“That will continue, as Tencent strictly abides by and actively implements the latest requirements from the Chinese authorities.” “Since 2017, Tencent has explored and applied various new technologies and functions for the protection of minors,” a spokeswoman for Tencent said in a statement. In its latest financial disclosures, the company said that in the second quarter of 2021, players under 16 accounted for just 2.6 percent of its gross receipts for China gaming.
Tencent, which already reduced the amount of time minors could spend on Honor of Kings, said it would abide by the new restrictions. Many parents, the report stated, “reported that their children had big changes in their temper and personality after becoming addicted to games, even as if they had become another person.” In early August, the share prices of Tencent Holdings and other big Chinese video game companies fell sharply after a Chinese newspaper called their products “spiritual opium.” The article singled out Tencent, which owns Honor of Kings, a hugely popular game in China.Ĭhinese parents complained that children constantly found new ways to sneak past the limits on gaming hours, said a report issued in August by the government-funded Beijing Children’s Legal Aid and Research Center.
Parents, it said, had demanded “further restrictions and reductions in the time provided for minors by online gaming services.”Ĭhina’s Ministry of Education in April ordered online gaming companies to ensure that minors could not play from 10 p.m. “Recently many parents have reported that game addiction among some youths and children is seriously harming their normal study, life and mental and physical health,” the administration said in an online question-and-answer explanation about the new rules.
The government said it would step up inspections to ensure that gaming companies were enforcing the restrictions. The new rule sets the permitted gameplay hour to 8 to 9 p.m. Parents had complained that was too generous and had been laxly enforced, the administration said. Under the old rules, players under the age of 18 were limited to no more than 90 minutes of gaming on weekdays and three hours a day on weekends.
The rules, released by the National Press and Publication Administration, tightened restrictions from 2019 aimed at what the government said was a growing scourge of online game addiction among schoolchildren. Chinese children and teenagers are barred from online gaming on school days, and limited to one hour a day on weekend and holiday evenings, under government rules issued Monday. China’s strict limits on how long minors can play online video games just got stricter.
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