From 20:00 to 21:00 from Friday to Sunday and no more than three hours per week. After having ignited a mini-debate in the national press in the first week of August, China has introduced new restrictive measures on online video games for under 18s in an attempt to curb video game addiction, a widespread problem in the country that affects especially young people. The National Press and Publication Administration issued the notification “for effective prevention of children’s addiction to online games” in order, the official media reported, to address the problem of excessive use by children of online games “.
The precedents
After having defined them a few weeks ago as an “opium for the spirit” in an editorial, China launches a squeeze on video games that still risks doing very badly to Tencent and NetEase, the two “red” giants of the gaming industry that had lost at the beginning of August several tens of billions of dollars on the Hong Kong stock exchange just for an editorial in the Economic Information Daily (EID), a Chinese media directly linked to the government that limited itself to calling for measures against the excessive use by minors of online games. However, it is not the first time that China has intervened on video games and minors. Chinese users under the age of 18 were allowed to play online on weekdays for up to 90 minutes, with no access after 10pm and before 8am. While, on holidays and weekends, minors could have access to online games for up to three hours a day.
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Control over young players
And that’s not all. The National Press and Publication Administration has in fact urged the rigorous implementation of registration and logins with real name, stressing that online game providers must not provide any form of service that does not include real data and facial recognition. To play, players will have to say who they are by certifying their age and identity. In other words, video game makers will control who is who connects is a minor and how long they are playing. But especially if he is telling the truth. To date, for some games it is enough to declare that you are of age and that’s it. A squeeze on minors, as we know, has also been in the world of social media and has affected TikTok precisely under the pressure of the Italian Privacy Guarantor. In this case, however, the internal control over Chinese players risks being more severe and technologically easier.
The campaign against video game addiction is underway.
Alongside the restrictive measures, the Chinese government also intends to launch an awareness campaign, let’s say. Press and publishing administrations at all levels were also asked to strengthen “the supervision and inspection of the implementation of relevant measures to prevent minors from engaging in online games and dealing with video game companies who do not they have implemented them strictly in accordance with the laws and regulations “. A measure that reaffirms the need to “actively guide families, schools and other social sectors to co-administer, govern and fulfill the responsibility of child protection in accordance with the law and create a good environment for healthy growth for them”. The most disturbing aspect is that if there is a country where control over video game consumption can be surgical and without limitations, it is China. For the West it is a clear signal. For Tencent and the other national champions of Asian gaming, complicated hours on the stock market are expected.