China Limits Gaming Screen Time & Monetization For Children

china gaming

It looks like young gamers in China are facing a shut down as a new law limits under 18 game time to 90 minutes.

China’s National Press and Publications Administration has just issued a notice titled the “Notice on Preventing Minors from Indulging in Online Games”. Based on the information found in a sit-down conversation with the Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese State Press and Publication Administration confirmed that it has taken steps to tackle the ongoing problem of gaming addiction in the country.

More Than An Off Button

As a result, Chinese gaming giants from Netease to Tencent will be required to take steps to ensure that this limit is enforced. In addition, gaming should also fall between 8 am and 10 pm. There’s even worse news for anybody into convenience shops, because they aren’t buy to win at all. Players under the age of 18 won’t be able to spend whatever they want. Games companies will no longer be able to provide paid services to anybody under 8 with players between 8-16 able to spend up to 200 yuan and players up towards 18 only able to spend 400 yuan.

It’s a significant curtailment for a series of massive companies that thrive on engagement, screen time, and microtransactions to continue their growth. From a social standpoint, it isn’t unexpected to see systems like real name registration and facial recognition in China. This isn’t the first time the Chinese authorities have got involved in gaming with restrictions on game publishers and outright bans. The financial impact of around 170 million online individuals finding their spending habits curtailed, however, might be something we have to watch closely and see if it pushes more monetization elsewhere.

For the full Question and Answer session with the National Press and Publication Administration, you can head over to the Xinhua News Agency website. Should governments in the west be taking this kind of approach or is it just flat out draconian? Let us know how you keep the screen time to a minimum below.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Lost Password

Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.