China recently imposed new gaming restrictions on citizens under the age of 18, allowing them to play video games for just one hour on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and major holidays between 8pm and 9pm. It seems like this is already posing issues for game servers, as a huge influx of players on Saturday caused Honor of Kings – one of the biggest mobile games in the region – to go offline.
No official announcement has been given for servers going down, although it’s not hard to see that the new restrictions likely played a big role. This was the first weekend China enforced the rules, and the Honor of Kings crash quickly became a trending topic online. Issues persisted into Sunday as well, although Friday was notably free of any server malfunctions.
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"Honor of Kings, the most popular mobile game in China, had its servers crash on Saturday, September 4," Daniel Ahmad, senior analyst at Niko Partners, said. "While no specific reason was given, the crash was likely due to a surge of younger players logging on between 8pm and 9pm, as per the new regulations that have just gone into effect."
With "110 million gamers" under 18 in China, developers will need to find a way to restructure servers and account for the influx of players during these peak hours. There's no doubt many of these players will be excited to get their game time in, leading to a huge spike in server strain in the hours they're legally allowed to play.
Niko Partners also notes that many of these players will pivot to "streaming video" or "watching others play games online" during the hours of the day they'd usually be playing games themselves. It's unclear what long-term impact the new regulations will have in the region, but it's clear something will need to be done to combat the millions of players logging over the course of a few hours each week.
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