “Call of Duty” publisher Activision Blizzard at the beginning of the year.
In Paris, shares of Assassin’s Creed studio Ubisoft were also trading more than three percent lower.
Markets reacted quickly to draft regulations from China’s National Press and Publication Administration, which oversees video games.
Like that „Wall Street Journal“ reported, the proposal aims to reduce users’ in-game spending and tips. At the same time, incentives that could keep users online should be prevented, such as in-game functions that reward daily logins.
According to the newspaper, in 2022 China was the second largest gaming market in the world in terms of total sales, after the United States.
The new measures follow a similar crackdown in 2021, when Beijing banned minors from playing video games during the school week in a bid to curb so-called video game addiction among youth.
In 2019, the National Press and Publications Authority banned users under 18 from playing between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
Read the original article Business Insider.
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