A new rule introduced by The National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), China’s online surveillance dog, seeks to curb what the government believes is a growing “gambling addiction among young people.”
The rule drastically reduces the time children under the age of 18 can play online video games over the weekend, with a one-hour limit that will be imposed from Friday and Sunday, which also includes holidays. That would mean most of the year children would be allowed a maximum of three hours of online play per week.
Like the South China Morning Post reports, the standard was first published in a state media Xinhua, where a government spokesman said that “Many parents have said that the problem of gambling addiction between adolescents and children has severely affected their ability to learn and study, as well as their physical and mental health, even causing a number of social problems “.
The application of this rule will be in the hands of Chinese gaming companies, such as Tencent and NetEase, which are asked to “strictly implement” registration and login systems that require the use of the name. real of a player. Tencent, meanwhile, has already said it “supports the new regulation and will implement the new requirements as soon as possible.”
The latter move comes after a succession of similar, less severe measures has obviously proved ineffective by any metrics (or agenda) that the Chinese government is trying to achieve. In 2019, children were banned from playing after 10pm and spending on microtransactions was reduced, while also limiting their playing time to 90 minutes a day and three hours on public holidays.
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The new rule comes into force just weeks later government media in China labeled video games as “spiritual opium”, in a story that was published and then quickly deleted by The economic information newspaper, but not before causing an 11% drop in the share price of gaming giant Tencent.
It also arrives a few days later the Korean government invested its own limits on children’s play time, with the Youth Protection Review Act of 2011 —which prevented children under the age of 16 from playing after midnight—, abolished.