Gaming in China is complicated, to say the least, and now young players under the age of 18 will have their leveling up time reduced to no more than three hours a week as part of new regulations imposed by Chinese authorities.
The new restrictions will limit game time for minors to one hour per day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, plus national holidays, as part of a concerted effort from the government to tackle gaming addiction, at least according to regulators. Previously, there were existing restrictions dating back to 2019 that capped playing time for underaged gamers to 1.5 hours per day in a country where mobile gaming is king.
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As reported by Bloomberg, news of these more restrictive measures were initially disclosed by Xinhua, the official Chinese state news outlet, explaining that game services providers like Tencent, Netease, or Genshin Impact's MiHoYo are obliged to properly enforce real name registry, login information, and even facial recognition for young users to guarantee compliance with gaming curfews. As noted by Daniel Ahmad, around 110 million underaged people play video games in China, with the under 16 population accounting for less than 3% of total player expenses.
The news came as a blow to the stock prices of both Netease and Tencent, which besides owning several popular games in the country are also tasked with publishing and operating the Chinese version of popular western games like World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Fortnite, Call of Duty Mobile, and PUBG. This is also likely to impact the adoption and usage of the Nintendo Switch in China, since Tencent also runs the limited local eShop.
China is the largest video game market in the world, generating a massive $40.85 billion in revenue when compared to the United States’ sum for 2020 which totaled $36.93 billion. These numbers come in spite of the previous restrictions and the fact that China only lifted its ban on video game consoles back in 2015.
While the new regulation claims it's meant to look out for the healthy development of minor, state censorship has always impacted the final product Chinese gamers end up resulting in games like Fortnite being vastly different in China, or even the calm and peaceful setting of Animal Crossing getting an outright ban due to its usefulness to voice free speech.
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